A message from SEED Head of School, Martin Evans
22 Sep 2023
The start of a new year and new programmes, NSS results and opportunities to come together
Dear all,
It’s been a busy summer as ever with activity in all corners of the School. I hope however that you all managed to enjoy a break. At my daughters request I had my first ever ‘beach holiday’ this year…I slightly surprised myself by how much I enjoyed it!
September is all about looking forward, I very much hope that the current industrial action can be rapidly resolved and that we can move forward with something as close to a normal year as we have experienced recently. I do however want to briefly touch on last year and particularly on the efforts that colleagues made to close the financial gap that Faculty identified mid year. Under-recruitment in SEED and elsewhere in the Faculty meant that money was tight. Being careful in the second half of the year closed that gap considerably so that despite a shortfall in tuition fee income SEED finished the year very close to budget. This is never easy so thanks to everyone across the School who contributed here. Looking ahead recruitment looks better this year although we are struggling in a few places and home master's students are clearly down. What is really positive however is strong recruitment on our new programmes. The undergraduate programme in GDI, new masters programmes across the School and a new foundation year in Architecture have all done well which is testament to the careful work that has gone into their design. These programmes were part of a strategic attempt to rebalance our student numbers, so it is great to see them doing well.
Recruitment of staff continues over the summer as well and we have made some strong appointments internally and externally, including three new School associate directors, congratulations to Stefan Bouzarovski, Paul Armstrong and Chris Darvill.
One of the routines of the summer is the arrival of the NSS results. This year NSS looked quite different and there is lots of work ongoing to understand what we need to learn from them. Nevertheless, SEED had the highest NSS results in the University and the highest performing programme in the university was BSc education. This is a fantastic achievement for a programme going through NSS for the first time. There is lots for us to learn in the detail and we can still do better in relation to our competitors but these are heartening results and I would like to congratulate all the colleagues across the School that have played a role in delivering these outcomes, particularly the programme directors of our undergraduate programmes who play such a critical role interfacing with our students.
As mentioned, I have a fervent hope that we are all coming back to a more ‘normal’ year. As part of that I think it is important that we make the effort to meet with colleagues in person on a regular basis. Online is convenient and I am sure it has meant we get more ‘busy work’ done but I think we all recognise that we lose something as well. I know departments are thinking about aligning in person activities so that there are days when most colleagues will be in. There are also School events such as the upcoming inaugural lectures on Wednesday, 11 October, and SEED happy hours which are a great opportunity to meet up with colleagues across the School. Can I encourage you to think about aligning some of your days in the office so that you can participate.
Walking across campus yesterday there was a real buzz…students are arriving from across the world to take advantage of everything a Manchester education has to offer. Yesterday I was speaking to our incoming PGR students who all seemed genuinely excited to be joining the community of scholarship that is SEED. The range of fascinating topics they are planning to study really highlighted the quality and range of the research that we do in the School. I hope you all share our feelings of excitement about a new academic year… have a good one!
Best wishes,
Martin