President's weekly update

21 September 2023

Industrial action

It is with deep regret that, despite further efforts over recent days to seek a constructive way forward with Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB) deductions, a further proposal yesterday has been rejected by 151 UMUCU members, 67% of those who voted at a branch meeting. We have around 2,000 UCU members. We had proposed that for staff who have taken MAB action, 45% (increased from 33% previously) of the time participating in that action would not be deducted or would be reimbursed. It is very disappointing this proposal has not been accepted. This proposal was in addition to the agreement that 100% deductions were reversed, which has happened, and an extension of the marking and assessment completion deadline to 13^th October irrespective of whether strike action continued.

UCU head office has told branches that they can opt out of strike action. Our local branch is going ahead with 9 days of action until 29 September. We will continue to do all we can to mitigate the impact on our students and our wider community who now face further disruption and of course had no choice in the actions that affected some of them so much. Details for staff reporting during strike action are available here.

China visit

I spent a very packed three days in China (Beijing and Shanghai), including very productive meetings with the British Council and the UK government’s trade commissioner to China. We also met our partner universities, Peking and Shanghai Jiao Tong Universities, the China Scholarships Council, which funds some outstanding Chinese PhD students, and the National Natural Science Funding Council, which is a huge funder of research in China, and also supports international collaborations. We are seeing a shift in research collaboration interests towards health and environmental sustainability.

We visited to our China Centre in Shanghai, led by Sherry Fu, which provides our global MBA and executive education programmes, and is very impressive. I had a private meeting with senior alumni and hosted major alumni events in both cities, attended by hundreds of incredibly enthusiastic and committed alumni, with very many photos taken. There is such enthusiasm for our university. In some meetings with senior staff, I raised the fact that universities, through our students and joint research can act as a bridge across, geographical, political and cultural differences. A very productive trip was just marred a little by a 13-hour delay on return-and not much sleep! Much to follow up.

First meeting with our new Students’ Union Officers

At our first meeting, we discussed their priorities for the next year, the ongoing discussions with UMUCU- though of course not the details, clearer explanations of our finance including  how we spend student fees and how we set international fees, rents and costs of food on campus. We agreed that getting messages to our wider student body is a challenge, for example to ensure that more students are aware of the financial support they can receive. Priorities, which we shared, are student wellbeing, cost of living and financial hardship, and assessment and feedback. We agreed that summaries of our meetings should be shared with students.

Digital Futures Board

We heard updates on our activities in digital and AI, received an update on our Turing Innovation Catalyst (TIC) which is remarkable in the short time it was established.

Healthier Futures Advisory Board

This was the first meeting of members of our very impressive external advisory board. We discussed our priorities and plans for this cross-University initiative and future plans from Professor Dame Nicky Cullum who leads on Healthier Futures. Our advisors strongly supported our vision and aims and made very helpful suggestions on focus and next actions.

Student recruitment

It’s great to see the campus so vibrant again with our new students - shame about the weather so far. While there is still some time until the completion of all registrations and the important HESA survey date of 1 December, it looks like we are close to targets for all areas of student recruitment - slightly over on some and under on others. It also appears that we have made progress in diversification of the countries of origin of our international students. Huge thanks to the many staff who are involved in student recruitment and admissions.

Strategic Planning Group

The start of the academic year is the time when we prepare for our annual performance reviews here we consider how we have delivered against our targets, to consider targets for the next year in all areas, and prepare our presentation of these reviews and our objectives to our Board of Governors. We also discussed any big new opportunities and challenges in the year ahead and beyond and looked at comparative data for us against key universities in the UK and overseas.

Campaign oversight group

Plans to launch the major philanthropic campaign towards the end of our bicentenary year are progressing well, but have been affected, like many other activities, by the cyber incident. We heard of really good progress on meeting our targets for philanthropy over the past year and updates on major fundraising initiatives.

Congratulations….

..to April McMahon on her appointment as Vice-Chair and Treasurer of the British Academy. This is really important to help recognition of our staff in Humanities.

Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor

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• president@manchester.ac.uk