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President's weekly update

6 October 2022

Board of Governors

We held the first meeting of the new academic year with our new Chair, Philippa Hird. The meeting was preceded by a brilliant talk on AI for healthcare by Professor Caroline Jay, a member of our Digital Futures platform, and an update on IT from PJ Hemmaway, our Director of IT Services.

At the main Board meeting, I reported on our real concerns about the cost of living, inflation and their impacts on staff and students, and on the difficulties of recruiting staff in a range of professional support areas. I also raised uncertainty over government policy given recent leadership changes and current geopolitical turmoil. We have raised concerns about resulting humanitarian issues in regions such as Ukraine and Iran. It was positive to report that all students that we had guaranteed accommodation to have now been offered places in Manchester and that student recruitment was buoyant.

I had meetings with Philippa to discuss the priorities and challenges facing the higher education sector, and she joined SLT members to discuss areas of focus for the coming year.

Productive visit to India

Several colleagues and I spent a very productive time in India  – across three cities in four days. We discussed ongoing and future collaborations and exchanges with the Tata Medical Centre in Kolkata, the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur (and their director visited us this week in Manchester), the National Centre for Biological Science (and others in the life sciences cluster on the same campus) and the Indian Institute of Science, both in Bangalore. All have very impressive facilities and very high quality research and are interested in partnerships with us. We have joint PhD programmes with several institutes.

We also met senior representatives from the British Council and High Commission in Kolkata who told us of increasing interest from students wanting to study humanities and that UK one-year PGT programmes are now accepted for PhDs and jobs in India. Alan Gemmell, Deputy High Commissioner for Western India hosted an event for us where we discussed the future of UK-India relations in teaching, research and innovation.

We had meetings with a large number of senior staff from Tata to extend our long-term collaboration in materials, particularly in environmental sustainability. We also met senior staff from Reliance Industries and visited their new and very impressive university campus (JIO Institute, which has just opened to new students) in which we are a partner. I also had a number of meetings with senior alumni and discussed fundraising for Indian students and staff to come to Manchester.

Back home

I was pleased to officially launch our platform Creative Manchester, and to host an excellent presentation by Sir Peter Bazalgette, a leader in creative industries, who is a great supporter of creative activities and of Manchester. Peter spoke eloquently and in detail about the strengths and commitments of our University and our city region to creative activities, which I led on in my welcome. I said again that creativity is not only a great driver of economic value but also critical to society, social cohesion, ‘levelling up’ and wellbeing.

I attended Faculty heads of schools, departments and divisions meetings with Humanities and Science and Engineering (BMH to follow soon). The main concern in FSE was about major vacancies and lack of support in Professional Services. All posts needed have been approved but we are seeing, like many others across all sectors, real difficulties in recruitment, compounded by staff illness and absences. This is putting major pressures on our PS staff - who are working incredibly hard alongside academic colleagues. In Humanities, similar issues were raised about difficulties in staff support and recruitment and timing of contracts, expenses etc which we hope will be automated quite soon (by early 2023).

The board of trustees of Cancer Research UK, a major funder of ours, held their latest meeting in Manchester and asked me to talk about universities over the next ten years - not an easy task given the surprises the past few years have thrown at us. Roger Spencer (Chief Executive of The Christie) also spoke. We both stressed the importance and effectiveness of the partnership in Manchester.

A final request

Please do remember and take a moment to complete the Staff Survey – we need to hear your feedback so that we can act on the things that are important to you. 

Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor

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