President's weekly update
15 February 2024
Opening of Talk 200 our bicentenary lecture and podcast series
We were very fortunate that the opening lecture and podcast in our Talk 200 series was given by Professor Sir Chris Whitty, who many of you will have seen frequently flanking the Prime Minister on television during the Covid pandemic. Chris is the Chief Medical Officer and has received a string of accolades. He gave a fantastic talk about ‘Health inequalities, past, present and future’ which is a major area of research for us and one of the themes of our forthcoming fundraising campaign.
After the lecture, I chaired a panel discussion on the lecture topic with Chris, Professor Dame Nicky Cullum who leads our initiative in Health inequalities and Jane Pilkington, Deputy Director of Population Health at Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership.
Then our Chancellor, Nazir Afzal, bestowed an honorary doctorate on Chris. I was privileged to read the citation. Most notable for me was that, despite his very senior position, he still finds time to be out on the wards treating patients - he did so throughout Covid and can often be found there on Christmas Day. If I were a patient, I would be delighted to see Chris!
Senate
Prior to the Senate meeting we had briefing sessions on the time-tabling project and criteria for teaching and scholarship promotions. Senate received reports on each of our core activities, quality and standards for research and teaching, discussions at the Board and my report. We also had useful discussions on how we better make the case to the current and future government about the value of universities and of international students, how we support students who are struggling with mental health issues and how we can get better integration of students from different backgrounds and different countries.
Visit to the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures (SALC)
Students in SALC raised support for disabled students, hot-desking for PGRs, confusion over support for conference attendance, delays in getting ethics approval and visas for study abroad. Staff raised similar issues on workload, ever increasing ‘paperwork’, developing blended and flexible learning, especially to reduce our carbon footprint.
European visit
Signe Ratso, Deputy Director-General for Research and Innovation for the European Commission, and Adam Jackson (DSIT International Director) visited us to mark the UK’s accession to the EU’s Horizon Programme. Both visitors urged us to step up our already substantial participation (75 research projects) and assume leadership roles as we had done during the UK’s EU membership. They saw some of our major facilities, met European grant holders and Signe attended the Chris Whitty event.
Russell Group meeting
We had a discussion with Andrew Griffith, Minister of State for Science, Research and Innovation, who was extremely supportive of Russell Group activities in research and innovation and cited some aspects of this in Manchester. He also recognised the very difficult financial sustainability challenges of all universities.
Professor Patrick Chinnery, Executive Chair of the Medical Research Council (MRC), also joined us, and we held lengthy discussions about the nature of research funding, cross disciplinary research and training and financial challenges due to inflation.
At the main Russell Group meeting, the most important discussion was about international students and the flawed Sunday Times reporting and its damaging impact. I raised our very robust response (we had sent a rebuttal to the Sunday Times well before they published their article).
UNESCO designation
Manchester has been awarded UNESCO status as a City of Lifelong Learning to which a number of our staff contributed.
Thank you…
To Adèle MacKinlay for her many contributions as she will be leaving shortly for personal reasons to support her family which is of course her prime concern. We wish her the very best in the future.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor