President's weekly update
11 June 2020
Tackling discrimination has been an important and prominent topic of discussion at many meetings I have attended over the past week following the killing of George Floyd in the USA and the depth of reaction across the world. I know many of our community have been impacted greatly by these events. I share their sorrow and concern. As set out in a message from Professor Nalin Thakkar, our Vice-President for Social Responsibility, racism has no place in our University and we will do our utmost through our research, teaching and social responsibility to tackle not only racial hatred but discrimination and prejudice more widely and also systemic inequities in our society. Equality, diversity and inclusion rightly feature prominently in ‘Our Future’, our vision and strategy, and Nalin has set out some of the steps we are already taking. He also notes where we need to do more to ensure that we are a strong, united organisation that offers opportunity for all to succeed and realise their full potential and we will be progressing these across the University.
Our Global Leadership Board (GLB) and Hong Kong Foundation (HKFUM) support our philanthropic activities and GLB has representatives from the UK and from our Hong Kong and North American Foundations. We held Zoom meetings with members of GLB and HKFUM to update them on the impact of and our responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. Many have contributed to our student hardship appeal, Covid-19 research and other University activities. Simon Collins, Chair of GLB (formerly head of KPMG UK), also spoke to me and Patrick Hackett, Registrar, Secretary and Chief Operating Officer, about managing change in crises and adapting to new challenges.
Senior colleagues and I held a meeting, also on Zoom, with Heads of School where we discussed the shape of the next academic year, student recruitment, the re-opening of some research facilities and applications for voluntary severance and other voluntary pay savings.
I chaired a short meeting of the Oxford Road Corridor Board at which members updated on their responses to the pandemic. Manchester Metropolitan University and the Royal Northern College of Music have faced the same problems as us and are gradually preparing to reopen their buildings. Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, which now includes 11 hospitals, has been at the forefront of dealing with infections though the number of patients has now declined significantly. Like all hospitals, they are preparing for a potential resurgence of infections, possibly in winter though we all hope that this won’t happen.
At our Board Audit and Risk Committee I updated on the expected challenges we are facing and plans for mitigating the financial impacts of the likely reduction in international students which features heavily on our updated risk register. We also discussed the major increase in cyber threats that all universities have been facing recently.
Zoom was used for our meetings of Finance Sub-Committee and Planning and Resources Committee. We discussed the principles for our budget for next year. This is normally set by now, but is extremely difficult to do so with any certainty as we don’t know how many students we will recruit, the level of savings we will make through voluntary pay reductions and severance or whether there will be any financial support for universities from government. We also reviewed the University level risk map which has obviously changed significantly recently.
A great deal of my time over recent weeks has been spent in discussions with ministers and senior civil servants about possible government support. It was also the key topic of a Russell Group board meeting that was joined by senior representatives from Treasury to discuss the impact of Covid-19 on universities, particularly on research.
I’ve also been involved in several meetings to discuss the government’s next Research and Development strategy and plan, which includes potential ‘levelling up’ of regions such as the North West that have received less funding than the South East.
We held a programme board meeting to discuss the new Paterson research building on The Christie site which will replace the building that was badly damaged by fire and has now been demolished. To date Covid-19 hasn’t had a major impact on the plans but obviously this is a possible concern for the future construction.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor