President's Weekly Update
16 February 2017
Jo Johnson, Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, visited our Jodrell Bank Observatory and the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) that is housed on site there. Jo realised what he said has been a long standing ambition to visit Jodrell. During his visit he went up onto the dish of the Lovell Telescope, and visited the control room and the eMERLIN centre where vast amounts of data are exchanged. Then he went to the SKA headquarters where he heard about progress with the SKA project and the benefits for the UK. Finally, we discussed the recent government UK Industrial Strategy green paper and the very welcome additional government funding for research and innovation. Find out more about Jo Johnson’s visit at:
Jo has written to Universities UK to express concerns about anti-semitism on university campuses. While we have had no reports of such acts, we must be very clear that the University is a global institution that welcomes diversity. We have been working closely with our Students’ Union on a campaign ‘We Get It’ to make it clear that we will not tolerate any kind of abuse or intolerance in our community. You can find out more and report any such incidents that you hear of at:
Before our Board of Governors' meeting, I took part in an induction for our new members and met with our Chair, Edward Astle. I’m afraid that the core of our discussions was the increasing challenges we face from Brexit, a reduced pool of good UK applicants to study at university, increasing global competition, growing concerns about pension deficits and the need to try to close the gap with our competitors.
At the Board meeting, in addition to normal business, we had more detailed discussions on our financial performance, IT strategy and delivery, key risks for the University, and current skills of the Board members and needs for future recruitment. Professor Keith Brown, Vice-President and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, updated on many recent successes in his area and raised the key challenge of ‘quality, scale and shape’ of our activities.
I gave the welcome to new staff to the University at one of our monthly events and answered questions on our international links, especially with India and China, what are the biggest challenges the University is facing, and on public events and adult education programmes.
I met Eamonn Boylan, who will take up the position of Chief Executive of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) on 1 April 2017, when Sir Howard Bernstein retires. Eamonn is one of our graduates and is keen to continue the excellent relationship between the University and GMCA.
I took part in a short meeting of the Greater Manchester (GM) Local Enterprise Partnership to consider the apportioning of the Local Growth Fund allocated to GM.
Professor Clive Agnew, Vice-President for Teaching, Learning and Students, and I visited the School of Law. The students we met seemed very happy and praised their support and pastoral care. Much of the discussion with staff was on ‘Brexit’ and actions we are taking to try to reassure staff and students and to influence government.
I attended a board meeting of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership (NPP), chaired by George Osborne. We agreed the principles of how the NPP will operate, key priorities and goals and leads for each area. I will lead on ‘Health Innovation’.
I met Professor Malcolm Press, Vice-Chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University. We discussed the many challenges facing UK universities at the current time, the change in leadership at Manchester City Council and GMCA, the Northern Powerhouse and plans for collaborations between our universities.
It was a pleasure to catch up with Chris Brinsmead, one of the government’s ‘Life Sciences’ advisors, who also co-chaired the Alderley Park Task Force and is always a source of excellent advice on health and business.
I also met Professor Alistair Burns, one of our own staff, with whom I have worked for many years and who advises the government on dementia. This is timely as we have just submitted a major bid for dementia research, so Alistair’s advice was most welcome.
The Staff Survey 2017 will be launching next month and as usual the University will be offering a charity donation of £1 for each completed survey. Over 1,200 of you took part in the online poll to choose the charities which will benefit this year which are: the Manchester Ending Homelessness ‘Big Change’ campaign; City of Trees and Moodswings. Find out more at:
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor
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