President's Weekly Update
11 February 2016
The meeting of our Board was held at Jodrell Bank this week. Members of the Board and of our General Assembly were given talks about the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Jodrell Discovery Centre and research conducted at Jodrell and the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) which we host. They were then taken on a tour of the telescope facilities in glorious sunshine.
At the Board meeting itself, we dealt with the normal business of audit, finance, staffing committee and reports from Senate, Planning and Resources Committee and the University-Students’ Union Committee. We also discussed the forthcoming Board Planning and Accountability conference, the fact that we will not receive our budget allocation from HEFCE for the current year until mid-April, our most significant risks, the new Faculty structure, IT strategy and analysis of our costs (TRAC return). We received a report from Professor James Thompson, Associate Vice-President for Social Responsibility, and Patrick Johnson, Head of Equality and Diversity, about our current position, progress and plans on equality and diversity amongst our staff and our students.
I attended an event at the Houses of Parliament for Northern MPs organised by N8 (the group of eight research intensive universities in the North of which we are a member). I spoke about research collaborations in materials, including the Sir Henry Royce Institute for Advanced Materials, which will be built on our campus, and in health through ‘Connected Health Cities’, which brings together health informatics and data analysis across the North.
I visited the Faculty of Life Sciences (FLS), where a large group of undergraduate and postgraduate students were very positive about their experiences, their staff and their facilities. In the open staff meeting, discussion focussed on the new Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health (FBMH), which most FLS staff will be joining. Staff are inevitably concerned about how the new structures will operate, where Professional Support Staff will be located, how we will manage teaching, budgets and research initiatives and other issues in this period of transition. We are aiming to resolve as many of these as quickly as possible and move to new structures. While we need to address the inevitable difficulties, we must also not lose sight of the very many opportunities presented by this development.
This week I chaired a meeting to review progress on the implementation of the review of life sciences and cognate disciplines. All staff have now confirmed their new location in FBMH or in what will be the Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE), and several senior appointments in FBMH have been made. We are now seeking appointments to further leadership positions in FBMH. For further details see:
In the School of Environment, Education and Development, we heard about the great success of the Global Development Institute and Manchester Institute of Education and issues of split site locations and IT services support. The students were extremely positive - describing their staff as “superb”! In the open staff meeting, we discussed the importance of research, the Research Review Exercise (RRE), Distance Learning, environmental plans for the campus and creating time or staff.
It was a pleasure to meet Ian Kennedy, Vice President of Technical Operations for Cisco, which is the City’s partner in Manchester’s £10m ‘Smart Cities’ project known as CityVerve. Ian is also a keen supporter of ESOF (EuroScience Open Forum).
I also met with Juergen Maier, Chief Executive of Siemens UK, who holds an honorary professorship with us. Siemens is also providing excellent support for ESOF. We discussed research collaboration and employment of our graduates - Siemens now employs more graduates from our University than any other UK university.
I met a large French delegation from Institut des Hautes Etudes pour la Science et la Technologie (IHEST) who visited the University to discuss how we collaborate. This is a fascinating organisation that includes University representatives, industry, policy makers and journalists and the focus of their visit was science, innovation and wider communication - a good fit with our goals.
At one of my regular meetings with a group of staff from across the University, they raised many topics including ‘green spaces’ on campus, how we encourage our students to be more independent, induction for new staff, opportunities for training in leadership, staff facilities and our great public places such as The Whitworth, Manchester Museum, Jodrell and the John Rylands Library.
At Planning and Resources Committee, we approved important topics including our Annual ‘Stocktake Report’, which assesses how we have done over the past year against our key performance indicators. On most we have met our targets, but given the increasingly competitive environment we face, we need a step change to meet our ambitious targets - and funds to meet those step changes.
At Finance Sub-Committee, we began the annual budgeting process, agreeing on principles and the process and timescale, including review and challenge. We also considered our progress in releasing some of our endowment funds, which will be utilised to further the strategic objectives of the University.
You may have been watching The Story of China on BBC Two presented by our Professor of Public History, Michael Wood. The next episode airs tonight (11 February) at 9pm.
The BBC dramatisation of War and Peace is also very closely linked to the University - the Director, Tom Harper, the composer, Martin Phipps, and Adrian Edmondson, who plays Count Rostov, are all our graduates!
