President's weekly update
14 November 2019
I attended the Board meeting of the North American Foundation of The University of Manchester (NAFUM). The main aims of NAFUM are to support fundraising for the University in North America, to build relationships with North American organisations and to support student recruitment from the region. At the Board meeting we focused on the latter. In addition to my report and those on philanthropy, Andy Wilkinson, Chief Executive of UMI3, our intellectual property commercialisation company, updated the Board on recent changes to, and new plans for, commercialisation and innovation. I took the opportunity to have a number of meetings with current and potential donors to the University and individuals who support our Global Graduates programme for our students.
At the Greater Manchester (GM) Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) I reported on actions to support training for small businesses (which is being led by the business schools at the GM universities, including our own) as I lead on this element of the GM Local Industrial Strategy. Juergen Maier, Chief Executive of Siemens UK, reported on the Advanced Materials and Manufacturing part of the strategy (in which we are obviously closely involved). In the main LEP meetings we reviewed the latest plan for GM’s digital strategy, heard about the consultation on reform of bus services, plans for cleaner air and progress against targets on a wide range of measures including employment, education, health, affordable housing, transport and economic productivity.
Senior staff and I had a meeting with some of our experts in climate change and carbon targets - Professors Alice Larkin, Carly McLaughlin and James Evans and Dr John Broderick, with our Head of Environmental Sustainability, Dr Emma Gardner and one of our Academic Leads for Social Responsibility, Professor Amanda Bamford. The objective of the meeting was for us to get a better understanding of how the University can achieve its ambitious targets for reducing carbon emissions and other environmental challenges. Our academic experts (who are now being called on by many to help them in the same way they have supported GM) were excellent at explaining the impacts of, and routes to, reducing carbon emissions.
We held meetings of the Board Finance and Audit Committees and a joint meeting of the two to sign off the University’s financial accounts for the past year. We had a ‘very satisfactory’ report from our external auditors and no issues with our financial accounts, though in common with many universities our accounts are now affected by large charges or credits from revaluations of the pension funds. We have therefore provided additional information to help readers of the accounts to interpret our position.
I had a private meeting with Edward Astle, the Chair of our Board of Governors, to update him on the many things that have been happening since our last meeting, including some major awards, student recruitment (which is strong) and the actions the University is putting in place to mitigate any potential disruption arising from industrial action by members of the University and College Union (UCU) over eight days in November and December, and through action short of a strike. We have also issued guidance to staff in dealing with queries from students.
Edward and I met John Allan who is President of the CBI and will soon become the Chair of the Council of Imperial College. He also learnt about our students and teaching, business development, Innovation District Manchester and our Graphene Engineering innovation Centre.
I hosted a joint meeting with Patrick Hackett, Registrar, Secretary and Chief Operating Officer, Professor Colette Fagan, Vice-President for Research, and our equivalents at Manchester Metropolitan and Salford Universities to discuss area of common interest and collaboration. We discussed the ongoing collaboration between our business schools on developing business skills in the region, particularly in smaller and medium-sized companies. We also identified areas where we have complementary skills and activities in creative subjects, environment and social care which we will now consider opportunities.
I visited Professor Luke Georghiou, Deputy President and Deputy Vice-Chancellor, at Wythenshawe Hospital. He was sharp as ever and wanted to know about what was happening in the University. He will have a long recovery but it was good to see him so chatty and I passed on the many good wishes from numerous people.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor