President's weekly update
7 March 2019
Our 2019 Staff Survey is now open until Monday, 8 April – it takes about 15 minutes to complete and is completely anonymous. Your feedback – whether positive or negative - is enormously valuable as leaders from across our University use it to take action on the issues you raise.
Coincidentally last week I was on a panel at one of our leadership development programmes, ‘Leading at Manchester’, to assess some very impressive presentations on wider engagement and empowering leaders at all levels across our University. Delegates asked me why we initiated the programme and I replied that this programme like ‘Inspiring Leaders’ and ‘Managing at Manchester’ was created in direct response to the last Staff Survey which included quite a number of comments about staff engagement, training in leadership and being able to feel more responsible and empowered to make decisions.
This remains a difficult and uncertain time due to Brexit, particularly for us as a global community with many European staff, students and partners. Updates are posted on StaffNet which I would urge you all to read and we are sending further messages to all our students.
We held our Global Leadership Board in Manchester. This group of very experienced and influential individuals, who are all external to the University, act as critical friends and advisors, particularly on philanthropy. Professor Graham Lord, Vice-President and Dean of the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, talked to the Board about his enthusiasm for what he had seen in his first few weeks in this role and the many great strengths in Manchester, but also the need to focus - we can’t do everything. I updated the Board on the many uncertainties that the university sector is facing and on some of our recent successes and plans. Later we continued the health theme as we were joined by Professors Stephen Taylor, Lead of Cancer Sciences, and Tracey Hussell, Lydia Becker Institute for Inflammation and Immunology. We explained the core impact of immunology and inflammation on just about all diseases and new developments in the early detection and targeted treatments for cancer.
Senior colleagues and I visited the Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS) to hear from staff and students in open meetings. Students were keen to develop environmental sustainability in our actions and our teaching and wanted to hear what we are doing to support students with mental health issues. Staff asked about Brexit, pensions and what I expected from the Staff Survey - I said most of all a high response rate and honest feedback.
Professor Sir Mark Walport, Chief Executive of UK Research and Innovation which oversees most government funding for research, visited the University. Professor Martin Schröder, Vice-President and Dean of the Faculty of Science and Engineering, showed him the facilities and work ongoing in the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre. We then showed him major developments on the campus, including the Henry Royce Institute. David Knowles, Chief Executive, and Professor Phil Withers, Chief Scientist for the Royce and our Regius Professor of Materials, explained progress on the Royce even before the building is completed. Mark is particularly interested in the Royce since he was instrumental in delivering its £235m of external funding.
We also hosted a visit from the Scar Free Foundation, which has funded some of our research in injury and repair. Graham Lord and I spoke about the importance of this area to the University. The Foundation is working with the Manchester Institute for Health and Performance at Manchester City Football Club which was critical in the recovery of many who were injured in the Manchester Arena bomb. One of those survivors was at the meeting together with two others who had suffered very serious injury, one from burns and the other as a result of sepsis.
I met staff who help to deliver Stellify to our students. The key components of Stellify are attending the annual Ethical Grand Challenges, volunteering, taking on leadership roles, and attending the University College for Interdisciplinary Learning and employability. Participating in the first three of these results in a Stellify award at graduation. I met two students who will receive such an award and they told me how beneficial they had found their participation. The meeting was held in the newly refurbished Coupland 3 building which I was visiting for the first time since the works had been completed. It is extremely impressive - light and bright and retaining many of the beautiful original features such as windows, brickwork and some floors. It is well worth a visit.
I held one of my regular meetings with staff from across the University where I asked them to tell me what is good and what is not good about what we do and how we do things. We discussed how we could be better at academic recruitment given the importance of such appointments, better promoting our cultural assets like the Manchester Museum, creating time for thinking and research, some quite onerous processes in teaching, Brexit, digital futures and staff and student wellbeing.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor