President's weekly update
16 January 2020
This week we launched our new vision and high-level strategic plan which have been agreed by Senate and our Board of Governors. These have been formulated after many months of consultation with over 4,000 staff, students, alumni and other stakeholders and the whole process has been overseen by Matt Atkin, Director of Planning. We are now preparing the more detailed underpinning plans behind our people, our values, research and discovery, teaching and learning, social responsibility, civic engagement, global influence and innovation. Each of these will be distributed for consultation over coming weeks for input from relevant groups.
General Assembly is a body which comprises mainly external representatives who act as ‘critical friends’ of the University. We are in the process of reducing the number of General Assembly members with the aim of encouraging closer engagement with them and increasing the contribution of General Assembly, in particular to the civic engagement theme of our strategic plan. As usual I gave an overview of University activities, performance against plans last year (which will eventually be published in our annual Stocktake Report) and spoke about external opportunities, concerns and future plans.
I reported on the recent strike and ongoing action short of a strike by University and College Union (UCU) members. The numbers of staff declaring that they were on strike in the industrial action before Christmas was an average of 441 per day over the period (21%) of UCU members. This compares to an average number of 662 staff on strike per day (32% of UCU members) in the 2018 action. The closing date for reporting taking strike action for the latest dispute was 9 December. We are in regular contact with Universities UK and Universities and Colleges Employers Association over ongoing national negotiations with UCU.
David Soutter, Interim Finance Director, described to General Assembly our financial performance last year and the sources of our income and how we spend it. Professor Graham Lord, Vice-President and Dean of the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, talked about the successes and plans for the Faculty. Professor Chris Taylor, Associate Vice-President for Digital Strategy and Business Engagement, talked about plans for our new Christabel Pankhurst Institute for Health Technology, Research and Innovation which will have the hub of its activities in a development based on the former National Westminster bank on Oxford Road.
I chaired the executive group that oversees the development of our North Campus - Innovation District Manchester. The process for selecting an investment partner (which will fund and develop the site) is progressing well.
Patrick Hackett, Registrar, Secretary and Chief Operating Officer, and I visited the School of Biological Sciences Annual Event which was very busy with talks, posters, demonstrations and trade stand. We particularly enjoyed meeting the two dogs (very friendly pugs, Percy and Presley) who regularly come in to the University as part of our efforts to promote student well-being, particularly during more stressful times such as exams. They are extremely popular and we wondered if dogs could be used more widely in our attempts to improve well-being as I described last week.
I chaired our External Relations Strategy Group where we received a presentation on how we are doing in our ‘brand-tracker’ (a joint project between 11 universities) which seeks the opinion of thousands of different audiences about UK universities - we came out very strongly, but with a few areas to focus on for improvement. We also considered a stakeholder map, the findings of a project which involved staff to identify our University’s most important external stakeholders. Around 300 have been identified and we will now prioritise a top 50.
I had an extended meeting with the Chair of our Board, Edward Astle, to consider all of our ongoing plans and the external environment. There is much current news about further funding for the North of England and for research and innovation. I spoke briefly about this on the Today programme [from 1 hour, 52 minutes] last week.
I met the Russian ambassador to the UK who visited the University with colleagues from the Embassy. We have about 90 Russian students studying with us. We also have the top-rated and one of the largest and oldest departments of Russian studies. I learnt that the Victoria University of Manchester had the only academic representative at Tolstoy’s funeral in 1906.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor