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President's Weekly Update

2 June 2016

We held the Cockcroft Rutherford Lecture, the largest alumni event in our calendar, last week. This year’s lecture - ‘Citizen Scientists: anarchy amongst the engineers’ - was delivered by Danielle George, Professor of Radio Frequency Engineering in our School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Vice-Dean for Teaching, Learning and Students in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences.

Danielle demonstrated part of the ‘Robot Orchestra’ that she is building with a wide range of members of the public for European City of Science - it will play at the opening ceremony of EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF). She asked the audience to participate in the lecture and choose the music the orchestra will play (string - possibly the most difficult) and the face of the Alumni Association robot - they chose Lemn Sissay, our Chancellor.

At the Social Responsibility Governance Group meeting, we heard that over a million people had visited our Museum, the Whitworth, John Rylands Library and Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre last year. We discussed our international programme, the tenth anniversary of our Equity and Merit Scholarships for students from Africa and the success of the recent volunteer and ‘Making a Difference’ awards. Several members of the Group have now finished their term and we were joined by new members.

I hosted a lunch for a group of staff from across the University, several of whom had joined us recently. They were very positive about the scale and scope of the University but also raised processes that could be improved and suggested ways in which we could further communicate our strengths. One who had moved from London said that the cost of a new apartment in the city of Manchester was one tenth the cost of an equivalent apartment in central London!

At one of our regular meetings with the executive members of the Students’ Union, we met several incoming members and discussed the recent government White Paper, student safety and the value of joint initiatives such as volunteering.

There was a meeting to discuss progress with the new Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health. All senior positions have now been filled and most of the Professional Support Staff (PSS) roles at grade 6 and above have been agreed and occupied. Following completion of the formal consultation process, the next steps are now to populate the remaining PSS roles (for which we don’t expect a reduction in the number of roles) and to realise opportunities internally and externally, while of course maintaining ‘important business as usual’.

We had our annual visit by staff from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) to assess our progress against plans and future initiatives, and to discuss our concerns and challenges. We discussed the proposed government changes to universities and the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), and raised specific concerns about the split in governance of universities, measures to assess teaching quality, the supposed ‘level playing field’ for new universities and potential increases in regulation (though it is claimed that our regulatory burden will be reduced).

This week saw the final changes to our submission for Biomedical Research Centre funding - which has been a huge effort by many staff - and the final stages of our budget planning, which has been extremely challenging, given additional costs and reductions in several funding sources.

I met Malcolm Whitehouse, our new Director of IT, who has already (in just nine days) met many people, not just within IT Services but across the University, and seems to have a good understanding of our needs, strengths and challenges.

I also met staff from our International Office and the Division of Development and Alumni Relations to plan my overseas engagements this year. We try to balance large alumni events with individual meetings with senior and very successful alumni and meetings with current or potential university and business partners. I will be travelling to Hong Kong later this month for just two days - but many meetings - and to Chicago for our North American Foundation board, but I also plan to make at least one further short trip to China. Several staff will be in Beijing in July for important business events and university meetings that will be linked to the two Manchester football clubs playing each other at the famous Bird’s Nest Stadium - but I will be busy at ESOF!

     

Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor

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