President’s Weekly Update
13 February 2014
At our Board of Governors’ meeting this week we discussed student recruitment, the University’s current and projected financial position, recovery of true costs for research, continuing cuts in government funding, student recruitment and the planning for the Board conference next month. Several members were hoping to travel to London after the meeting, but travel reports suggested that transport was highly disrupted by the terrible weather.
I attended a lunch at the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce with Lord Ian Livingston, the Minister for Trade and Investment. I met Ian on the trip to China I made before Christmas as part of the Prime Minister’s trade mission. Ian was until recently head of BT and is a Manchester graduate in economics. We discussed Manchester as a region of major growth, inward investment and the provision of skills. I raised the great opportunities to link with University of Manchester alumni globally - we have so many in influential positions across the world that could greatly benefit trade and other UK links.
I visited two more Schools this week with the usual discussion with senior staff, then open meetings with students and staff. The School of Arts, Languages and Cultures is probably our largest School and was established only very recently in 2012. I was interested in a question asked by one of the students about the value of a degree in Arts, Languages and Cultures. Aside from the generic value of a degree (which is the topic of my March UniLife article), I talked about the huge value of humanities to the University, the region and the UK, but perhaps most importantly to society in general. Better summarised by others – humanities is about everything that is human.
Manchester Medical School is also very large and distributed across the main campus and our partner hospital trusts. We have seen a remarkable improvement in student satisfaction amongst our medical students and some truly innovative approaches to engaging students, getting their feedback and addressing their concerns. I was very taken by the strong comments from several staff about how clinical service delivery in our partner hospitals has a major impact on our students, staff and research.
I can’t count the number of grants I have submitted – there have been many failures and some successes - but all felt like shedding sweat and blood. I have always valued rigorous academic review and sound advice on what I can and can’t include in the costs. So I am very supportive of the need to build time into our grant applications to seek valuable advice, rather than waiting until near the submission deadline. It’s important that we set ourselves internal deadlines to ensure that our grants have the best chance and are costed appropriately.
I spent a day in London meeting one of our wonderful alumni, Sir Ralph Kohn. Sir Ralph has three degrees from us, has been a generous supporter of the University and always has wonderful tales to tell - he was a child refugee during the war, who lived in Salford, and after graduating had an extremely successful career in clinical trials for new medicines. Ralph and his wife Zahava have been great supporters of our University.
Professor Luke Georghiou (Vice-President for Research and Innovation) and I attended a meeting at the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) to discuss the European Open Science Forum (ESOF) which Manchester will host in 2016. This means that Manchester will be European City of Science in 2016, so we are planning major events at and around the ESOF conference.
I hosted another dinner for new professors; those who have been at the University for a while but promoted recently, and those who have recently joined us. There were some great ideas and experiences about better social spaces, wider engagement across disciplines and how we enhance the student experience, to discussions around our international agenda, how we generate income and save money and how we better ‘market’ the University. Many wanted to make contact with colleagues in different parts of the University - the University of Manchester Staff Association may be an opportunity:
I had lunch with Paula Vennells, who is Chief Executive of the Post Office. I met Paula at a dinner in London and discovered that she had been brought up in Manchester because her father (Frank) had been a senior lecturer in chemical engineering at UMIST. She noted some remarkable changes in the city and the University.
It was also a great pleasure to meet Sir Walter Bodmer, a truly great scientist, who was visiting to give a seminar in the Faculty of Life Sciences. He is a longstanding friend of Ralph Kohn.
I managed to spend some time this week in research meetings, planning new grant applications, preparing papers to submit and discussing new PhD students. I also had to deal with referees comments on grants and papers - like every applicant I feel that they often miss the point, don’t read papers properly or seem intent on trying to be difficult - or is this just me?
I’m expecting a particularly heavy mail bag tomorrow…?
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor
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