Dean's update

11 Feb 2019

Message from Graham Lord

This is the first of what will be a regular Monday morning email to Faculty colleagues.

I’m keen to start a conversation with you and so hopefully this will help while I make every effort to get around the Faculty and meet as many colleagues as possible in person.

Putting an emphasis on team working is really important to me. Initially I’m planning to visit our three Schools to meet with the heads of divisions and research domains and also to meet with the Professional Services Leadership Team.  But while my wider programme of engagement is put into action, please do stop me to introduce yourself if you see me. I’m at a disadvantage because you probably know what I look like by now, but I may not yet know you!

I spent my first day reviewing the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre (BRC), which connects some of our leading researchers with the NHS in Greater Manchester to drive the translation of scientific breakthroughs into life-saving treatments and care for patients.  As we move forward in this area, it would be great to discuss how we can provide greater alignment of the fundamental discovery science going on within the Faculty with the BRC. This will enhance the impact of our research and make it more visible to the wider community across the city.

I’ve experienced my first Senior Leadership Team (SLT) meeting.  It was followed immediately afterwards by the Policy and Resources Committee and so I had three and a half hours of meetings and rather a lot of papers to read and assimilate! All this just reinforced how impressive our institution is.  I’m obviously doing a lot of listening in these early days and it is clear from the discussions at SLT, that there are many collaborative opportunities across our three Faculties.  We are part of one University and one Manchester and collaborations are going to be very important and a key focus area for me.

I’ve been invited to speak at the University’s two-day annual Board of Governors meeting in March. Peter Clayton, our deputy Dean, is going to talk about the past year’s Faculty successes and I’ll speak about the Faculty looking to the future. They’ll certainly want to hear about our renewed focus on Faculty finance given the challenges we need to address and I’ll plan to talk about that as part of a presentation regarding the 10-year strategy we’ll be developing.

This means generating new ideas quite swiftly. The Faculty Leadership Team (FLT) began the discussion last week and I’ll look forward to sharing more of the thinking on this with the Leadership Forum in the first instance (which comprises the direct reports of the FLT) and then at my first Town Hall Meeting, which I really hope you will join me at in three weeks’ time on Thursday 28 February at 3.00pm. You’ll find further details about this in the FBMH News bulletin. Please do sign up and come along to listen, ask questions, challenge our approach, and say hello personally.

I really do think we have opportunities to be more ambitious and better aligned across the Schools, across the Faculty, across the University and with our partners in Greater Manchester.

I’d like to be in a position to share the overarching strategy for the Faculty within three months and then we will quickly move to develop the specifics. I’m very keen to capture as much diverse opinion as I can, so that the plans we formulate before the end of the summer term we will be able to deliver on together. Some of you may think my timing is too ambitious while others will be eager to move at pace! Please get involved in the conversation and tell me what you think!

All the best,

Graham

Professor Graham Lord

Vice-President and Dean