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor
Feedback
Please send comments to: president@manchester.ac.uk
President's Weekly Update
11 February 2016
The meeting of our Board was held at Jodrell Bank this week. Members of the Board and of our General Assembly were given talks about the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Jodrell Discovery Centre and research conducted at Jodrell and the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) which we host. They were then taken on a tour of the telescope facilities in glorious sunshine.
At the Board meeting itself, we dealt with the normal business of audit, finance, staffing committee and reports from Senate, Planning and Resources Committee and the University-Students’ Union Committee. We also discussed the forthcoming Board Planning and Accountability conference, the fact that we will not receive our budget allocation from HEFCE for the current year until mid-April, our most significant risks, the new Faculty structure, IT strategy and analysis of our costs (TRAC return). We received a report from Professor James Thompson, Associate Vice-President for Social Responsibility, and Patrick Johnson, Head of Equality and Diversity, about our current position, progress and plans on equality and diversity amongst our staff and our students.
I attended an event at the Houses of Parliament for Northern MPs organised by N8 (the group of eight research intensive universities in the North of which we are a member). I spoke about research collaborations in materials, including the Sir Henry Royce Institute for Advanced Materials, which will be built on our campus, and in health through ‘Connected Health Cities’, which brings together health informatics and data analysis across the North.
I visited the Faculty of Life Sciences (FLS), where a large group of undergraduate and postgraduate students were very positive about their experiences, their staff and their facilities. In the open staff meeting, discussion focussed on the new Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health (FBMH), which most FLS staff will be joining. Staff are inevitably concerned about how the new structures will operate, where Professional Support Staff will be located, how we will manage teaching, budgets and research initiatives and other issues in this period of transition. We are aiming to resolve as many of these as quickly as possible and move to new structures. While we need to address the inevitable difficulties, we must also not lose sight of the very many opportunities presented by this development.
This week I chaired a meeting to review progress on the implementation of the review of life sciences and cognate disciplines. All staff have now confirmed their new location in FBMH or in what will be the Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE), and several senior appointments in FBMH have been made. We are now seeking appointments to further leadership positions in FBMH. For further details see:
In the School of Environment, Education and Development, we heard about the great success of the Global Development Institute and Manchester Institute of Education and issues of split site locations and IT services support. The students were extremely positive - describing their staff as “superb”! In the open staff meeting, we discussed the importance of research, the Research Review Exercise (RRE), Distance Learning, environmental plans for the campus and creating time or staff.
It was a pleasure to meet Ian Kennedy, Vice President of Technical Operations for Cisco, which is the City’s partner in Manchester’s £10m ‘Smart Cities’ project known as CityVerve. Ian is also a keen supporter of ESOF (EuroScience Open Forum).
I also met with Juergen Maier, Chief Executive of Siemens UK, who holds an honorary professorship with us. Siemens is also providing excellent support for ESOF. We discussed research collaboration and employment of our graduates - Siemens now employs more graduates from our University than any other UK university.
I met a large French delegation from Institut des Hautes Etudes pour la Science et la Technologie (IHEST) who visited the University to discuss how we collaborate. This is a fascinating organisation that includes University representatives, industry, policy makers and journalists and the focus of their visit was science, innovation and wider communication - a good fit with our goals.
At one of my regular meetings with a group of staff from across the University, they raised many topics including ‘green spaces’ on campus, how we encourage our students to be more independent, induction for new staff, opportunities for training in leadership, staff facilities and our great public places such as The Whitworth, Manchester Museum, Jodrell and the John Rylands Library.
At Planning and Resources Committee, we approved important topics including our Annual ‘Stocktake Report’, which assesses how we have done over the past year against our key performance indicators. On most we have met our targets, but given the increasingly competitive environment we face, we need a step change to meet our ambitious targets - and funds to meet those step changes.
At Finance Sub-Committee, we began the annual budgeting process, agreeing on principles and the process and timescale, including review and challenge. We also considered our progress in releasing some of our endowment funds, which will be utilised to further the strategic objectives of the University.
You may have been watching The Story of China on BBC Two presented by our Professor of Public History, Michael Wood. The next episode airs tonight (11 February) at 9pm.
The BBC dramatisation of War and Peace is also very closely linked to the University - the Director, Tom Harper, the composer, Martin Phipps, and Adrian Edmondson, who plays Count Rostov, are all our graduates!
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor
Feedback
Please send comments to: president@manchester.ac.uk