President's weekly update
21 March 2024
Board of Governors
We had a pre-meeting briefing on plans for our fundraising campaign, joined by Simon Collins, chair of our Global Leadership Board. This was followed the next day by a separate meeting of our Campaign Oversight Group to review plans on the identity of the campaign and progress to date. At the main meeting of the Board, we reviewed progress on our People and OD and Equality Diversity and Inclusion plans, reviewed plans for our Board Strategy Day in May and received the standard reports from sub-committees and Senate. We had a brilliant research presentation from Professor John McAuliffe who leads our cross-cutting theme of Creative Manchester. John spoke about how this embraces staff and students across the university and spoke about one event that included theologists, staff in Japanese studies and robotics experts!
Donors and supporters
Following the major events that I reported on last week, I had private meetings with a number of our alumni and supporters who had visited Manchester to discuss our fundraising campaign and to thank them for their generous donations.
Duncan Ivison
Duncan, my successor who takes up post as President and Vice-Chancellor on 1 August, is spending two weeks with us watching, learning and attending many meetings, as part of his ongoing familiarisation programme. He has a packed agenda! In addition to attending many regular meetings with me, including our Board and other internal meetings, we also set up opportunities for him to meet teams across the University and key external stakeholders. These will be built upon when he joins us in the summer.
Regional innovation
Duncan and I attended a briefing of our regional innovation activities-opportunities, challenges and gaps, including a short tour of our Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre. We covered a wide range of topics including Innovation District Manchester, Atom Valley, Innovation Factory, Northern Gritstone, Masood Enterprise Centre and our many external partnerships.
Feedback from staff
I held one of my regular meetings with a group of staff from across the university to get their feedback on what is good and what is not so good about the University. They were very positive about the collaborative nature of the university, particularly in response to challenges like the cyberattack, support for staff, our commitment to social responsibility and our cultural institutions. They were less positive about some areas of professional services support, though some admitted it had improved recently as we have started to fill vacancies. Views were mixed about our progress on EDI, some saying how positive it has been and another saying they had seen no real progress, though all acknowledged the major external recognition we have received in several areas of EDI. They were worried about restrictions on visas, visa costs and salary thresholds for international staff and students. These were widely recognised, and we continue to make representations to government.
Strategic Planning Group
We discussed our budget for next year, which is inevitably under pressure given that our major income stream (UK student fees) has not increased for several years and there are risks around international student recruitment given geopolitical events and policy changes on immigration which impact on international students. The government’s Migration Advisory Council will report on post-study work visas in May which may also have a major impact on universities including ours. We also looked at comparisons of our student staff ratios against similar universities which are generally favorable but variable.
UK Investment Council
I attended a meeting online that included discussions with the Under Secretary of State for Housing Lee Rowley, Andrew Bowie, Minister for Nuclear and Renewables, Jonathan Brearley, CEO of Ofgem and Julia Hoggett, CEO of the London Stock Exchange.
Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor