A further meeting will be held tomorrow as part of a campaign to ‘encourage the selection of a chancellor with national and/or international experience, political clout and a sound appreciation of academia’.

The meeting of concerned academic and general staff, along with other members of the UNE and New England community, will be held at 1pm in the Arts Theatre (A1).

Following an initial meeting on May 6, staff representatives forwarded to the UNE Council a resolution listing the desirable attributes of a UNE Chancellor.

Elected academic staff members of council, Associate Professors Herman Beyersdorf and Jeanne Madison, said the resolution also called for clarification and discussion at the June 16 council meeting on the engagement of the Sydney-based industrial relations/specialists law firm Clayton Utz.

Meanwhile, the academic staff representatives ‘continue to receive an amazing number of names of prominent Australians, many UNE graduates, and with international connections, for the consideration of council in the selection process of a Chancellor 2009-2014’.

“We continue to hear also, from the UNE community, reiteration of the necessity for, as the attributes document states, a transparent selection process with full council participation,” they said.

“The current Chancellor (John Cassidy) has announced that, based on the encouragement of some council members, he intends to stand again for Chancellor for another term.”