President's weekly update
4 October 2018
I spent last week in China, which is one of our most important countries under our international strategy, and this built on my earlier visits and those by colleagues and the Mayor. I visited Wuhan (which is twinned with Manchester), Shanghai and Beijing with several University colleagues. We visited HUST (Huazhong University of Science and Technology) where we have significant collaborations in research and teaching. We also went to Tongji Medical College, where I gave a talk entitled ‘A Life in Science’ to a packed audience of students. This was followed by an alumni dinner with members of the Hubei Alumni Association and the British Consul for Wuhan, Gareth Hoar.
After a very fast train (over 300 km/h) journey to Shanghai we had lunch with senior alumni, then I met the President of Tongji University (which is different to the Medical College in Wuhan). Following this we attended a large business event hosted by Sherry Fu who runs our University of Manchester Worldwide China Centre. Sherry also organised the 10th Anniversary Gala Dinner, including a 10th Anniversary Ceremony alumni event for 400, with many photos - some young female alumni even followed me to the bathroom to get selfies.
An even faster train (350 km/h) took us to Beijing where we met the President and senior staff at Tsinghua University, had a tour of their very impressive Faculty of Life Sciences and discussed a joint PhD programme. Later I gave a talk to their students. The next day we had a breakfast meeting with the British Ambassador to China, Dame Barbara Woodward, followed by discussions with embassy staff about our Manchester China Institute with Professor Pete Gries who leads the Centre. We visited Renmin University, which specialises in humanities, Peking University Health Science Centre (where we have an ongoing collaboration on genomics) and the China Scholarship Council to discuss extending our funding for Chinese PhD students and our successful training for Chinese football coaches by the Alliance Manchester Business School. Unfortunately my return flight was delayed by over five hours so I missed my connection to Manchester.
Before leaving for China, I had lunch with the new Chinese Consul General in Manchester, Mr Zheng, and his colleagues. He told us that we have more Chinese students than any other European university. We discussed how we can ensure the best experience for all our students, recognising particular needs of those from overseas. China is one of our top countries for strategic engagement.
At a meeting with Andy Burnham, the elected mayor of Greater Manchester, we compared notes on China - Andy had visited the week before me with several of our staff. We also discussed student mental health, clean air in Manchester, transport issues, means of retaining skilled graduates in the region and attracting global companies.
Creativity is key to all our activities so I was delighted to launch Creative Manchester, a major new initiative that is being led by our School of Arts Languages and Cultures, but will have much wider reach. I highlighted the strength of creative activities in the city and the University and the importance of our outreach and partnerships in this area. I also stressed that creativity must be part of every discipline in the University. We heard amazing stories about our activities and enjoyed some wonderful performances by our students.
At the first Board of Governors meeting of the academic year, Board members had a briefing on Industrial Biotechnology (one of our five research beacons) by Professor Nigel Scrutton. At the formal Board we heard about progress with research and commercialisation of graphene and other two-dimensional materials and heard of the very successful activities in our fundraising and alumni engagement.
I attended an event hosted in London by Paul Polman, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Unilever, for ‘valued partners’. We have a major collaboration with Unilever, which is also a key partner in the Royce Institute, on renewable packaging.
We had the ‘topping out’ ceremony for our Manchester Engineering Campus Development (MECD) to mark the final girder being put in place. Leo Quinn (CEO of Balfour Beatty) and I thanked all the people from within the University and our contractors for getting us to this stage in the building. It was very cold up on the fifth floor but the barbeque on the ground floor for everyone working on site was much warmer and a great success. The move to MECD will be critical to reduce our carbon footprint and running costs, bring our engineering activities onto a single site and release very valuable land on our North Campus that we will retain and co-develop.
Edward Astle (Chair of our Board) and I met with Gillian Easson to thank her for her great contributions to the University as a former Board member from 2001 to 2012, then as Pro-Chancellor for six years. Gillian is moving to New Zealand to join some of her family.
Finally, a reminder that Our Future is well underway and leaders across the University are already having sessions with their teams to talk about what the Big Ideas for our University could be. We are also holding four Big Events in October to give colleagues the chance to get involved so to book your place visit:
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor