President’s Weekly Update
10 April 2014
I’ve spent the last few days in Hong Kong, returning first thing this morning. Will Spinks, Registrar, Secretary and Chief Operating Officer; Chris Cox, Director of Development and Alumni Relations; and Fiona Manning and Jo Keown (both from Chris’s office) joined me at the first ever joint meeting of our Global Leadership Board (GLB, chaired by Dr Rory Brooks) and our Hong Kong Foundation (chaired by Dr Eric Li).
We met members and their guests for dinner shortly after arrival. We then spent the first full day in a joint meeting of the two groups. Will and I gave an update on the many activities in the University and plans for the future. The chairs of the two organisations told us about recent activities; Chris Cox updated on philanthropy across the University; and Fiona reported on progress since her appointment as Senior Development Officer. We had a presentation from Professor Arthur Li Kwok-cheung, Deputy Chairman of the Bank of East Asia and previously Vice-Chancellor of the Chinese University in Hong Kong and Minister for Education and Workforce. He spoke about what it takes to be a successful university and completely aligned with my own views on so many things!
In the evening, we attended an excellent reception at the wonderful home of Sam Chan, one of our Hong Kong graduates (his house is fabulous). The event was a celebration to honour the significant achievements of our alumni and friends of the University in Hong Kong. We recognised the contributions of pioneering donors who were inaugurated into the new ‘Recognition Circle for the Foundation’. In addition to the many alumni, it was great to meet some of our undergraduate students who are coming to the end of their exchange year and clearly have been having a great time.
The following day we held a full business meeting of GLB at our Manchester Business School Worldwide (MBSW) office in Hong Kong and received a presentation from Christina Siu, who is Director of East Asia MBSW, on the MBSW activities and future priorities, and Bernard Chan, who holds many senior positions in Hong Kong and spoke to us about philanthropy.
Before a late night flight back, Eric Li entertained us all at the Happy Valley Race track where he has a private box. Jo Keown seemed to have a lucky streak, but we decided that all losses were our personal money and all wins had to go to the Hong Kong Foundation of the University!
In Manchester we held one of our regular meetings with Manchester City Council which is chaired jointly by Sir Howard Bernstein (Chief Executive of the Council) and I. We covered the usual wide range of topics, including skills, business partnerships, health, the European Open Science Forum in 2016, other festivals in Manchester and potential joint bids for major developments locally.
Professor Clive Agnew (Vice President for Teaching, Learning and Students) and I visited the School of Psychological Sciences where the students praised their staff and one wanted to know all about graphene! The staff told us about a very large increase in applications from overseas students, but also highlighted concerns about space and pressures on student numbers.
I gave another lecture to first year students - and this time I managed to get the audio visual to work. One student came up to me at the end and wanted my autograph!
Professor Clive Agnew and I had one of our regular meetings with Grace Skelton, General Secretary of the Students’ Union, and talked about the possible marking boycott, the handling of student events and the hand over to next year’s Students’ Union executive team.
Feedback on the live Question Time event I took part in last week with colleagues from the Senior Leadership Team has been positive with almost 1,500 people watching the recording. You can still see it at:
I managed to spend a little more time on research as we had a visitor and collaborator (Professor Andreas Meisel from Berlin) with us to present his work. He attended dinner with many of us from the stroke research group and heard about our research plans in our regular Friday lab meeting. I also spent some time reading grant applications - I know that it’s so important to seek all advice possible on applications.
It was a pleasure to attend a celebration in the School of Mathematics for Lenox Green, who recently received an OBE for the amazing voluntary work that he and his wife Heather do locally through their Rainbow Christian Centre. He said he had a short chat with the Queen, but then forgot to walk backwards before he bowed. I said that she was probably quite used to this!
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor
Feedback
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