Author: Professor Mark Spearing, President and Vice-Chancellor (Interim)
Most of today’s meeting considered 10-Year Plan business. Before this, three regular UEB items were discussed. Professor Alex Neill, our Vice-President (Education), presented an update on the Education Strategy and progress towards it. This paper will be discussed at Council at its meeting on 25 September, as one of the regular updates that Council receives annually on each of the strategies within the Vice-Presidents’ portfolios. The importance of connecting the Education strategy to our evolving staff development plans – and also the importance of the NSS implementation plans being enacted across the University were emphasised.
We discussed the University‘s progress towards its Athena Swan submission, which is due in November. An initial draft of the submission has now been written, and is undergoing editing, and will be reviewed at UEB on 16 September 2019. The critical issue is that Athena Swan, together with many of the other Equality and Diversity and Inclusion ‘Kite Marks,’ need to be embedded throughout the University. Our initial reflection is that this has been achieved to varying degrees over the last five years since our previous submission, and over the coming years we need to find better ways to achieve a more uniform engagement with the very important aims of the programme.
UEB agreed to support a proposal from the University and Colleges Union (UCU) for a 30 minute work stoppage, by all staff who want to support this activity and whose roles allow, on 20 September 2019 as part of the Global Climate Change action. This is intended as a recognition of the need to act individually and collectively to address the increasingly critical global environmental situation. Further details will be available on SUSSED in due course. Independently of this, UEB will have an initial discussion about the development of a comprehensive environmental sustainability strategy on 16 September. We noted that the 2019 Travel Survey for staff is now open and we encourage staff to participate.
Professor Mandy Fader, our Pro Vice-Chancellor for the 10-Year Plan took the chair for the remainder of the agenda. We reviewed the portfolio of projects and were pleased to see a number were making good progress from concepts to business cases, through the initiate and planning phases and onto ‘delivery’. A new project to create a Future Towns Innovation Hub, to be located at the Science Park, was introduced. Over £4M of funding has been won from the Enterprise M3 Local Enterprise Partnership and Research England to support this project, which will house applied research facilities and incubation and growth space for start-ups and small companies working in relevant technologies. We had a wider discussion about projects in the portfolio which require changes in ways of working and ensuring that there is sufficient support provided for these projects.
We reviewed the governance for the 10-Year Plan and reiterated the need for effective prioritisation, including making ‘go/no go’ decisions at the earliest possible stage. There was a strong collective view that where we have a choice, we will benefit from undertaking slightly fewer projects with a clear focus on delivery in a timely manner, rather than spreading ourselves too thinly. Related to this, we also discussed the need to have a clearer method of distinguishing projects that have been approved but are not being progressed at the present time, either due to the need to focus, or due to funding or other resource constraints.
A paper to develop an integrated sports and estates strategy was enthusiastically approved. This recognises the multiple benefits to having more of our students and staff involved in sports and other physical and wellbeing activities.
A concept paper was discussed to review and update the ordinances of the University to reflect best practice across the sector. The ordinances have not been reviewed since 2007/8, so this work is overdue. We agree that revisions were needed to be clearer about the scope and timelines of the project. A revised version will return to a future 10-Year Plan board meeting.
Under ‘any other business’ we noted that there will be Open Days on the coming weekend. Several UEB members will be attending, giving talks, and supporting the many colleagues involved outside their normal working hours. These Open Days are very important in allowing us to attract high quality students to the University.
We also noted the continuing Brexit uncertainty and reminded ourselves of the need to make widely known the help and support provisions being offered to colleagues who may be affected by this.