President's weekly update
25 February 2021
You will have seen that the government has announced that all students whose studies include practical and practice based subjects (including some creative arts) can return to campus and resume those forms of teaching from 8 March. There will be a review in April to consider the return of other students for in-person teaching. Faculties and Schools are now working hard to ensure that we deliver as much essential in-person teaching as possible and students tell us they want to return for reasons of wellbeing and community building. This is really welcome news but we need to ensure safety so please urge all your students and staff to take regular (free) COVID tests.
You may have seen a study to which our staff contributed, which reported data on COVID infection rates by occupation. Across 25 occupations, the likelihood of testing positive for COVID-19 between 1 September 2020 and 7 January 2021 ranged from 2.1% to 4.8%. The average likelihood across the 25 occupations was 3.9%, and over half of these occupations had likelihoods between 3.5% and 4.2%. For higher education teaching staff the infection rate was 2.48%, again this is an encouraging sign, which suggests that universities’ safety measures have been effective.
Our Board had informal briefings on our innovation activities. This included details on the significant reorganisation of what was UMI3 into Innovation Factory, the establishment of Gritstone, a new venture capital fund, jointly with the universities of Leeds and Sheffield and Innovation District Manchester (IDM), the plans for our North Campus when we vacate most of the site to occupy MECD. We are nearing the final stages of the process for identifying a commercial partner for the development of IDM.
At the main Board meeting, we had presentations on the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, equality, diversity and inclusion, health, safety and wellbeing, the USS pension scheme (we expect to have an update on the likely costs of the scheme next week, and will be supporting this with briefings to our staff to help them understand any implications), our annual assurance item for teaching and learning and our risk register in addition to the standard update from me.
I held a welcome meeting for new staff which was unfortunately not in-person. They asked me about our Museum, which of course we
In a visit to the School of Biological Sciences, students asked about return to practical classes and in-person teaching - which of course I said was imminent. They also asked about fee rebates, quarantine for students who had to return from overseas and cannot afford the hotel costs and our Living Cost Support Fund. Staff raised IT support, finances, the slowness of government contracts and our reputation as we seem to be in the news quite often. The latter is hard to judge but applications to study with us from the UK and globally are up on last year and above the sector average.
Senior colleagues and officers from the Students’ Union and I met with course reps in the Faculty of Science and Engineering. They welcomed and thanked us for all the support that staff have provided and asked about the return of all in-person teaching in subjects without practical classes, the difficulties some international students will face in travelling back to Manchester, student mental health, meetings with academic advisors and they said how well online exams and assessments had gone. The meetings with student reps have been very valuable and will be continued in the future.
Professor Luke Georghiou, Deputy President and Deputy Vice-Chancellor and I met Rory Brooks, former chair
Luke and I also met Professor Mark Ferguson, formerly Dean of the School of Biological Sciences at the University and now head of Science for Ireland, the Irish equivalent of UKRI. We talked about funding schemes for collaboration between the UK and Ireland.
At one of our regular meetings with officers from the Students’ Union we discussed the return to campus and how we can support international students who want to return. We discussed our partnership and they asked us to encourage all our students to vote in the forthcoming elections for Student Union officers for next year.
I attended a meeting hosted by the Royal Society with the Secretary of State for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy, Kwasi Kwarteng and the
At a meeting with about 60 leaders from across the University I gave a general update and Robert Fraser, our Director of Finance, explained our financial reports from the last academic year and our main funding streams and expenditures.
I was interviewed by the student radio station FUSE FM and the Mancunion about many aspects of student life and answered questions on our finances, return to in-person teachings, student fees, residences, wellbeing and mental health support and equality, diversity and
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor