President's weekly update
22 November 2019
The announcement was made yesterday at a reception at St James’s Palace that the University has won a prestigious Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education for its world-leading expertise in industrial biotechnology. The work, undertaken by a team led by Professor Nigel Scrutton, Director of the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, has been recognised for helping to drive the UK’s development of bio-manufacturing to put industry onto an environmentally sustainable basis. The Prize will be presented to us formally at a ceremony at Buckingham Palace in February. Many congratulations to Nigel and his colleagues on this award which is the highest form of national recognition available to UK universities and colleges. Our own awards scheme is now open for nominations to be made for honorary degrees, Medals of Honour and national honours.
Members of UCU (University and College Union) are taking strike action from next Monday, 25 November until 4 December inclusive, and action short of a strike continuously from 25 November. Industrial action is over pay and the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), both of which are negotiated nationally; our position on both is set out on StaffNet. We fully recognise the importance of pay and pensions to our staff but still hope that this dispute can be resolved. We do not know how many of about 2,000 UCU members will take action, but I am sure that each will consider this very carefully. While we fully respect the right of our staff to take such action, our priority at this time must be to minimise any adverse effect this may have on our students.
Our Board of Governors had informal briefings on our Access and Participation Plan for students and on international links. At the main Board meeting, we approved the University’s financial statements for the previous year. Our Future - our vision and strategic plan - was also approved ahead of its launch in January and work now continues on more detailed plans to support the three core goals and four themes. The Board also received reports from many committees and was understandably very concerned about industrial action. We explained that while we disagree with many of the positions and statements that UCU has made, we share their concerns about gender and ethnicity pay gaps which was discussed in detail by the Remuneration Committee. Further actions to address pay differences are being developed.
I hosted an event with senior staff for our leading teachers. We asked them to consider how we balance high entry qualifications with widening participation, how we could deliver digital learning to every one of our students in the next five years and how we best meet the growing expectations of our students. We also discussed enhancing staff engagement with students, and recognition, reward and support for teaching focussed staff. We heard many excellent ideas that we will be communicating.
The Greater Manchester (GM) Local Enterprise Partnership Foresight Group looks at what more the region needs to do over the next 20-30 years for the economic and social prosperity of our city region. As a member of this group, I attended an excellent event on ‘clean growth’. Our external guest was Lord Nick Stern, the eminent economist who has done much research on climate change. We had an excellent discussion including important contributions from three of our leading academics, Professors Carly McLachlan, Jonatan Pinkse and James Evans.
We held the first session with bidders to partner us on Innovation District Manchester - the planned transformation of our North Campus. I talked about relevant strengths in the University and Diana Hampson, Director of Estates and Facilities, spoke about our vision for the project, what we will bring and what we expect of our future partner.
At a ‘drop in’ session for staff with me, much discussion focussed on our actions and research on the environment. Staff also raised sabbaticals and the impact of our Student Experience Programme.
I attended the formal launch of our partnership with other GM universities and our local NHS to deliver a direct access, fast track service for students with mental health problems. The Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, spoke about the new service and the other Vice-Chancellors and I talked about the importance to our respective universities and particularly to our students. In the few weeks that it has been open, a number of our students have been referred there from our counselling service and have benefitted from the rapid response it provides.
The Board overseeing the new Paterson Building on The Christie site met this week; Professor Graham Lord, Vice-President and Dean of the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, and I attended. Planning permission has now been fully approved, and the building design and major fundraising between the University, The Christie and Cancer Research UK are pushing ahead.
It is with great sadness that we learnt that Mike Oglesby has passed away. Mike did so much for the University and the city region and I have written a short tribute to him highlighting his many remarkable contributions.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor