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President's Weekly Update

4 December 2014

You may have heard the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s announcement in the Autumn Statement yesterday:

"£235 million investment in the Sir Henry Royce Institute for advanced materials, which will be based at Manchester University with satellite centres at Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield, Cambridge, Oxford and Imperial College. The institute will drive collaborations between academia and industry, to commercialise the UK’s world-leading research in this field.”

We expect further details to be released over the next few days, but this is fantastic news for our University and the result of very hard work by many in the University, particularly Professor Colin Bailey, Professor Luke Georghiou and Dr Jacqueline Henshaw.  You can read more at:

Last week I spent an afternoon in Oldham with Professor Brian Cox, who was born and brought up close to the town. We were both extremely impressed by our visits to Oldham Sixth Form College (OSFC) and Mahdlo - a centre for young people.

The University has great links with OSFC - we recruit many students from there (with a success rate for applications well above our average) and Mike Gibbons, Director of Student Recruitment and International Development, is a member of their board of governors. Brian and I first met a very lively class of primary school students learning about electricity, then we judged some fantastic posters on science from many local secondary schools We also saw the very impressive efforts of the college in helping local teachers in science and engineering - with some practical demonstrations. We ‘officially’ opened OFSC’s impressive new building and met with students who have applied to our University through our Manchester Access Programme. It was fantastic to meet Tasleema Begum, who came from the College through our Access Programme and graduated with the very top mark in Medicine! We then joined a packed audience for an enthusiastic 'Q and A' from the students, and we also received OSFC Biology and Physics ambassador T-shirts!

Then we went on to Mahdlo, also in Oldham, an amazing organisation which welcomes young people after school into its fantastic building. We were shown round by Terry Flanagan, chair of the board, Helen Taylor, the CEO, and Lucy Kershaw, a Youth Work Manager. The noise and excitement that greeted us was immediate, our two young guides Lewis and Mckenzie were great and we saw many University of Manchester student volunteers. The facilities at Mahdlo are really impressive and were full of kids having fun. Brian and I then did another ‘Q and A’ with yet another packed audience. The whole experience brought home to me the real importance of our many initiatives such as the Manchester Access Programme. Stories and pictures of our visit occupied the first three pages of the Oldham Chronicle!

We have had some great news on awards this week. We won the Times Higher Education 'Outstanding Contribution to the Local Community' award for the second year in a row for one of our key social responsibility signature programmes, our School Governor Initiative - again Oldham is a great example of this! Congratulations to the 150 staff who give their time as governors in local schools and special thanks to Alison Gregory and Stephanie Lee in the Directorate for the Student Experience, who have helped us achieve the fastest growth of school governors of any employer in the UK. We received another great award for the Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre which won the Marketing Cheshire award. Congratulations to many but particularly to Dr Teresa Anderson, Director of the Centre.  And finally, the Conferences and Venues team, based in the Directorate of Estates and Facilities, were the winners in the Business Tourism Award category of the Manchester Tourism Awards 2014. Congratulations to Alison Aucott, Head of Hospitality and Events, and Layton Quinton, Marketing Manager.

At the Board of Governors meeting we signed off on the financial accounts and our audit - both of which were very positive and will be public soon. The Board also agreed to extend my contract as President and Vice-Chancellor until 2020, which I was delighted to accept.

I hosted our annual ‘Civic dinner’ with local leaders including the Lady Mayoress, the Lord Lieutenant and the High Sheriff, along with leaders of key Manchester organisations. We were joined by Professor Ian Anderson, Vice-President for Engagement for the University of Melbourne, with which we have strong links. The main topic of conversation was how we can further improve partnerships between our University and other organisations across the City and the region.

I talked about leadership at the final session of our Headstart programme which runs twice a year and supports those in the University who are interested in taking on positions of leadership. This was a special occasion as it was the last time that the programme will be run by Professor Stephanie Marshall before she takes on a greater role in our Institute for Education research.

At one of the regular meetings with the City, Sir Howard Bernstein and I gave updates on the many things happening at the moment, not least the devolution of some powers and funding to Greater Manchester Combined Authority.

I joined a panel at the opening of ‘Manchester Escalator’ on Deansgate. This is a great new space where people who want to start up companies can go to work, network and get advice. It is sponsored by Barclays bank, so the Chief Executive gave the opening speech then the panel talked about what is needed to support entrepreneurs and start-up companies in Manchester. You can find out more at:

At one of my regular lunches with staff from across the University, I asked what things are most in need of change or improvement. They raised the need to reduce ‘red tape’, asked for more support and advice in developing leadership skills and more opportunities for ‘grass roots’ research collaborations across disciplines.

In the School of Mathematics we met students who clearly loved Maths. With staff we discussed cross-disciplinary research support, time-tabling, pensions and service teaching in other schools. Happy ‘special’ birthday to Lenox Green - who works in the School and a past winner of our Social Responsibility and Volunteer of the Year Award - for the weekend!

   

Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor

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