President's Weekly Update
26 October 2017
You may have seen extensive coverage in the media of the ‘topping out’ of the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre (the GEIC) at the southern end of our North Campus. This new £60 million facility is entirely externally funded and will open next year. It will facilitate the commercialisation and scaling up of the applications of graphene and other 2-dimensional materials. The event was attended by representatives of the key funders: Masdar in Abu Dhabi; the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE); the Regional Growth Fund managed by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and the European Regional Development Fund; Innovate UK; senior staff from the University, the City and staff from the companies who are working on the building. After the speeches, several of us were lifted up about 25 feet to sign a steel girder with the name of all the funders.
At Senate this week, in addition to normal business and reports, an update was given on staffing changes in the University. The Voluntary Severance Scheme has now closed in all seven areas where reductions in the number of staff are being sought. We confirmed that in three areas this has been successful and the necessary reduction in posts has been achieved through voluntary severance, redeployment and other actions. In a further three areas this process continues. Unfortunately we did not achieve the numbers of voluntary severance applications that we had aimed for in one area and as a consequence of this have initiated a compulsory redundancy process for two positions. We remain committed to mitigating the need for redundancy wherever possible and opportunities for redeployment for these two posts will continue to be sought until June 2018.
We also discussed several governance issues at Senate and how we can best review the effectiveness of Senate.
Whilst we recognise the rights of individual members of staff to take industrial action, we were disappointed that the Universities and Colleges Union decided to take strike action this week, particularly because we have been involved in an extensive consultation process, including 16 consultation meetings with the Trade Unions. It was very disappointing to see some misleading messages from the UCU about the University’s financial position which we have addressed in detail with them and the other two Trade Unions we have been in consultation with. It is important to note that we do not have £1.5 billion in reserves - this figure refers to our assets ie: our buildings, equipment, computers, books etc which are essential to our operation.
I met Dr Luke Hakes, one of our graduates (he holds three degrees from our University), who is chair of UMI3 (our subsidiary that handles intellectual property, spin-out and start-up companies). We discussed opportunities for further investment in the application of our discoveries and the development of entrepreneurs.
Very relevant to this, Ronald Kong, another of our alumni who is based in Hong Kong, brought a group of Chinese investors over to consider opportunities to develop graphene applications. They spent two days with us and met many staff working in this area, including Professors Sir Andre Geim and Sir Kostya Novoselov. I welcomed them and we had many photographs taken!
The Austrian Ambassador, Dr Martin Eichtinger, and Honorary Consul, Harald Loeffler, visited the University. They met Professor Luke Georghiou, Deputy President and Deputy Vice-Chancellor, and me to discuss building research and educational links, and they had a tour of the National Graphene Institute.
Staff from Jaguar Land Rover came to the University as a follow up on my recent visit to their headquarters in Coventry. They are keen to work closely with us on student work experience and recruitment and on widening participation - particularly to encourage more women into engineering. I met them at the end of their visit and they were very impressed by what they had heard. They will be following up on research links in the near future as they see many opportunities for collaboration.
I hosted a dinner at the University for the members of Oxford Road Corridor which I chair. This was partly to celebrate ten years of the partnership between major organisations, though the main purpose was to consider the next priorities for Oxford Road and adjacent areas and what would make this a preferred destination for students, residents, businesses and visitors.
Several senior staff and I had our first meeting of the academic year with members of the Executive of The University of Manchester Students’ Union (UMSU). We talked about green spaces on campus, assessing teaching excellence and the Union’s own assessment of student satisfaction and equality. They also asked me to briefly describe what concerned me most for the University for the coming year and what was most exciting.
Professor James Thompson, Vice-President for Social Responsibility, Will Spinks, Registrar, Secretary and Chief Operating Officer, Alan Ferns, Associate Vice-President for External Relations and Reputation, and I met Eamonn Boylan who is Chief Executive of the Greater Manchester (GM) Combined Authority and some of his colleagues, to discuss ways for the further strengthening of our partnership and our plans over the coming year. In particular we talked about ‘anchor institutions’, policy advice, working with local schools, ‘inclusive growth’, health economics and liaison and possible events with the Greater Manchester Mayor’s office.
I met Jon Rouse, Chief Executive of the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership (often known as ‘Devo Manc’), to discuss student health and mental health services, developments in digital health and health data analytics, medical training and building our links with Harvard.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor
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