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The President and Vice-Chancellor

President's weekly update

21 October 2021

Senate

We welcomed new members of Senate including this year’s Students’ Union officers. We had a briefing on student mental health and wellbeing in which we have made very significant extra investment and many new student support activities. At the formal Senate meeting, we had updates from the Vice-Presidents and me, and received updates on the Halpin review of our governance, on which we will have a further dedicated Senate meeting. I apologised for further problems with IT which although now resolved have caused very significant disruption to staff and students.

Research support

Recognising that COVID has hindered research for many staff, we are increasing our investment in research through an internal support fund for this academic year which will be announced next week. This will be funded through Faculties and the University of Manchester Research Institute with a ‘light touch’ application process to reduce the burden on staff.

Internal meetings

At our Strategic Planning Group, we considered priorities for next year, measures of success and risks associated with our five-year plan. We also reviewed our current financial position and the accounts for last year at the Finance and Capital Planning Sub-Committee. The additional students we have recruited this year will bring extra income, but we are spending most of this on additional staff and support for those students.

I took part in the quinquennial review of our major cancer centre, which is supported by Cancer Research UK. The centre has applied for funding for the next five years, and has done incredibly well despite the major disruption caused by the Paterson fire and COVID. We hope to hear the outcome very soon. We have also submitted a major proposal for significant expansion of our Biomedical Research Centre.

UCU ballot on strike action

The two ballots, one on pensions and the other on pay and employment conditions opened this week. Universities UK has published a response to UCU, we have published three articles on all these issues (pay, contracts, pay gaps and workload and the USS pension), and we will be holding an open staff meeting on these subjects on Friday, 22 October. I am deeply concerned about the impact potential industrial action would have on our community, and especially our students, taking away their opportunity to learn and their wider experience of university life, particularly after the difficulties they have already had to endure.

Additional holiday and wellbeing

As a way to say thank you for the hard work that has been put in this year, everyone will have an additional day of leave over the festive period.  You can find full details of the Christmas and New Year closure period and further information on wellbeing on StaffNet. 

Staff time

We have committed to identifying practical actions that we might take to reduce some of the pressures around workload as part of the Staff Survey follow-on action plan. You can find details about this, including how to submit your suggestions on StaffNet. All suggestions will be considered by SLT to inform the next stage of the staff survey action plan.

Civic university agreement

You may have seen that the five universities in Greater Manchester published a civic agreement with Greater Manchester Combined Authority. At one of our regular meetings of the five vice-chancellors and the five leads on the agreement, we discussed the next steps we have to take to meet the goals of the agreement and how this will be governed.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

It has been wonderful to see our core goal commitment to social responsibility writ large, particularly as the start of COP26 rapidly approaches. Our newly published Sustainable Development Goals report for 2021/22 has already been downloaded more than 3,500 times within a week, and our creative social media campaign supporting it reached 150,000 contacts in the same timeframe.

Science and technology committee

I gave evidence to this cross-party group of MPs on the forthcoming Comprehensive Spending Review, to be published on 27 October. We focussed on the government’s commitment to increase the research and development budget to 2.4% of GDP, ie £22 billion per annum by 2024/25. I said that independent evidence suggests that each pound of government investment levers an additional two pounds of private investment leading to the creation of jobs and stimulating further inward investment. I also commented on how this could help to deliver the government’s ‘levelling up’ policy objective.

COP26

Our four-day Festival of Climate Action has provided a forum to discuss, debate and share innovative approaches to tackle the biggest climate questions. With 60 Manchester academics and sustainability experts offering responses to help drive lasting change, the live sessions attracted a total of 1,750 participants, from policy, industry, academics, students and members of the public.  Professors Colette Fagan and Nalin Thakkar have also penned a great Viewpoint piece, Getting ready for COP26. We have a number of our staff attending and presenting at the event in Glasgow. I also gave an opening welcome to our Sustainable Futures launch event. This brings together research and other activities on environmental sustainability from across the University.

Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor

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