President's Weekly Update
12 November 2015
Senate last week approved proposals for naming of the new Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, the naming of the three Schools within the Faculty (Biological Sciences, Medical Sciences and Health Sciences), the renaming of the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences to the Faculty of Science and Engineering and the renaming of the School of Earth and Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences to the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences. These proposals will now be recommended to the Board of Governors for approval. Pending approval by the Board, work is now in progress to determine the structures of the three Schools, the nature of the Research Domains, the structures for Professional Support Services, the process for the population of new structures and the time scales to ensure that new structures are fully operational. Regular updates will be sent out and affected staff will have the opportunity to comment.
You may have seen the Government’s green paper (ie largely for consultation) on universities entitled ‘Fulfilling our Potential: Teaching Excellence, Social Mobility and Student Choice’. As the title suggests the paper is mainly about students, with proposals for the forthcoming Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). We will be responding in detail to the consultation. You can see the paper at:
I spent much of Monday in sub-committee meetings of our Board of Governors. First, Staffing Committee considered staff on fixed term contracts or on open-ended contracts with finite funding. Then we discussed progress on changes to our redeployment register and the transformational change to IT services, as communicated to staff last week.
At Finance Committee, we considered progress in dealing with major changes to our financial accounting rules and the early management accounts for the current financial year.
We held a joint meeting of Finance and Audit Committees to agree the final sign-off for our accounts for 2014-15, including a private meeting of our external auditors with the chairs of each committee. It is a credit to our finance teams that our external auditors had no significant issues or concerns.
Then we had a normal meeting of Audit Committee to consider, amongst normal business, our risk registers and how we manage risk, the effectiveness of procurement and the reports of our internal auditors.
We held an informal briefing for members of our Board of Governors. These briefings are where we update them on important activities in the University, outside the normal Board meetings. This time we heard about environmental sustainability. Professor Ian Cotton from the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, who leads ‘energy@manchester’, and Dr Emma Gardner, who is Head of Environmental Sustainability, presented on the goals we have to reduce our carbon footprint, reduce overall waste and promote sustainability, our research on sustainability and the ma y undergraduate programmes we have and are planning in this area.
At our Senior Leadership Team (SLT) meeting this week, we considered the Government’s green paper, student applications for the next intake in 2016 and discussed how we might further enhance marketing and recruitment for students and how SLT members can provide better communications to and from SLT – comments from staff are of course welcome.
Senior colleagues and I had an informal supper with the executive members of our Students’ Union. We discussed a whole range of topics, including the recent Government green paper, student demonstrations in London, projects where we can work in partnership, wider engagement of students who live off campus, are in part-time study or are carers, the important goals of our new Chancellor, Lemn Sissay, around arts and poetry, students from ‘care homes’ and achievement of our students from ethnic minorities
It was a pleasure to meet Professor Tony Chan, Vice-Chancellor of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and his colleagues. I met Tony on my visit to Hong Kong in September and we are setting up a programme of collaboration, supported by our Hong Kong Foundation, which we hope to announce soon. The visitors met many other senior staff, visited the National Graphene Institute and discussed how we enhance student exchange programmes.
I was interviewed for Nature Jobs about the University, my career and research, and about ESOF (EuroScience Open Forum). I’ve known the editor of Nature, Phil Campbell, for many years and he is a great supporter of ESOF and the associated European City of Science. Professor Luke Georghiou (Vice-President for Research and Innovation) also promoted ESOF at a major conference in Budapest this week.
This week we conducted the Annual Performance Reviews for the Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences and for the Professional Support Services. Once reviews are completed for the Library and our Cultural Institutions (our Museum, The Whitworth, John Rylands Library and Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre), progress across the University against our key performance indicators will be summarised in our Annual Stocktake Report and discussed in detail at our Board of Governors’ Annual Planning and Accountability Conference next March.
We have seen very extensive press coverage of the visit by the President of China, Xi Jinping, to the University a few weeks ago, including major coverage in mainland China.
Look out for a TV programme about Jodrell Bank on BBC Four’s Timeshift series at 9pm on Monday, 16 November:
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor
Feedback
Please send comments to president@manchester.ac.uk
President's Weekly Update
12 November 2015
Senate last week approved proposals for naming of the new Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, the naming of the three Schools within the Faculty (Biological Sciences, Medical Sciences and Health Sciences), the renaming of the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences to the Faculty of Science and Engineering and the renaming of the School of Earth and Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences to the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences. These proposals will now be recommended to the Board of Governors for approval. Pending approval by the Board, work is now in progress to determine the structures of the three Schools, the nature of the Research Domains, the structures for Professional Support Services, the process for the population of new structures and the time scales to ensure that new structures are fully operational. Regular updates will be sent out and affected staff will have the opportunity to comment.
You may have seen the Government’s green paper (ie largely for consultation) on universities entitled ‘Fulfilling our Potential: Teaching Excellence, Social Mobility and Student Choice’. As the title suggests the paper is mainly about students, with proposals for the forthcoming Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). We will be responding in detail to the consultation. You can see the paper at:
I spent much of Monday in sub-committee meetings of our Board of Governors. First, Staffing Committee considered staff on fixed term contracts or on open-ended contracts with finite funding. Then we discussed progress on changes to our redeployment register and the transformational change to IT services, as communicated to staff last week.
At Finance Committee, we considered progress in dealing with major changes to our financial accounting rules and the early management accounts for the current financial year.
We held a joint meeting of Finance and Audit Committees to agree the final sign-off for our accounts for 2014-15, including a private meeting of our external auditors with the chairs of each committee. It is a credit to our finance teams that our external auditors had no significant issues or concerns.
Then we had a normal meeting of Audit Committee to consider, amongst normal business, our risk registers and how we manage risk, the effectiveness of procurement and the reports of our internal auditors.
We held an informal briefing for members of our Board of Governors. These briefings are where we update them on important activities in the University, outside the normal Board meetings. This time we heard about environmental sustainability. Professor Ian Cotton from the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, who leads ‘energy@manchester’, and Dr Emma Gardner, who is Head of Environmental Sustainability, presented on the goals we have to reduce our carbon footprint, reduce overall waste and promote sustainability, our research on sustainability and the ma y undergraduate programmes we have and are planning in this area.
At our Senior Leadership Team (SLT) meeting this week, we considered the Government’s green paper, student applications for the next intake in 2016 and discussed how we might further enhance marketing and recruitment for students and how SLT members can provide better communications to and from SLT – comments from staff are of course welcome.
Senior colleagues and I had an informal supper with the executive members of our Students’ Union. We discussed a whole range of topics, including the recent Government green paper, student demonstrations in London, projects where we can work in partnership, wider engagement of students who live off campus, are in part-time study or are carers, the important goals of our new Chancellor, Lemn Sissay, around arts and poetry, students from ‘care homes’ and achievement of our students from ethnic minorities
It was a pleasure to meet Professor Tony Chan, Vice-Chancellor of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and his colleagues. I met Tony on my visit to Hong Kong in September and we are setting up a programme of collaboration, supported by our Hong Kong Foundation, which we hope to announce soon. The visitors met many other senior staff, visited the National Graphene Institute and discussed how we enhance student exchange programmes.
I was interviewed for Nature Jobs about the University, my career and research, and about ESOF (EuroScience Open Forum). I’ve known the editor of Nature, Phil Campbell, for many years and he is a great supporter of ESOF and the associated European City of Science. Professor Luke Georghiou (Vice-President for Research and Innovation) also promoted ESOF at a major conference in Budapest this week.
This week we conducted the Annual Performance Reviews for the Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences and for the Professional Support Services. Once reviews are completed for the Library and our Cultural Institutions (our Museum, The Whitworth, John Rylands Library and Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre), progress across the University against our key performance indicators will be summarised in our Annual Stocktake Report and discussed in detail at our Board of Governors’ Annual Planning and Accountability Conference next March.
We have seen very extensive press coverage of the visit by the President of China, Xi Jinping, to the University a few weeks ago, including major coverage in mainland China.
Look out for a TV programme about Jodrell Bank on BBC Four’s Timeshift series at 9pm on Monday, 16 November:
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor
Feedback
Please send comments to president@manchester.ac.uk