President's weekly update
7 December 2023
Fantastic series of recognition awards at the end of 2023
It has been a great week for the University in receiving hard earned external recognition.
This week the QS announced the results of its 2nd World University Sustainability Rankings. We were ranked first in the UK, first in Europe and third in the world out of over 1,400 universities assessed across 95 countries. This is an amazing result and my thanks to everyone who contributed. The result echoes our outstanding performance in the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings league table earlier this year.
We also saw the publication of the assessment of our public engagement activities by the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement. Previously we held a gold ranking. This time, after a very intensive assessment, we achieved the highest award – a platinum ranking. We are only the second university to achieve this level of award. Thank you again to the many people involved. I have to give special thanks to Dr Julian Skyrme, Director for Social Responsibility and his team, who led both activities, though I know he would say that this was with the help of many others.
On top of that, we won a Green Gown Award for excellence in environmental sustainability for our ‘Zero carbon with no net’ programme. Once again, many congratulations to the Estates and Facilities team and all those involved in this tremendous achievement.
Then two more….the South Asia Gallery at our Museum won the best exhibit award and our Whitworth Art Gallery won best event award at the Manchester Cultural Awards!
Successful visit with our North American Foundation (NAFUM)
I made a short trip to New York, my first visit to the USA since before Covid, mainly to attend our NAFUM Board meeting. They support us with fundraising and student recruitment in North America and have been very successful, lately with three gifts of over $1 million. Many will be travelling to Manchester next year for a joint meeting of NAFUM, with our Global Leadership Board and Hong Kong Foundation in March. I also had one-to-one meetings with a number of alumni to discuss how they might support us.
Meeting with senior staff
At one of our regular meetings between senior staff and about 70 leaders from across the University, I gave a brief update on our Board accountability conference and the wider higher education sector issues. Dr Lynne Sheppard, Director of the Masood Entrepreneurship Centre in AMBS, and Professor Lee Pugalis, Deputy Director, talked about opportunities to expand student entrepreneur training. Patrick Hackett, Registrar, Secretary and Chief Operating Officer, updated on resolving recent operational issues and Carol Prokopyszyn, Chief Financial Officer, reported on our latest financial statements for 2022-3.
Regional activities
I met the heads of Manchester Metropolitan and Salford universities and the Royal Northern College of Music to discuss our joint initiatives, notably in areas of creative endeavours and our partnership with local further education colleges. You may have seen the announcement that English National Opera will relocate to Manchester over coming years.
Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF)
The Office for Students has now published additional information for most universities and colleges that took part in TEF 2023. The additional information includes summary statements from the TEF panel and the submissions from providers and students (redacted to remove any references to individuals).
Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) visit
Senior colleagues and I met with the President and many other senior staff from HUST. We already have strong links with HUST, a leading Chinese university particularly in engineering and health. We discussed how we strengthen these areas and expand to environmental sustainability and social sciences.
University Exam Board
We held an additional University Exam Board to deal with ongoing issues relating to the delayed students’ assessment as a result of UCU’s marking and assessment boycott. Thanks to the huge amount of work by many colleagues (thank you!) we have completed assessments for most students and will complete very soon on those few remaining.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor