SESU - Research project support

The Stakeholder Engaged Scholarship Unit (SESU) provides scholarly expertise and research assistance to organisations working in areas that are central to ACU’s mission and ethos as a Catholic university.

The SESU invites community organisations to tell us their needs, questions and problems and then activates scholarship projects to explore and produce meaningful outcomes to address these issues. ACU’s academic staff can apply to work on these projects and lend their expertise to help address real-world problems identified by these organisations.

The role

If your application is successful, you will be invited to contribute to project planning discussions with the organisation and other academic staff. SESU projects are partner-driven, and this means that they are wholly collaborative—your role will involve working together with the organisation to understand their needs and intentions for the project to help deliver a final product that will benefit their work.

Unlike consultancy work, SESU projects are developed in partnership with organisations and utilise their expertise to design and undertake the project. You will use your conversations with organisations (along with their EOI) to shape a Project Plan, which will include the project’s objectives, methodology, outcomes and outputs as well as the contributions the organisation will make to the project.

Requirements

• Academic staff on continuing or fixed-term contracts of more than six months across all Faculties, Research Institutes and Institutes.
• Availability to commit to a project for roughly one year (or less).

When

Applications for the next round of projects will open in April 2022. If successful, we expect your work with the organisation to commence in May or June.

How to get involved

For more information about the SESU and for FAQ’s about how to apply and what your participation in a project will involve, please visit our website.

Learn more

Note: This opportunity does not qualify for Community Engagement Time Release (CETR). However, academic staff proceeding to the final research team will have the project included in their academic workload and SESU funds will be used to cover the cost of replacing their usual work in the project period (for example, teaching load). Workload allocations will be determined by the relevant executive member and the internal members of our Advisory Group.