All entries for Wednesday 03 February 2016

My first day as your new Vice–Chancellor

Dear all,

Even though I’ve worked at Warwick for nine years, today feels a bit like my first day at school. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t particularly enjoy any of my first days at school. I hope this one will be different.

It is an interesting time to be taking over as Vice-Chancellor. On the one hand, Warwick is riding higher than at any time in its history, according to every league table at which you might look. The past few years have been marked by a whole series of achievements in teaching, research, in our organisational efficiency, as well as in our ability to raise the funds that we need to invest in our future. We have great students and wonderful staff; which we are adding to through top quality recruitment. On the other hand, not all of that success has been easy, and there have been a number of difficult moments for us all. The success of the university has depended on the hard work of so many, and I do not underestimate the effort and personal cost that this has entailed. Let me start as I mean to go on – by thanking you for that effort, energy and commitment.

In fact, there is still a lot for us to do. But this is tempered by what I know of the University of Warwick.

We can achieve a huge amount, because of the incredibly high quality of staff and students that we have, because we pull together when we need to, because we have wonderful friends amongst the alumni base and beyond both locally and around the world. The future will be challenging, there is no doubt about that. But there are real opportunities for us to make Warwick a still better university. And we must work together to take those opportunities.

Please click hereto read my full ‘first day at school’ letter. It’s where you’ll read more about the challenges we face, and how our ethos and people will ensure we face those challenges with confidence. You’ll also learn about some exciting new developments for Warwick both on campus and further afield.

I hope this is a useful way of beginning a conversation. I plan to write more for our blog, and my colleagues will do so too. I also plan to get around the university as much as I can, starting this week, and look forward to a very large number of conversations around all these issues – and more!

Best wishes,

Execblog Resource : 03 Feb 2016 13:12 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem