A warm welcome to Board Sketch #2
05 Apr 2022
These sketches are aimed at giving you more insight into each of the Board of Governors meetings to help engage our University community with the Board and its work
They form part of a broader communications package to bring to life the work of the Board with the aim of:
- letting you know more about the members of the Board;
- creating a better understanding of its role and what it does (and doesn’t do).
The Board Sketches are intended to give a flavour of the topics covered within the meeting and in no shape or form replace the formal minutes. The most recent Board Meeting was held on Tuesday, 22 March in AMBS.
Continuing to connect Board Members with the University community
One of the recommendations from the independent Halpin review into the University’s governance from 2021 was to encourage the members of the Board of Governors to connect with all aspects of the University and, reciprocally, for our broader community to interact more directly with Board members.
The latest Board meeting illustrated that real commitment to make engagement happen.
Ahead of the formal meeting, various Board members met with staff from every School across the University. Across a series of active and lively discussions, staff shared some of their views of the positives - and the challenges - that we face from their varying perspectives.
While there will be more formal feedback on the subjects raised at the next Board meeting, all agreed it was a really helpful initiative in building better understanding of the challenges on the front-line and to increase the visibility of the Board.
This followed on from a similar session with students at the February Board. The feedback from those student/Board member discussions were captured at this meeting and agreement reached to take forward actions between management and the Students’ Union on a range of themes. These included challenges with student IT; speed of response to student feedback; investment and maintenance of student residences; adding value for international students; and equality, diversity and inclusion concerns of students.
A focus on China
Given its importance to the University, a separate briefing was run on China over a couple of hours, looking at both the risks and the opportunities. The introductory overview was given by Lord Jim O’Neill, former Chief Economist of Goldman Sachs (author of the seminal BRIC paper, an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India and China), chair of Northern Gritstone and an honorary Professor with us.
A deep dive into the University risk register and cybersecurity preparation
Managing risk is a key element of the work of any Board. The Audit and Risk Committee chaired by Deirdre Evans provides detailed scrutiny on behalf of the Board, but the full Board has an annual ‘deep dive’ into the risk register, reviewing whether all the top risks have been identified and whether we have the appropriate mitigations.
As you might imagine cybersecurity, the potential for data breach, inflation and industrial relations remain significant topics. Board members discussed the growing risk and impact of rising inflation and ever more complex workforce planning.
Angus Hearmon, Director of IT Services gave the Board a presentation on the huge effort and range of work being undertaken to mitigate cybersecurity attacks. This emphasised the technology improvements we have made, often focusing on significant but important incremental changes to better manage our cyber risk exposure - such as the recent successful implementation of student two-factor authentication, enrolling over 50,000 students in 5 days.
He also stressed the simple truth that even with our defences at the maximum, people remain a major part of the cybersecurity risk matrix. Therefore, plans include taking staff and students through a range of refresher cybersecurity awareness training.
Academic Governance Assurance
Another of the Halpin review recommendations was to create an explicit protocol between the Board of Governors and Senate to more clearly define the role of Senate in providing academic assurance to the Board. Following Senate’s approval, the plan for academic assurance in teaching and learning was approved by the Board.
This was an important step forward, with parallel work on research governance assurance ongoing.
Always a packed agenda
Over the course of a packed 2.5 hours formal agenda – opening at 3.30pm and concluding at 6pm, the Board received the President and Vice-Chancellor’s regular update, details on health, safety and wellbeing, together with formal faculty briefings from Graham Lord on FBMH and Fiona Smyth on behalf of FoH. The Board also supported the proposed increase in Senate membership to accommodate Heads of School (and consequent increases in elected members) with the implementation of that change taking place after the approval of the changes to Statutes.