President's Weekly Update
8 December 2016
We have cause for celebration in the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health. The Wellcome Centre for Cell-Matrix Research, led by Professor Karl Kadler, was renewed with funding of almost £5 million over the next five years. This is one of quite a small number of Centres funded by Wellcome and has been funded continuously for the past 25 years.
I was honoured to receive a special award (similar to our honorary degree) from the Royal Northern College of Music along with a number of others, many of whom are much more prominent in music than me - Sir Mark Elder, Dr Howard Keable (who used to be our Deputy Secretary), Professor Gary Carpenter, Alasdair Tait, Susan Baines and Dr Pete Waterman. I thanked the College on behalf of us all and spoke of its importance in the City and as a valued close neighbour.
The Vice-President and Dean of Science and Engineering, Professor Martin Schröder, has initiated a review of the current School structure within the Faculty of Science and Engineering to establish whether there are more effective and efficient ways of delivering Manchester 2020. See:
I chaired a Board meeting of Corridor Manchester which focussed on the future aims and nature of the partnership of organisations along Oxford Road. We had a briefing session about what was most important to us - with environment, retail and places to eat, transport, clean air, places to visit, appearance and culture all featuring strongly. We also considered whether the name ‘Corridor Manchester’ described the partnership in a way that conveys what we do.
At one of my regular meetings with Professor Malcolm Press, Vice-Chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University, we followed up discussions on Corridor Manchester and our work together on medical education, schools and health research.
John Lauwreys met me to discuss the independent review of our Board of Governors that he is undertaking. He is looking at the scale and expertise of the Board, how it and its sub-committees operate, and the views of Board members and other senior staff.
Professor Fiona Devine, Head of Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS), Professor Naomi Chambers, Professor of Healthcare Management in AMBS, and I were filmed on a panel discussing women and leadership, including what we felt might be barriers to encouraging more women leaders, how we support those who want to step up to leadership and whether we feel that women have different leadership styles. The film is for an AMBS doctoral programme for NHS clinical scientists but will be available more widely.
I met Tom Glick, Chief Commercial Officer of [Manchester] City Football Group, to discuss international partnerships in China, New York and Melbourne, where they have clubs. We were then joined by Mike Green, who heads the club’s community engagement, Stephanie Lee, Head of Student Recruitment (Widening Participation and Outreach), and Lesley Dowdall, Deputy Director (Development) from Development and Alumni Relations, to talk about partnering on work with local schools, health and community engagement, all of which are a major part of our social responsibility activities.
At the Social Responsibility Governance Group, which I chair, we had a report on the extremely successful Ethical Grand Challenges sustainability activity which was taken by 5,000 first year undergraduates, on our 10,000 Actions to improve environmental sustainability and a report on our success in social responsibility and procurement.
This week, senior colleagues and I reviewed a summary of the Annual Performance Reviews (APR) which will feed into the Annual Stock Take Report. Progress has been good in general, but we need to do much better on student satisfaction and on generating income to invest.
I met Dr Andrew Hosty, who recently took up the post of Chief Executive Officer of the Sir Henry Royce Institute for Advanced Materials, the UK’s leading centre of advanced materials research and commercialisation. Andrew is already working with our own staff, our academic partners and looking to major industry partners.
Jon Holt, Office Senior Partner of KPMG Manchester, and his colleague Sandra Cox, Associate Partner, came to see me to discuss our work together on student experience and recruitment and particularly on widening participation. We also discussed a whole range of work with KPMG on international links, medical education and cybersecurity.
The 2017 Making a Difference Awards for Social Responsibility have been launched - these celebrate the social responsibility achievements of our staff, students and external partners. Further information can be found at:
You may have seen that Joanne Roney has been named as successor to Sir Howard Bernstein as Chief Executive of Manchester City Council. She will take over in the spring:
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor
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