President’s weekly message
12 June 2014
Highlights this week include a visit to the Student Communications and Marketing team (pictured right)
At the Board of Governors ‘informal briefing meeting’ Professor Colin Bailey (Vice-President and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences) gave an update on graphene and other new 2D materials. He told us about progress with the applications of our discoveries, the National Graphene Institute, industrial partners, patents, major funding, recruitment, new 2D materials and general future plans. Not surprisingly there were many questions.
I went to an event of the Manchester Leaders Forum chaired by Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester City Council. The event was attended by about 40 ‘leaders’ of varied organisations across Manchester with the aims of identifying opportunities and threats and eventually agreeing on priorities for the future. This is now being worked up into a priorities and actions plan which will be disseminated.
You have probably heard that Professor Ian Jacobs, Vice-President and Dean of the Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences will be leaving us early next year to take up the position of President and Vice-Chancellor at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney. Ian has made an enormous contribution to the Faculty and to the University and we shall miss him, but we wish him every success is his exciting new role. Since UNSW is very close to Bondi Beach, he may expect a few visitors.
Last week I met David (Lord) Puttnam in London. I worked closely with David many years ago when he was chair of the National Endowment for Science and Arts (NESTA) and I was a Council member, but we haven’t seen each other until we met up recently at a dinner. We talked about overseas students from South East Asia where David has a special interest, and distance learning in areas such as sociology, philosophy and ethics.
Also in London I gave a talk at the Royal Society on Academia and Women as part of an Economic and Social Science Research Council project run from the University of Warwick. The other speaker was a senior member of professional support staff from Warwick and gave an interesting perspective on his career in the commercial and academic world as a gay man.
In between these two meetings I met Alan Pitt, secretariat of the Council for Science and Technology to plan areas for our work over the coming year.
I visited the Directorate for Student Experience and heard about the work of the office led by Paul Govey who is Head of Student Communications and Marketing. They seem to be busy all year round, from students’ first contact with us until they leave. For example they send out 42,000 emails a week and receive hundreds of enquiries each day. I was given my own framed ‘thank you’ card that is sent to all students who hold offers. Though it wishes me luck in my exams; I wasn’t planning any exams anytime soon. I also took part in their World Cup sweepstake - and drew Belgium as my ‘good team’. Not a bad draw, and Vincent Kompany, captain of Manchester City and one of our students will be playing for them.
I gave out the awards at the Green Impact Award Ceremony. This recognises teams (and a few individuals) across the University who have made an impact on sustainability. This year 68 teams had taken part- up from 40 last year and 11 the year before. I praised the winners for their achievements and also excellent team work between staff in very different roles and with our students. I was delighted that my office moved from Bronze to a Silver award this year - largely thanks to the efforts of our ‘Green Impact Champion’ Laura Hill. There was just one Platinum winner - our Manchester Museum for its remarkable work.
At the Planning and Resources Committee we considered the Operational Plans for all areas of the University, discussed how we compare to the Russell Group of universities on core parameters for staffing, students, teaching and research income and recommended some changes to our policies on outside work, staff probation and a new policy paper on ethics framework for forthcoming Senate and Board meetings.
Senior colleagues and I participated in a second exercise to consider how we would respond to a major incident here on campus. The thankfully fictitious scenario started with an apparent leak of confidential information, but ‘within an hour’ progressed to the complete corruption of every one of our IT services and then to the realisation that this had been a terrorist attack on the University.
Congratulations to Dr Jill Barber, Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy, Manchester Pharmacy School, and Professor Wendy McCracken, Professor in the Education of the Deaf, School of Psychological Sciences, who have had their contributions to teaching recognised in this year’s Higher Education Academy’s National Teaching Fellowships. You can find out more at:
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor
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