President's weekly update
30 March 2023
Meeting with newly expanded Senate
At the pre-meeting of our newly expanded Senate (now with 100 members) we discussed plans for our bicentenary next year and our fundraising campaign. The campaign is still in the ‘quiet’ phase before any formal public launch but is nevertheless very active and with some recent significant gifts.
At the main Senate meeting, in addition to normal business, we had an excellent presentation on our environmental sustainability by Dr Richard Smith, who leads this area. Some members felt that our target of recycling 45% of our waste was too low. Richard pointed out that this was mainly down to all our behaviours - so we can all improve it.
Celebrating our health research
I spoke at an event to celebrate our success in the most recent National Institute of Health Research Biomedical Research Centre and Clinical Research Facility competitions, in which we greatly increased our income. The event was packed and was opened by GM Mayor Andy Burnham and closed by our Chancellor, Nazir Afzal. Our plans focus very much on interdisciplinary research and on patient engagement.
I also opened an event, attended by over 200, to discuss our Health Inequalities initiative. This is one of our cross-University platforms which brings together about 300 researchers from all parts of the University to tackle regional, national and global inequalities in health. This is important for social cohesion and fairness but also has major economic impacts. Our research studies indicate that 40% of the gap in economic productivity between the North of England and the South-East is due to health inequality.
Discussions with our staff
At a meeting with over 70 new professors, both those promoted and new staff, we explored a number of issues, including why they came to the University, what is good and not so good about our University, how do we create a more productive and ambitious environment and what we learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. Major positives were staff and students, facilities, social responsibility, cross-disciplinary activities and our interactions across the city region. Concerns and opportunities as usual included service delivery in some areas, vacancies in PS staff, national regulation and delays in government security approvals for research, new teaching modes addressing AI, time to think and innovate, more merging of common teaching, and new approaches to student assessment.
I met the nine staff and PhD students who are taking part in the second cohort of the national 100 Black Women Professors programme, who were very enthusiastic about the programme but some voiced concerns about being the only Black woman in their area, and students who also felt that they had few peers and struggled to feel a sense of belonging. Challenging such concerns and experiences are core to our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) strategy.
North American supporters
Our North American Foundation, which supports our philanthropic activities in the USA and Canada, met in Miami. Professor Martin Schröder, Vice-President and Dean for the Faculty of Science and Engineering, attended, and I joined online. I updated them on recent challenges and some major successes and spoke about our campaign and the bicentenary, and about our plans for stronger engagement in North America.
Student communications and regulation
The Russell Group held an event at the University on student communications. We talked about our need to address ever more diverse student communities and to use increasingly varied means of communications. It is a real challenge to get messages out to a very large student community such as ours - almost 45,000. We know that some of our messages, for example on our Cost of Living Support Fund, have not reached all of our students despite huge efforts by us and our Students’ Union, but we will continue to provide a wide range of support across our student community.
I met the Chief Executive and Chair of the Office for Students (OfS). They have received some criticism during the House of Lords inquiry. We agreed that the best approach was to work together more closely to deliver the most effective regulation, particularly for our students, with minimal bureaucracy.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor