High Wired update: Accentuate the positives SUGAR coating bitter pills; research policy up for grabs; and a fuzz-free zone. Research policy up for grabs: HW was giddy with excitement when we popped along to a research conference in Melbourne this week. We expected to hear the new government's update on the previous government's plans for a pilot assessment of research impact next year. But Prue Torrance, director of research policy in the department's higher education group, was a no-show. The conference organisers were given no reason for the last minute bailout, but it seems to confirm what Ian Chubb was saying - the new government's research policy is yet to be fully formed. Certainly industry minister Ian MacFarlane is tied up with the fallout from Holden upping stumps (HW can't bear another reference to "end of the road") and he will want a big say in research policy when he gets around to it. As far as the impact agenda is concerned it's a fair bet the Coalition will like the idea given they started down that route last time around - especially given that Kim Carr hated it. But an interesting question is: how will adding another research assessment square with the government's war on university red tape? Report, consult, report more, consult more: For the record, HW asked the department why Torrance piked. Apparently it's still considering the "outcomes of consultation" but is also waiting on some further commissioned work on the issue. Someone is on a nice little earner. Accentuate the positive: Torrance's no-show left Craig McInnes of consultants PhillipsKPA to step into the breach with a talk on their advice handbook for higher education leaders. It's no doubt a timely read for VCs and their minions as faculties collapse into colleges, bureaucracies are razed and academics face the squeeze to publish and teach more. Asked how managements can encourage staff to maintain their sense of urgency among all this, rather than just bitching, McInnes said scare tactics - the "gloom and doom" approach - only worked up to a point. Academics are sick of hearing that the end of civilisation is nigh, he said. He suggested focusing on the win-wins and using the competition as a spur. It's about saying "we can get to a better place individually and collectively if we get on board, but we have to be quick," McInnes said. Please send in your examples of VCs accentuating the positives on some bitter pills. We could do a ranking. Lobbing in to lobby: With policy up in the air, the time is ripe for impact fans the Australian Technology Network. The Higher Education Funding Council for England's research director, David Sweeney, is out here to talk up the UK's foray into assessing impact by using case studies. For Sweeney it's no doubt a nice distraction from England's dire Ashes campaign. Despite being Scottish, Sweeney does follow cricket, though he is probably trying not to now. Cop this: More from the policy document being mulled over at the National Union of Students conference this week - the fuzz-free zone. Following the cops' aggressive picket line-breaking tactics at Sydney University, the organisation wants cops off campuses. "NUS requires all affiliated student unions to be police free zones, so as to assure a space for students on campus that is free from the threat of police," the document fumes. Fortunately, the utopian nature of these places means there's never any other type of threat. Romper stomper: Macquarie postgraduate Paul Keil is off to India after winning a Prime Minister's Australia Asia Endeavour Award. His topic? Human-elephant conflict, which apparently isn't all one way, with jumbos raiding crops and stacking into trains. And we thought we had it tough with galahs and roos.