President's weekly update
18 January 2024
Light Up events to kick off our bicentenary
This week, we held a series of fantastic Light Up events to mark the start of our bicentenary year. In Manchester, Councillor Bev Craig, Leader of Manchester City Council, and one of our alumni and I both spoke about the importance of our bicentenary, then we heard an extract from a wonderful poem read by Rebecca Hurst, one of our alumni, called ‘Mast Year’ which she had written especially to mark this occasion. We were joined by many guests, alumni, members of our General Assembly, Global Leadership Board, North American Foundation and Hong Kong Foundation, our Chancellor Nazir Afzal, the Lord Mayor of Manchester Councillor Yasmine Dar, and Lord Mayor Consort, Majid Dar.
At exactly 18.24, Bev and I pressed the button to light up much of the University in purple, start projections on to the University Drum and light a pathway for anyone who wished to walk around, ending up at a late evening event in our wonderful Manchester Museum.
Crowds developed on Oxford Road to watch and our Museum was absolutely packed out for the event after the Light Up – as busy as our reopening days last year!
We were also delighted to see celebratory ‘light ups’ to kick off our 200th year in Shanghai, Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong, organised by our international centres. Many thanks to all the teams in Manchester and around the world who all made this happen. All the events are available to watch or will be available to view very soon.
First General Assembly of 2024
Before the Light Up, we held our General Assembly meeting. I gave an update on successes, challenges and plans. Carol Prokopyszyn, our Chief Financial Officer, reported on our financial results for last year, then Kim Graakjaer, Head of Bicentenary Planning and Delivery, then spoke about events for the bicentenary.
Prestigious awards for our academics
Huge congratulations to Senior Lecturer, Jason Allen-Paisent, who has been named winner of the UK's most prestigious poetry award, the TS Eliot Prize, for his collection ‘Self Portrait as Othello.’
Furthermore, Professor Anthony Green and Professor Rahul Nair have been recognised in the prestigious 2024 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists. They are two of the three Laureates, who will each receive £100,000 in recognition of their work in Chemical Sciences and Physical Sciences & Engineering, respectively. Many congratulations to both for their outstanding work.
Meetings with staff
At an event for about 100 new academic and PS staff from across the University, senior colleagues and I asked what they thought was good and what we could improve about our organisation. As always, this was extremely positive. They raised many issues that we can do better on, such as often complex and long approval routes, timetabling at the start of year, time to get staff contracts, stretched staff in areas such as research support. These are all areas we are working hard to improve. But all three groups I met with, and I had similar feedback from others who hosted groups, were so positive about many things, especially the staff and students. All said they felt so welcome when they arrived. Several staff had joined IT during the cyber incident and spoke of the massive challenges but swift actions and amazing teamwork.
I held one of my regular, much smaller, meetings with staff and asked them the same questions. They responded with many positives (scale, resource, staff, students, social responsibility, EDI) and some areas for improvement such as a number of processes, under staffing of PS in some areas, needing to spend a lot more time supporting students. We discussed all these areas, and they came up with helpful suggestions to put into action.
Digital Futures
Aside from general updates, the main topic of discussion at the board was digital learning led by Professor Steve Pettifer and Liz Scott from the Turing Innovation Catalyst, Manchester. We heard great progress on many short programmes to develop digital skills and work with wider stakeholders including Further Education colleges.
Next week
I won’t be sending a message next week as I will be in Hong Kong, meeting our Foundation members who provide us with so much support and engaging in key events that I couldn’t do remotely. I will also be meeting with other alumni including at a major bicentenary event and I will host an event to present the Medal of Honour to Dr Eric Li, the founding President of our Hong Kong Foundation in recognition of his incredible work with our many alumni in Hong Kong.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor