President's Weekly Update
17 December 2015
Last week I joined a ministerial visit to India with Jo Johnson, Minister of State for Universities and Science, and Sajid Javid, Secretary of State for Business and Skills. The trip involved at least as much travel as meetings - Wednesday Delhi, Thursday Bangalore, Friday Mumbai, then back with an ever changing programme. I am most grateful to Tanya Luff in the International Office for managing to deal with the frequent alterations to the schedule, often late at night or very early morning!
The trip was valuable, if tiring. We visited several of the leading Indian research institutes, met the Indian ministers of science and higher education, and participated in several panel discussions with academics and industries. I gave a few talks - usually at short notice! I left the main party to meet Professor CNR Rao, probably the most eminent scientist in India, who works on materials, and we discussed existing and potential new partnerships. I also visited Reliance Industries, one of the largest companies in India.
At one of the top schools in Mumbai, I met a student who will join us next September to study mechanical engineering, and two of the visiting party had daughters studying with us - thankfully both having a great time (studying history and economics).
At the ‘Heads’ meeting, several senior colleagues and I gave feedback on the Annual Performance Reviews (APRs) and discussed the areas of success and where we need to step up in performance, the nature of future APRs and the format of future ‘Heads’ meetings. In the final session, we discussed four key questions: how do we raise ambition in our staff and students, how do we create more time to focus on our core goals, how do we generate ‘investment funds’, and how do we invest any funds to meet our core goals? We took a short break at 11am to watch the launch of Tim Peake’s rocket! There was a great event at Jodrell Bank with many schoolchildren to celebrate the launch.
The University continues to have constructive discussions with the campus trades unions on matters relating to the redeployment register. As a result, UCU have suspended any plans for industrial action and Unison has withdrawn its notification to conduct a ballot on industrial action.
I spoke at an event to celebrate Professor Simon Gaskell’s contribution to science and higher education (as part of his 65th birthday celebrations earlier this year). Simon played an important role in convincing the Council of UMIST that they should go ahead with the merger with the Victoria University of Manchester in 2004. He then became Associate Vice-President for Research, working closely with me, then Vice-President for Research in 2006 before becoming Vice-Chancellor of Queen Mary, London in 2009.
I have just started my annual round of Schools visits. The first this year was the School of Law where we only met a very small group of students but they were very positive and we heard of many new initiatives in the School and a desire to innovate further, but a sense that our processes and policies can ‘stifle’ innovation.
We were visited by a group of senior staff from the Biology and Biotechnology Research Council (BBSRC). We are the largest recipients of BBSRC grants so this was an important visit. The focus was on industrial biology and bioenergy. We are very strong in both areas through Manchester Institute for Biotechnology (MIB) led by Professor Nigel Scrutton and I hope we convinced them of our commitment to this area one of our five ‘Beacons of Research’
We held another meeting of the oversight group for changes in Life Sciences and Cognate Disciplines. Progress has been good, with structures agreed and regular messages sent to all relevant staff. The next step is to propose staff locations and seek feedback.
This week we have our winter degree ceremonies. I presided over a degree ceremony in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences. I heard that Lemn Sissay’s first degree ceremony was a great success and he spent time in the Quad letting students take ‘selfies’ with him!
Clive Agnew (Vice-President for Teaching, Learning and Students) and I had one of our regular meetings with Naa Acquah, General Secretary of the Students’ Union. We discussed recent speakers at the University, the response to the consultation on the government’s green paper on higher education, the annual performance reviews and students’ participation in the forthcoming Schools visits.
I hosted a lunch for staff across the University. As usual, I asked what they would want to change – but this time I also asked what they were most proud of in the University. There was a shared concern about centralisation of support services, though recognition that this was less expensive and more consistent than distributed support and all wanted ‘simplification’ where possible. Several felt proud of ambition and wanted better integration of teaching and research.
We held a lunch for Lynda McKean who is retiring after working in my office for ten years - and in the University for 25 years.
Finally, the Whitworth Building has been transformed into our very own snow globe in the University’s online Christmas greeting. Welcome to our winter wonderland:
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor
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