Provost's Update #13 (October 2018)

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Provost's Update #12 (July 2018)

Adam Waddingham : 24 Jul 2018 09:59 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Provost's update No. 11 (May 2018)

PDR

The PDR window for this year will run from May 8^th- 20 July, and forms, guidance and education resources will be available from the main PDR website from the 8^th May. I know this is a busy time of the year, with the additional pressure of reorganising teaching this term, however I would still like to encourage as many colleagues as possible to take part, to ensure we are offering our teams support as required and acknowledging their hard work and contributions.

In terms of the process and academic form for 2017/18 there are only two changes to note. Firstly the section looking at goals for 2018/19 now reflects the criteria agreed as part of the academic promotions pathways work, and secondly there are additional prompts in the form to encourage a discussion around dignity, inclusion and respect.

As you may be aware it is hoped (subject to go live date) that some Professional Services colleagues will have an opportunity to trial the online PDR form provided by the Success Factors, (the new self-service online tool for many people-related processes). For this year this the online form will not be available to Professional Services colleagues based in academic departments, they should continue to use paper based forms alongside all other academic colleagues.

If you have any specific questions about the process, particularly those who are new to Warwick, your HR link advisor will be able to help.

Planning Round and Financial Plan

The planning round meetings are now essentially completed and we’re working on the overall ARC budget. We still have some way to go to get the ARC budget into a position in which we can meet our target surplus and thus ensure that the capital plan is funded, overheads covered and we have resource for strategic investment.

Strategic Fund

We expect to be able to confirm the size of the Strategic Fund later this month. And we will be looking to make some commitments from this fund fairly quickly. Some of these commitments will have emerged directly from department (so issues that have been discussed during the planning round); others will be more top down driven and will relate to institutional strategic priorities (so, for example, the new Impact Leave proposal will be a strategic fund investment). We will also look to use resource from within the strategic fund to support, where necessary, outcomes from the Strategy Renewal Process.

Capital Plan

Financial Planning Sub-Committee (FPSC) met last week to look at a first draft of the overall financial plan as well as to look at the current capital plan (including new requests for investment). This is still work-in-progress as we try to explore how we might accommodate new projects in what is already a very tight capital plan.

CSAG has also been doing some thinking about longer term capital development needs which will help to link some of the masterplanning work to the size and shape work to ensure we have a coherent approach to space needs for the longer term.

University Size and Shape - some further thoughts

The thinking around University “size and shape” will be presented for discussion with Council at its meeting in mid-May. In many cases, size and shape options for individual departments were discussed as part of the planning round. If they weren’t discussed during your meeting, we will be in touch to explore further the ways in which you think your department might develop over the period to 2030.

Adam Waddingham : 09 May 2018 10:00 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Provost's Update No. 10 (March 18)

Adam Waddingham : 19 Mar 2018 10:26 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Provost's Update No. 9 (February 2018)

Applications for 2018/19

The UCAS deadline has now passed and the final position with respect to applications this year is positive. Although there is considerable variation by subject, it’s very encouraging to see that application numbers are markedly better than the national position and ahead of our competitors. Heads can see a more detailed report, emailed directly to them.

2018/19 Planning Round

The first meeting of Financial Planning Sub Committee for this year has now taken place. This meeting sets the broad parameters for the University’s financial plan for the coming academic year. I thought you might want to be aware of some of the broad conclusions from these discussions. Key points that were highlighted included;

• Surpluses in the initial roll-forward plan are lower than for last year
• Tuition fees – the previous version of the plan had budgeted for an inflationary increase in tuition fees. These will now not happen and so the income figures have been revised downwards based on the student numbers as per the last planning round. As you’ll be aware, the target numbers are currently being revisited and these will be fed into the plan.
• The initial financial projections also include a slight increase in costs because the pay settlement was higher than assumed, because there are additional costs for business rates, and some additional costs to deal with GDPR.

FPSC also noted that there was likely to be considerable uncertainty around the finding environment both because of market uncertainty and also the proposed Government review of the funding of HE.

Capital Projects

Projects in the Design Phase

• Arts Faculty Building – this is now detailed development of the design and the production of project documentation sufficiently to enable the procurement of a main contractor during the first and second quarter of 2018, with a start on site anticipated in January 2019 and completion targeted for spring 2021.
• Interdisciplinary Biological Research Building (IBRB) – dominantly research but also teaching space including a 400-seater lecture theatre. FGPC has recommended to Council that the spend be approved. Subject to that approval it is anticipated that work will start on site anticipated towards the end of 2018, project completion is ideally targeted for December 2020.
• WMG Degree Apprentices Centre (DAC) – essentially academic teaching accommodation. Start on site anticipated in June 2018 and completion targeted for March 2019.

Active Projects

• National Automotive Innovation Centre (NAIC) - main construction works will be complete in April 2018, to be followed by fit-out and specialist equipment installation with anticipated completion in September 2018. Public realm adjacent to the building is being progressively released, with the main frontage and route to University House now being open.
• Sports Centre – provision of new sporting facilities including pool, gym squash courts and climbing wall. Work commenced in August 2017 and is due for completion in March 2019. Associated projects including the 4G "all weather" pitch, the water based hockey pitch and an activity zone are complete and in use.
• Mathematical Sciences - completion is programmed for September 2018. The scope of the project has been amended to include a full and revised "fit out" of the 5th floor to accommodate additional academic staff relocating from Senate House.
• Kirby Corner Car Park (Car Park 16) - adjacent to University House, this will provide a total of 1300 car parking spaces. Work is due to commence on site in March 2018 for completion in January 2019.
• Arts Centre 20/20 - the Phase 1 refurbishment is underway and due for completion in July 2018 and will be followed by the new build extension. Overall completion is anticipated to be in July/August 2020.
• Cryfield Village Residential Accommodation - will provide 828 rooms to be completed in three phases. Phase 1 completion is anticipated in October 2019, Phase 2 in October 2020 and Phase 3 in October 2021. Extensive enabling works are underway.
• WMG Materials Engineering Centre – provision of a range of teaching facilities, including laboratories, a workshop, and office space. Operations on site commenced in November with a completion date of September 2018.

Creating an integrated student services centre

Space Planning, in conjunction with CSAG has been looking at space use and particularly at the way in which Senate House is used to provide a range of student services. Plans are still at an early stage, but we are hoping to make some significant changes to enhance student service provision. Many of the relocations are still under discussion and details are to be finalised, but the aspiration is

• To ensure the more of the important “touchpoints” for students are available conveniently and in a central campus location
• To bring more in the way of well-being services into central campus
• To provide a flexible space for a number of transient services at different times of the year, PNC checks, VISA checks
• To enhance the advice service to Students: (self-service, convenient, accountable, joined-up) working with Student Personalised Information Programme (SPI) and the implementation of Student Information Desk(SID)

Senate House is an ideal location, especially given the services that are already hosted there. However, limited space suggests that we may only be able to accommodate staff who are student facing advisers or who need to meet with students. This will present some challenges for a range of professional services because they may need to split teams (either between floors or between UH and Senate) and potentially adjust their service delivery to fit the new arrangements. We will also need to work hard around efficiencies to ensure that student waiting times are acceptable.

Adam Waddingham : 05 Feb 2018 16:39 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Provost's Update No. 8 (January 2018)

2018 Applications

The UCAS deadline is getting closer and the current position on applications for 2018 entry is as follows

(a) Applications

(b) Competitor Group

Our competitor group (ie those Universities with whom we share the largest number of applications is changing as we can see below)

Student Recruitment Strategy Group has been reviewing feedback from open day visitors. This feedback will support the central team as they look to enhance and develop the open day offer. In addition, they have been able to gather specific feedback for individual Departments and this will shortly be shared with you.

You might also wish to be aware that the University is developing a new digital platform to engage offer holders and to support conversion activity. This platform will support the provision of a range of different forms of content, including the work of our student bloggers. It is not a platform to support University level messaging but rather an opportunity for peer engagement – by students and for students. It is hoped that this will be available early in the new year.

OfS Consultation

The University will shortly be submitting its response to a series of consultations on the regulatory framework for the Office for Students (which will be formally established in January of 2018). HEFCE will work alongside OfS until April when HEFCE will be formally disestablished. The consultation document is lengthy and deals with a number of important issues including:

• Proposed requirements for initial registration of a high education provider (including governance, quality and standards; financial sustainability; widening participation; CMA compliance, transparency and information provision).
• A proposed change in approach to oversight of teaching and learning, setting out the expectation that continuous improvement will no longer be monitored through review processes, but instead will be achieved through competition.
• The proposal to monitor providers through indicators, reportable events and other intelligence such as complaints as well as randomly sampling a small proportion of providers to check they are still meeting the conditions of registration.
• The OfS proposes to engage students through a student panel and a student representative on the Board. However, the student panel is likened to a consumer advisory panel rather than engaging students as collaborators!

A new risk-based approach to allowing new providers to enter the market is being proposed which will make it easier to become a provider and is intended to reduce burden where risks are deemed to be low. Accelerated degrees will also be promoted.

HESA benchmarking for international recruitment

Student Recruitment Strategy Group has been looking at international recruitment targets and benchmarking our position against others in the Russell Group. A copy of the data is attached and you might find this helpful as we move into the process of setting future intake targets. It does suggest that there are areas where we might have scope to expand our international recruitment in the medium term.

Financial statements

For 2016-17, the University recorded a surplus for the year of £41.5m (7% of income). Whilst this result was lower than the previous year’s surplus of £54.2m it is a positive outcome and ahead of budget. This surplus hasenabled additional investment to be made during the University’s 2017 planning (particularly in ARC) round in priority activities, such as supporting work to enhance the quality of the University's teaching and learning provision, increased scholarships, bursaries and awards, additional welfare and mental health support and investment to further strengthen our research quality.

The cash generated from our surpluses provides much of our available funding for investment in buildings and infrastructure, such as the Mathematical Sciences Building and the new Sports Hub which are both currently under construction and the recently-approved plans for a new Faculty of Arts Building.

For the current financial year, the first quarter results suggest that we are slightly behind budget; Tuition fee income is slightly ahead of budget, research income slightly behind budget and costs are forecast to be over budget – most notably in the non-pay area.

ARC Autumn Review

The ARC Autumn Review took place on December 13^th and we’ll shortly share feedback with you. As we’ve moved to a system in which every department has the same type of planning meeting, there was no need for us to undertake any categorisation. We did discuss progress on the revised approach to budgeting and planning and some work that has been done to model target margin/contribution. I hope to be able to share an update on this early in the new year.

Adam Waddingham : 07 Jan 2018 23:01 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Provost's Update No. 7 (October 2017)

Welcome Week and Registration

Arrivals weekend and registration have run smoothly this year and the system which staggers the arrival of new students over the welcome weekend has been a great success. Students are still registering, so we don’t yet know final numbers. However, given the latest information, we look to be several hundred up on undergraduate numbers and about 90 below target on international undergraduates. Postgraduate Taught (PGT) numbers are looking to be slightly above target and international PGT significantly above target. Postgraduate Research numbers are currently below target for both and international but given a variety of start dates, these numbers will change quite a bit.

ARC Planning 2017-18

Academic Resourcing Committee (ARC) has had an initial discussion of possible changes to the planning process. Further work will start to look at more specific details of how a revised process might work. All HoDs will have seen a copy of the relevant ARC paper and feedback is welcome, whether directly to me or via Chairs of Faculty.

Fees debate

You have probably all heard the news about the Governments proposed cap on tuition fees and the raising of the repayment threshold. The on-off proposal to review the funding of higher education appears to be back on again (but watch this space), and there’s lots that’s uncertain here. Like most other Universities, we have been planning on fee increases in line with inflation as part of our medium-term projections. With this now ruled out, there will be an impact on the five-year plan. We’ve done a little bit of modelling and while there will be a drop in income to the University, our student mix could mitigate some of the impact. An initial analysis suggests that we might expect an annual reduction in income from UG fees that is just over £6.5m net by 2020/21. The reduction in fee income will, however, have a negative impact on Widening Participation (WP) spending, reducing that figure by a little over £2.5m. While both of these changes represent a significant unfavourable movement, our planning process does include a contingency so we believe that we well placed to manage the impact of the UG fees cap, provided our future recruitment outcomes are in line with plan.

Head of Department Induction Programme

The development programme for new HoDs is continuing with recent events including a 2-day session on leadership delivered by the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education and a morning session on academic processes.

Summer refurbishments

There have been a range of refurbishments taking place over the summer. The Westwood Café has been substantially improved – capacity has doubled and there is now enhanced provision of student study space. The Avon Drama Studio is also currently being refurbished although its taking a bit longer than planned because of some significant remediation. There have also been improvements to some of the teaching spaces on Westwood. On central campus there are new student study areas in the Science concourse and in the Humanities building. A number of rooms in Milburn House, Ramphal and on Gibbet Hill have be redecorated and improved and there are also new social learning spaces on Gibbet Hill. And of course the new temporary theatre by the Arts Centre is now in place.

