President's weekly update
1 June 2017
We held our annual Cockcroft Rutherford lecture, the major alumni event of the year. We decided to proceed after taking advice from Greater Manchester Police and the comments from the Mayor of Greater Manchester and the leaders of the City Council that we should carry on with ‘business as usual’ and not allow the tragic event of last week to disrupt activities. At the outset of the lecture we paid tribute to those who had been affected by the Manchester bomb and held a minute’s silence. Earlier that day, many staff in the University came out into open spaces and observed the one minute silence, as people did across the City and the country. We welcome diversity in our University and in Manchester, so it is disturbing to hear of some recent reports of increased harassment across the City. Our University has a zero tolerance approach to such harassment and we encourage everyone to report any such incidence. We will be publicising again the We Get It campaign which is promoted jointly by the University and our Students’ Union to raise awareness of bullying, harassment and discrimination and which lets people know how to report any incident and where to get support.
This year’s Cockcroft Rutherford lecture was given by Sir Peter Fahy, former Chief Constable of Cheshire and Greater Manchester Police, who also holds an honorary professorship with us. He spoke about children across the world in his lecture: ‘Seen But Not Heard – Born But Not Nurtured’. Peter discussed his extensive experience, from both his time as Chief Constable and in his new role as Chief Executive of Retrak, which helps children across the world. His thoughtful and very thought provoking lecture attracted many questions from a packed audience – in itself surprising given the disruptions to travel last week. It was a pleasure to meet four members of the Cockcroft family who attended, and see our alumni, many of whom had travelled long distances to be at the event.
Please see a number of additional frequently asked questions and responses that have been added to the Manchester 2020 site in relation to proposed staffing changes M2020 FAQs . A statement from the Chair of our Board of Governors, Edward Astle, is available on StaffNet at: Statement from Edward Astle. Last week’s consultation meeting with the trade unions was cancelled in light of the attack on the Manchester arena on Monday evening but consultations were resumed this week and we intend to open a voluntary severance scheme to staff in affected areas as soon as possible, as we know that many staff have been enquiring about when this will be available.
I visited Sackville Street Building to meet with a number of our students, staff and apprentices and to see their project to develop a training bike for Paralympic athletes. An 11 year old girl who is a keen wheelchair racer gave a demonstration of the (static) training bike and I observed the monitoring of her heart rate, position of her limbs, speed and torque – very impressive.
At one of my regular meetings between senior staff and executive members of the Students’ Union, we met some of the new incoming officers, discussed the proposed staff changes under M2020, the National Student Survey of satisfaction, student safety and the aftermath of the Manchester bomb.
I met Dr Ruth McKernan, Chief Executive of Innovate UK, who I have known for many years. Ruth was speaking at the UK Space Conference and we discussed the future industrial strategy for the UK, the opportunities presented by the new research organisation (UKRI) and the major additional funding which will be available, particularly for innovation and application of research.
At the Social Responsibility Governance Group, which I chair, we supported papers on Public Engagement and on Environmental Sustainability and heard about the communications plan for better dissemination of our activities in social responsibility. We also reviewed the operational targets and key performance indicators for next year. We managed to finish in time to join so many in the Quad for the one minute silence which was very moving.
I met with Sir Richard Leese, Leader of Manchester City Council to talk about how we further build relationships and activities between the University and the City and of course the atrocious events of last week and the remarkable response of the people of the City.
It was a pleasure to meet Baroness Eliza Manningham Buller, Chair of the Wellcome Trust Board, and two colleagues from Wellcome, who visited Manchester to hear about our research, particularly the recently renewed Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Matrix Research, led by Professor Karl Kadler. Eliza has previously been head of MI5 and we had a broad-ranging discussion about politics, Brexit and the Manchester bomb, but the focus of our discussions was on the excellence of our recently renewed Centre, new opportunities to build on the success of the Centre and wider aspects of Wellcome’s funding which is currently ~£1 billion per annum.
At the first meeting of the Board of the Biomedical Research Centre (BRC), for which we awarded £28.5 million (the only major centre outside the South East), we discussed the governance and operation of the BRC, progress to date and opportunities for growing our activities.
In a call with senior staff at the University of Melbourne, we considered the conference that they are organising in September on universities and wider engagement. I am chairing a session and speaking and another of our staff, Professor Uma Kothari from the School of Environment, Education and Development will also be presenting.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor
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