President's weekly update

29 July 2021

International issues

We held the first meeting of our external international advisory board which includes friends of the University from across the world. It is chaired by Rory Brooks, one of our alumni, a major donor and former chair of our Global Leadership Board. We discussed our key international partnerships, international student recruitment including diversification, geopolitical challenges and new, emerging countries for recruitment and partnership.

I spoke at an online alumni event with attendees from India and other South Asian countries. We had an excellent presentation from Dr Jen O’Brien who is our academic lead for environmental sustainability in teaching and research. She spoke about what we are doing, further actions we need to take to meet net zero targets, and why this is so important.

At a meeting of the UK Investment Council, chaired by Lord Grimstone who visited us last week, we heard a report on international investments into the UK which are looking strong. The main area for inward investment was in the digital space. We also heard the results of a survey of international companies on the factors they consider important to attract them to the UK. Top of the list was our strengths and investment in research and development including in a talented and skilled workforce.

Working with our students

Professor April McMahon, Vice-President for Teaching, Learning and Students, and I met the incoming General Secretary of our Students’ Union (SU), Melody Stephen who is one of our law graduates, with Kwame Kwarteng, who Melody will succeed. We discussed the challenges of trying to meet the needs of such a large and diverse student body with many different interests and the importance of the Students’ Union in working with us to represent and respond to students. 

We had a dinner for senior staff with most of the outgoing SU officers. We acknowledged what a difficult year it had been for all students and for the SU. It was wonderful to meet them all at long last and to hear what they are all planning next.

Just prior to the dinner we held an event to celebrate the conferring of a Distinguished Achievement Award to Ben Ward. Ben is the Chief Executive Officer of our SU and has been so for over seven years now. He has been outstanding in helping our work with SU officers.

We held the annual University Examinations Board, somewhat later than usual, to check and ratify the decisions made by each of the Faculty Exams Boards. All processes were approved by our external examiner.

Government announcements

The Government released the Innovation Strategy and the Research and Development People and Culture Strategy and also announced a new independent review of the research and development landscape in the UK, to be chaired by Sir Paul Nurse. Many of the priority technology areas in the Innovation Strategy fit with our own strengths, but it is disappointing that all focussed on STEM subjects with no comment on the significant UK strength in creative industries, financial services and other humanities disciplines.

Other meetings

At a meeting with Heads of Schools we reported on the strategic planning session with our Board of Governors. Much of this had focussed on financial sustainability as all our costs are rising with or above inflation, while most of our income streams are stable and hence declining in real terms. To meet this challenge we have limited options, all with some risks, notably increasing student fee income, increased recovery of research costs and/or cutting costs. Exactly the same issues were raised at a Russell Group meeting that I chaired with several vice-chancellors reporting that they make a loss on all undergraduate programmes for UK students.

A well-earned break

We are now coming to the time of the year when I hope as many of you as possible will be able to take a well-earned rest and holiday. I hope you have managed to find time to watch the successes in the Olympics in Tokyo, albeit in a very different format to usual.

I will now pause my weekly messages until September, apart from an update that will report on student admissions following the release of teacher assessed grades for A-levels on 10 August, when I know many staff will be working hard to confirm places for those who have met their offers.

Whenever you can, please do take a break and thank you all for your tremendous efforts over the last academic year. We are all hoping that we can resume more in-person activities in September.

Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor

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