Academic Processes Review Group

This group has started its work to review promotion/probation criteria. This review builds on the changes introduced recently with respect to process and documentation. We’ll update as this work progresses and we will be looking to consult more widely later in the year when some proposals have been developed. The intention is to ensure that criteria are much clearer and that we fully recognise the contribution that individuals make across all areas of academic activity.

Adam Waddingham : 06 Oct 2017 14:28 |  Tags: 2017 October |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Provost's Update No. 6 (September 2017)

Confirmation and Clearing for 2017-18 Entry

UG recruitment targets were set conservatively for this year to try to improve accuracy in in income forecasting and to recognise some of the implications of the demographic downturn. As context, UCAS have reported a 4% decline in total numbers of applications to Undergraduate UK Higher Education. We have recruited well at UG level as the figures below show. Although these figures will change slightly, the overall position looks promising with the University likely to be slightly over target. It is worth being aware that a significant number of international students who have accepted places will decide to go elsewhere so the current numbers will drop. HEU figures will be subject to rather less change.

The current position is

· confirmed HEU accepts currently at 3,852 (+185 against target of 3,667)

· confirmed overseas accepts currently at 1,082 (+152 against target of 930)

· 336 HEU and 56 overseas clearing accepts

· 40 home and 3 overseas adjustment accepts; 16 students adjusted away from Warwick

· We’ve out-performed our widening participation targets (192 LPN accepts against target of 165; 513 Low Sec against target of 470)

· Current average tariff is 181 (equivalent to just over A*A*A* at A Level)

There is a more mixed picture at departmental level. A small number of departments have significant overshoots: a number have more modest overshoots and some are noticeably below target. The position on PGT is still uncertain and we won’t really know the outcome until registration, although forecasts suggest that there might again be some modest overshoots in some departments and some undershoots in others. Thus far, we comfortably have enough University owned/managed accommodation available to meet demand.

ARC Planning 2017-18

There has been some further thinking over the summer about the planning process for 2017-18 and we’ll shortly circulate some more detail for comment and discussion. Current thinking suggests that we should look to move beyond the existing Scheme of Delegation and simply establish gross margin targets for departments based on an income budget. Departments would then have responsibility for managing their cost base in order to deliver the target gross margin. This would reduce the number of business cases that would be needed in year, give departments greater discretion (within limits) and ideally create budget space to support strategic initiatives. Both the ARC Autumn Review and the annual planning round would continue but with a reduced number of meetings and stronger linkages between the evaluations associated with the Autumn Review and the forward strategic thinking that should be part of the planning round.

We will work up some greater detail on the practicalities associated with these ideas and we will be looking for more detailed feedback and reflections from HoDs on these and other possible enhancements to our planning and budgeting within ARC

Capital Space and Amenities Group

You may be aware that Lawrence Young is stepping down as Chair of CSAG and Deputy Chair of ARC. I’m grateful to him for all the work that he’s done in these roles over a number of years. I will take over as Chair of CSAG, with two Deputy Chairs of CSAG (Kate Seers and David Haddleton) to assist with the workload that the Committee brings.

STP

Many of you will be involved in the practicalities of implementing STP and the project team are dealing with a range of queries about unusual cases that aren’t always fully specified within the framework. These queries will be used to generate a series of FAQs which will help us to share good practice for future rounds of STP contracts. This first implementation will be a learning period and while the project team are available to help you with these queries, we’d also encourage you to simply work within the spirit of the framework if you do have some atypical cases to deal with.

Fundraising Dinner in Singapore

The Friends of the University of Warwick in Singapore recently organised a fund raising dinner; this group has already supported 3 scholarships for disadvantaged/first in family students from Singapore to study here at Warwick. Our existing scholarship students joined the dinner and proved to be fantastic ambassadors for the University. Last week’s dinner raised enough to support a further full scholarship.

Race Equality Charter Mark and Stonewall Equality Index

The University made its submission for the Race Equality Charter Mark in July. In September, we will be making our submission for the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index. Our next round of Athena Swan submissions will be made in October and we plan to re-submit for our Athena Silver Swan in April next year.

