President’s weekly update
28 August 2014
I hope you all managed to have some rest and relaxation over the summer, though I know that for many staff this was a busy time of research conferences, preparing for next year’s teaching and it was particularly busy for the many staff involved in recruitment and admission of new students for 2014 entry.
I am delighted to say that we are very likely to fully meet our target numbers for home undergraduate students. Recruitment of overseas students and postgraduate taught students is always much more difficult to predict at this stage, but looks promising.
It is a great pleasure to see that this year’s Royal Institution Christmas Lectures will be given by one of our staff, Professor Danielle George in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering Danielle’s lectures will be broadcast between Christmas and New Year and are called ‘Sparks will fly: how to hack your home’. I gave the Christmas Lectures in 1998 and it was hard work but also great fun. You can see further details at:
The results of that National Student Satisfaction Survey (NSS) showed that our score had remained at 85% overall satisfaction, though the responses to many of the more detailed question had improved. We had hoped to increase our overall score this year and several subject areas did show improvements, but for others the scores went down. We will be considering follow up actions, particularly on those areas where scores are lower than we would wish.
By contrast we improved by three places in the Shanghai Jiao Tong (SHJT) Academic Ranking of World Universities, moving from 41st in the world to 38th. One reason for our improvement in SHJT is that we have published more papers in prestigious journals, which is valuable, at least in the sciences. The SHJT doesn’t take adequate account of our strengths in the humanities and we have concerns about the methodology of all international research league tables, so we are currently considering how we might gain a better overall assessment of our research performance than simply by using one measure
It was very sad to note the recent death of Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw at the age of 101 years. Dame Kathleen was one of Manchester’s most well-known mathematicians and politicians. She has served as Mayor of Manchester and had a long and close association with the University and its predecessor institutions. I visited her a few months ago when her health was clearly failing, but she was as lively and chatty as ever. You can see further details at:
In between some holidays, I’ve had many meetings with senior colleagues, been interviewed by journalists from the Financial Times, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, continued with the recruitment processes for Vice-Presidents and Deans for the Faculties of Engineering and Physical Sciences and Medical and Human Sciences and planned a number of presentations I will be giving over coming weeks.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor
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