President's weekly update
16 November 2023
At this time of year, we prepare for the annual Board of Governors’ Accountability Conference which reviews our progress against each of our main targets. This involves pairs of Board members (usually one elected and one lay member) reviewing each of the Faculties and Professional Services in some depth.
Professional Service Annual Performance Review (APR)
The final of this year’s APRs was completed this week and also forms a part of the accountability process. We acknowledged the many difficulties that staff in PS (and academic staff) have faced this year including high staff vacancies and sickness leave, the impact of the cyber-attack, substantial additional work after the start of the semester which is ongoing in some areas due to UCU marking and assessment boycott, issues with the new time-tabling software at the start of year and the impact of implementation of changes as part of the Student Experience Programme (SEP). As I have noted previously and discussed at the staff open meeting, with heads of departments/divisions in each Faculty and discussed extensively at Senate, we are very aware of the significant impact of all of these factors, have apologised and are working hard on resolutions.
Some issues have been largely resolved but others have not as yet. We are working to address as many of the issues as we can, as quickly as possible. We will also conduct an evaluation of (SEP) which will be discussed at a forthcoming Senate meeting.
In the APR we also discussed the importance of strong partnership between PS and academic staff, improving our systems and processes, reducing staff workload, adapting to new challenges and pressures and how we can ensure engagement with stakeholders and implementation of change programmes are enhanced, especially when these are often quite disruptive for a period of time.
Positive external stakeholder review
Every two years an independent organisation, Knowledge Partnership, conducts a review of the opinions of about 60 key external stakeholders about all major aspects of our University. These include funders, policy makers, partners and some outside the UK. The review this year was probably the most positive we have seen about our reputation, with many recognising our major themes and initiatives such as our research beacons, Innovation District Manchester, major initiatives in health and in student experience, our strengths in social responsibility and in regional engagement.
Importance of regional partnerships
I was interviewed for an article to appear in HEPI about the value of different regional partnerships, of which there are many in each region. I spoke about the N8 group of research-intensive universities in the North, the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, which is comprised largely of industry and regional government leaders, the North-West Business Leadership Team and the Greater Manchester universities through Civic Universities Agreement. We also have many other partnerships, for example with the universities of Leeds and Sheffield in Northern Gritstone (funding start-up companies), with Cambridge on innovation and others such as the Royce Institute for Advanced Materials and the Productivity Institute, both of which we host.
Many Congratulations…
to Dr Vivek Koncherry, one of our former PhD students who has a company, GIM, based in the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre. Vivek won Spectator magazine’s innovator of the year award for excellence in sustainability for his development of a new form of graphene enhanced concrete. It is based on renewable materials and has greatly improved properties and a much reduced carbon footprint.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor