President's weekly update
24 June 2021
We held General Assembly online again due to ongoing COVID restrictions. The meeting was chaired by our Chancellor, Lemn Sissay, so we had the opportunity to congratulate him on his recent OBE. I gave a general update on the University and the external environment. Dr Julian Skyrme, Director for Social Responsibility, presented the THE impact rankings
I joined Sir Richard Leese, Leader of Manchester City Council, and some of his staff, our local MP Lucy Powell, and staff from Bruntwood, who are partnering with us in IDM, on a tour of MECD. Now that the furniture is starting to be installed it’s looking even more spectacular. We heard about the amazing facilities for students and research, many of which are sector leading.
To enable externally funded research to proceed more swiftly we have adjusted the approval processes for principal investigators for R code expenditure to make them less cumbersome and provided a summary of procurement
We held a joint meeting with our counterparts from the University of Melbourne, with which we have a strategic partnership. Australia’s borders are still closed so visits are not possible and they are very worried about future recruitment and retention of international students. We agreed that the partnership is going very well with strong interest from both sides and a developing joint PhD programme.
I attended a Universities UK (UUK) meeting to discuss the current position on the USS pension. Employers such as us have been asked to respond to a short consultation by 5 July on potential modifications to the outcome of the 2020 USS valuation put forward by UUK which is still pushing the USS Trustee very hard to reduce costs. We will publish our response as soon as it has been completed.
At the board meeting for N8, the group of eight northern research-intensive universities, we discussed the plan for ‘net zero north’, a programme involving all eight partners in delivering zero carbon which we aim to submit to government as part of the comprehensive spending review in the autumn.
We had one of our regular meetings with executive officers of the Students’ Union. They will be coming to the end of their term at the end of July so we were joined by many of the incoming officers. We discussed plans for the next academic year, including opening up student study and social spaces, the framework for our joint working and support for student wellbeing where we have again increased investment and support.
Our Board Finance Committee approved our budget for next year, albeit recognising that there are some significant risks and challenging targets. They also considered the assumptions for our five year plan which will be finalised for the Board at its October meeting, reviewed the latest proposals on the USS pension and considered ‘benchmarking’ of various aspects of financial performance against other UK institutions - while recognising that each is very different and reports differently.
At the beginning of July we have our Board strategy day at which
At the Health Innovation Manchester board, we heard about the
I attended a meeting to discuss future areas of focus for GM Local Enterprise Partnership, which included innovation, and international links.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor