Provost's Update for Academic Heads #24 (February 2020), 21/04/20, Provost's Updates

April 21, 2020

Provost's Update for Academic Heads #24 (February 2020)

Covid-19 – Business Continuity

You may be aware that the University convened a Major Incident Team meeting when the news about Coronavirus (Covid-19) initially broke. More recently we have pulled together a Covid-19 Business Continuity Group, chaired by Chris Twine, to look at appropriate responses to the potential challenges we might face during the coming months. The situation both globally and nationally is now very fluid and we have a need both to react to current issues (e.g. managing impact of delays to Chinese educational system, managing travel to certain locations, managing concerns about the availability of English Language Testing) as well as to consider risk mitigation and scenario planning for a threat that is still undefined in scope, time and impact. A number of sub-groups looking at specific aspects of the situation are being put in place. Amongst other things they will need to think about potential scenarios and the contingency planning for these. The Business Continuity Group are also aware of the importance of keeping you and others informed as appropriate and the web/insite will be kept up to date and any targeted communications will be shared directly as appropriate.

Workload Planning

As you’ll be aware, we have a small group looking at options for a more systematic approach to workload planning. The group is looking at what happens in other similar institutions (via visits and other forms of information sharing) – both in terms of policy and systems – and considering what options might be best for us. There are important benefits from developing a more systematic approach to workload planning – not least because we can deliver greater transparency and consistency across Departments as well as ensuring greater clarity about how workloads should be managed. Anything that the group proposes will need to reflect our diversity and be consistent with appropriate levels of departmental autonomy. With that in mind we will shortly be consulting with you to get your views on how best to progress this work.

New Arrangements for PGRs who Teach (STP Review)

We are now close to finalising the new proposals for PGR students who teach (to replace the current STP arrangements). Consultations with Faculties and with students have been completed and a final proposal will go to ARC in March. This will be a major step in our plans to reduce the levels of casualization in our workforce. Moving our PGR students who teach onto employment contracts will represent a significant development but the work doesn’t end with this as we will now need to look at the changes that will be required to move other STP staff onto employment contracts. That will be the next phase of work for the STP Review Group and you can expect to hear more about this later this year.

Sustainability and the University’s Travel Policy

As part of the work of the new Climate Emergency Task Force, changes are being made to the University’s travel policy and you’ll see a blog referring to these on Monday. In brief the plan is that train travel should become the default for journeys within GB and key Eurostar destinations. This may be more expensive in financial terms than flying but will make a significant difference to our scope 3 emissions. For longer journeys – where air travel is the only option, we will be introducing internal offset charges and the revenue generated will be hypothecated for investment in initiatives to reduce carbon emissions. This arrangement should begin at the start of Q3, but we will encourage colleagues to engage with the new options around train travel as soon as possible. Full details will follow shortly. Green Week – this coming week – will draw attention to a range of sustainability issues and there is lots more happening on campus than many of us think. So you might want to be aware of the range of work that’s happening to sustainability (https://warwick.ac.uk/about/environment/) and also the approach adopted by CCSR (https://warwick.ac.uk/services/retail/sustainability/). And I’m also hoping there will be some news on expected changes to the University’s socially responsible investment policy during the course of this coming week.

Size and Shape 2.0

This is essentially a reminder, having mentioned the issue in my last update. Following on from the work that was completed in 2018 regarding the broad plans for institutional size and shape, we are now starting to explore the next phase of this work and to give some thought as to what our portfolio of degree programmes might need to look like moving towards 2030. Some of you will have already started to look at restructuring and refreshing core curricula and Education Executive is encouraging and supporting additional review and refresh work. But there are longer term questions about how disciplines are developing; how student expectations may evolve and how career and employability expectations may change. All of these will have a bearing on what we should be delivering at the end of the current decade. Within ARC and beyond, we are staring to give some thought to this and during the planning round, we are keen to hear more from you on the longer term developments in your discipline areas.

Execblog Resource : 21 Apr 2020 10:55 | Tags: Provost | Comments (0) | Report a problem