Adam Waddingham : 04 Sep 2017 09:10 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Provost's Update No. 5 (July 2017)

Admissions forecast

The undergraduate position is looking positive, but the continuing trend for Home postgraduate taught is below target. Forecasts are being shared on a regular basis with Accommodation and Timetabling, via the Student Intake Working Group, and with Heads of Department.

UCAS reported has reported that the total number of applicants for 2017 entry to UK HE institutions were down 4 per cent and applicants from the European Union down 5 per cent. Some 649,700 people applied by the June deadline, around 25,000 fewer than last year. The numbers are at their lowest since 2013.

ARC Planning 2017-18

The ARC plan has now received final approval as part of the Senate and Council sign-off of the University Plan. ARC approved some £2m worth of bids in-year and has been able to approve a further £2m of planning round bids. These approvals have been granted despite the fact that ARC is significantly behind its surplus target (by around £8m). In part, this reflects a wish to continue to provide support for certain key strategic initiatives. In part, it’s also the case that the additional surplus being generated within academic departments during the current financial year has helpfully given us the ability to approve more bids during the planning round than might otherwise have been the case.

Over the summer, I think it would be helpful to look again at the operation of the planning round and we will be looking for views from HoDs. Areas of particular interest include:

• Do we need separate meeting structures for different types of departments or do we end up duplicating a lot of discussion for those departments with separate finance and strategy meetings?
• Do we have the right sort of information to make decisions?
• Can we find a way of simplifying approval mechanisms for bids – and providing better information about the scale of bids that are likely to be approved (so that there isn’t a lot of time devoted to bids that re unlikely to succeed?)
• Are we strategic enough during the planning round – is the balance between planning round approvals and in year bids right?

Capital Plan

The University’s capital plan has now been signed off through Senate and Council. This has a commitment to an average spend of £108m per year over the next 4 years. We will receive some external grant funding to support capital spend, but we will still need to find around £360m over the period to fund buildings, refurbishments and equipment. To do this we rely on the cash that is generate from both surplus and from the depreciation charge. So in preparing the financial plans we have been focused on ensuring that we are able generate sufficient surplus to fund the planned capital expenditure. Major projects in progress include:

• Sherbourne residences – due to be finished early August – handed over to us and ready for occupancy, 267 additional bed spaces
• Sports Centre due to start
• Maths started
• Engineering labs – a major refurbishment project will take place over the summer
• Arts Centre – temporary theatre will go ready for use in September.
• WMG’s MEC building

Meanwhile, plans for the new Humanities Building and the Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research Building on Gibbet Hill continue to progress.

STP

The Sessional Teaching Payroll project (STP) has received formal sign-off from ARC. Final handbooks and payment frameworks have been agreed, roles have been graded and there is now a process to ensure that essential information for all sessional teaching staff is input into the payroll system. This will continue throughout the summer. We will continue to look at arrangements for the engagement of sessional teachers including consideration of alternative models, but for now the priority will be to ensure that STP becomes operational and that the system works smoothly.

Advisory Group on the Appointment of Heads of Department

The Advisory Group on the appointment of HoDs recently proposed to Senate some new arrangements for the appointment and terms and conditions for academic HoDs. In brief, the size classification of Departments has been reviewed, with a number of departments being move to a larger category. In addition, the size of the honorarium being paid is being adjusted for inflation and you will be receiving a letter advising you of the changes that directly affect you. We have also sought to clarify the support that would normally be made available to HoDs during their term of office and the study leave entitlement on completion.

Sir George Cox

The current Chair of Council, Sir George Cox is completing his term of office and has chaired his last Council meeting. He will be succeed by Sir David Normington from the start of the next academic year. George’s extensive contribution to the University will be recognised with the award of the Chancellor’s medal during next week’s degree ceremonies.

Commercial Group

Steering Committee was recently provided with a review of activity within the Commercial Group. This highlighted a good year for the group – with particular highlights including the success of The Slate (user feedback at 100% positive) and usage continuing to rise; popularity and impact of cashless self-service tills at RGS; a good year for the UK Unitemps franchise (2 new sign ups and more hoped for) and a strong performance from Jobs.ac.uk. Overall, forecasts for this year suggest that the work of CCSG will contribute around £20m to the University’s gross surplus.

Adam Waddingham : 14 Jul 2017 11:38 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Provost's Update No. 4 (May 2017)

Academic Resourcing Committee (ARC) planning

Much of the last 6 weeks has been occupied with work relating to budgets and plans for the next academic year. ARC has been required to make some difficult choices in relation to spending plans in order to meet the agreed surplus target. We’re now getting close to the required figure for 2017-18 although we’ve still got some work to do in relation to targets for 2018-19 and beyond. In order to invest in relation to the University’s strategic priorities, ARC has already approved a number of bids within year and has also prioritised a number of bids for the coming year. Of the bids approved in-year (and rolling forward), around £750k provide additional support for research related activity including doctoral training, investment in a small number of research posts, retention work and the appointment of D-PVCs and Academic Directors. A further £800k has been allocated for teaching focused initiatives (including ITLR), such as the Academic Directors for T&L, new Senior Tutor roles and a range of academic/professional services role to support student experiences and TQ.

For 2017-18, we received around £5m of bids for new spend. Some of these bids – most notably those relating to well-being and some marketing activity will be delivered via APSG. In addition, APSG is also investing to support teaching quality and research impact. ARC and APSG have been more closely co-ordinated and indeed, APSG has committed to reducing standard expenditure by around 5% in order to prioritise strategic investments (including £300k on research impact, £250k already committed to well-being and a further £140k planned and further resource in TQ and marketing).

Other remaining ARC bids have been prioritised, with a focus on T&L, Research, growth for new programmes, support for planned new programmes and STP). We have recently had agreement from Financial Plan Sub Committee (FPSC) to fund the top priority bids (total of £1.4m). This means that we can provide early feedback on decisions for at least a sub-set of Departmental bids. We will shortly be informing all those whose bids are included in this initial approval. In addition, we are working to build a case for a further bid to FPSC to release a the next set of bids (a further £1.4m). Currently we are aiming to make this request at the meeting of FPSC on June 5^th.

Higher Education and Research Act (2017)

As you’ve probably realised, the Higher Education and Research Bill made it into law before Parliament was dissolved for the general election. As a quick reminder, the key changes include

• Next year will see a new regulator and funding council for HE, entitled the Office for Students, which will hold the statutory responsibility for quality and standards, approve new entrants to the sector, and also the awarding of university title and degree awarding powers.
• The OfS will be empowered to make arrangements for assessing of the quality of teaching in universities, in an exercise currently branded as the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). A concession is that TEF will be reviewed independently by the end of 2019.
• Until 2020, the government is expected to allow tuition fees to increase by the rate of inflation for universities participating in TEF and meeting minimum eligibility requirements. After 2020, this can be linked to results in the TEF.
• The OfS will incorporate the functions of the Office for Fair Access. Universities will be required to publish information on the fairness of their admissions, and also information that could be considered “helpful to international students”.
• Universities will now be able to charge higher annual fees for courses that are taught over a shorter period of time, also known as ‘accelerated degrees’.

The seven research councils, Innovate UK, and the research functions of HEFCE, will be brought under a “single strategic research body”: UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The research councils will maintain their existing composition within UKRI, but be subject to a single accounting officer. They will continue their existing duties, with added responsibility for interdisciplinary collaboration. A new body, Research England, will be responsible for quality-related (QR) research funding.

Induction and Development for new Heads of Department

This year sees quite a bit of change leadership in academic departments and the large number of new HoDs has provided a prompt for a revision to the existing induction programme. We will continue with an event (1.5 days) in mid-July to brief new HoDs on key features of their new role. And we’ll be looking for volunteers from among existing HoDs to contribute to this event, so we may be in touch with you. Thereafter, we’ll run a number of shorter, focused events during Autumn and Spring terms to explore a variety of themes relevant to the leadership role of HoDs.

Review of promotions process - stage one

In response to the feedback from the Pulse survey and concerns about the lack of clarity in relation to the academic promotions process, we have undertaken a piece of work to gather feedback on promotions and respond accordingly. The work is falling into two parts. The first stage is concerned with ensuring that the process and its operation are as clear as possible. This will result in some revised documentation coming forward which seeks to make it easier for individuals to navigate the promotions process. The second stage of the work will focus attention on the criteria for promotion to different levels and through different routes. We will be establishing a small task and finish group to lead on this and work will start in the next 6 months or so.

ARC capital bids

As part of the planning round activity, a sub group from ARC reviewed a range of capital bids to the academic equipment fund. The recommendation was for approx. £2.8m to be committed to new (primarily) research related expenditure with a similar amount being retained for in year investment including marching funding bids. Outcomes from this assessment will be available shortly.

Adam Waddingham : 26 May 2017 17:28 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem