VC's Introduction
It is positive news that we have now welcomed back more students to the University and it is good to see increasing activity on campus. This week heralds a further easing of Government restrictions with the rule of six outdoors and a resumption of outdoor sports. We must never be complacent, but it is encouraging that our infection rates have fallen significantly and remain extremely low. Combined with the ongoing roll-out of the vaccination programme, this gives us cause to be optimistic. Hopefully now we can start to plan ahead with more certainty as we look to support our students through the remainder of the academic year and commence our planning for the autumn.
As always, there is a tremendous amount of activity within the University. In this bulletin there is more about the University’s involvement in the Freeport Strategic Group, an update on REF and more on the University leading the signing of our Civic University Partnership Agreement. Finally this year’s Vice-Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence are open. This is your chance to nominate the many colleagues and students who have accomplished extraordinary things in the last year.
As we head into the long Easter weekend, I hope that you all have the opportunity to take a short break from work and spend some time with loved ones.
Update on REF
I am pleased to announce that we have successfully submitted our REF2021 documents to Research England in advance of their 31 March deadline. This has been a huge amount of work for many people across the University for several years now. Preparations for this submission started in earnest back in 2018, while much of the research and impact presented in our submission started far earlier. It is an amazing achievement, especially during this stressful last year when we had to change the way we work together.
You may be interested to know that our submission involved 603 staff, more than double the number submitted to the previous REF in 2014. These staff are spread across 16 Units of Assessment covering all Faculties of the University. Our submission includes over 1,400 outputs (50% more than 2014) and 54 impact case studies (25% more than last time). We should be proud to advertise and celebrate the breadth and depth of our research capacity and quality that this assessment demonstrates. The fact that we don’t know how other competitor universities have evolved their research over the assessment period, means that I look forward to the April 2022 results with both excitement mixed with nervousness! Thank you again for all your hard work, not just in the submission, but also in supporting and growing research excellence at the University.
Knowledge Exchange Framework results
The first set of results for the new Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) were released yesterday (31 March), joining the REF and the TEF in being the third framework by which the Government assesses universities' threefold mission – generating knowledge (research), transmitting knowledge (teaching), and translating knowledge (knowledge exchange).
KEF is not a league table. It assesses performance across seven perspectives, and it groups institutions into similar ‘clusters’. We are in the biggest cluster with 28 other modern universities such as Coventry, Plymouth and Westminster.
The comparison, compiled by Research England, shows that we are in at least the top 50% of our cluster for every perspective, including in the top 40% for our research partnerships, and the top 30% for our skills, enterprise and entrepreneurship.
This is a solid result for the inaugural year of the KEF, showing that we have a strong and competitive foundation to build on to achieve our aim to be the top modern UK university in 2030.
But we want to do better.
To keep improving and growing, we are engaging with Research England’s Knowledge Exchange Concordat (KEC), introduced as the counterpart to the KEF. Simply put, the KEF shows us what KE we do, the KEC makes us think about how we do it.
Further work is being undertaken to fully understand the information and implications within the KEF, which will be fed into the work of the Strategic Delivery Groups to help drive our KE mission and ambitions forward.
Launch date for Staff ‘Pulse’ survey
Our new staff ‘pulse’ survey will launch next month - running from 10 to 28 May. This is the first of our twice yearly ‘pulse’ surveys on different themes and topics which are important to our vision and strategy. We have redesigned it to make it shorter, but it still covers many important questions. I urge you to take the time to complete the survey since this is an opportunity for all colleagues to provide feedback about their experience as a member of staff, which helps us to understand what we do well and where we can make improvements.
The pandemic has brought many changes to our working lives and how we operate. These changes mean that colleagues' views and feedback are ever more important and will help us to plan for the future success of the University. This is your chance to ensure that your staff voice is heard and plays a part in shaping our future. The survey will be anonymous and confidential, with benchmarking to responses from the 2017 Staff Survey and from other institutions. Significantly, the action planning process will be more robust and simpler to report on, with a framework to support the action planning provided. A number of improvements were made following the 2017 Staff Survey so please take part in this survey when invited to do so on 10 May. Your opinion matters and by contributing you can help influence your working environment.
Freeport and levelling-up agenda
Colleagues may have seen that the Solent was one of eight Freeports announced in the Chancellor's Budget last month. Freeports receive favourable tax treatment designed to boost economic activity, which means having a local Freeport is a fantastic opportunity for our region and our University. It has been calculated that the Solent Freeport can be expected to create over 25,000 new jobs and attract billions of pounds of inward investment. The University hopes to engage fully with the Freeport. For example, one of the planned activities is to support the decarbonisation of local businesses through a Solent Freeport Green Growth Institute.
The University will also engage through my membership of the Solent Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) Board as the LEP develops a full business case. I, and others, will ensure that the three Solent universities will be closely involved as the business case is developed. I am delighted that Bob Nichol, our Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation, will be closely involved representing the three universities on the Freeport Strategic Group.
Over the coming months I am sure Bob and I will be calling on some colleagues for help as we look to make the most of the opportunity for our region. This short video about the Solent Freeport has more details about its aims.
Civic agreement
Hopefully, you will have seen the recent announcement by Sherria Hoskins that the University has signed a Civic University Partnership Agreement with 19 local and regional anchor organisations. We have committed to work together to:
- Address long term educational inequality in our region
- Provide and support initiatives to fill the health and care gaps in the region
- Support sustained economic growth in our region
- Improve our environmental sustainability
- Opening up our institutions
- Promote diversity and inclusion in our community through engagement and leadership
These commitments will help the people of our city and region and will contribute significantly to the University’s strategic ambition of becoming a leading civic university and set a new benchmark for civic engagement.
We should not underestimate the appetite for this. As became clear from the public perception survey and focus groups we have carried out, the people of Portsmouth are proud of their University. They rank us as one of the positively impactful institutions in the City, behind only the Navy, the Dockyard and the Hospital. But they want to know more about what we do and how we can help them and their communities. In an increasingly difficult political environment we also need more advocates making the case for the University - and universities in general. Our civic role is not an optional extra.
We are only at the beginning of our work but I hope you are all as excited about this as Sherria and I are.
Recycling dental products
As a great example of our commitment to improve our environmental sustainability, the Dental Academy has taken great strides recently. Although a large amount of University waste is recycled, many dental products are not accepted in regular recycling centres. To overcome this, the Dental Academy is now taking part in the Phillips/Colgate – TerraCycle - Dental Care Recycling Programme, preventing dental care products from ending up in landfill. All oral care products and packaging are sorted and separated, and then cleaned, shredded, and made into new recycled products. The programme also rewards us with points for each kilogram of dental care products sent, which can be redeemed into financial donations to a charity or school chosen by the Dental Academy.
During the coming weeks, labelled bins will be placed in the Academy building for students, staff and members of the public to drop-off dental products including any brand of toothpaste tubes and caps, toothbrushes, electric toothbrush heads, flossing sticks and outer packaging. We hope that this initiative will motivate our community to drive forward other recycling programmes in the future. It’s great to see colleagues taking the initiative to reduce our environmental impact as part of our strategic commitment to becoming a climate positive university by 2030.
Environmentally-sourced stone for Ravelin Sports Centre
Our new Ravelin Sports Centre has progressed well over the winter months and the interiors are really taking shape. Wood panelling has been installed in the sports hall, underfloor heating in the reception area and tiling is underway in the pool and changing areas. Materials have been selected carefully to meet our sustainability requirements.
Work has also started on installing 420m² of Portland stone for exterior and interior feature walls. This stone was extracted from Jordan’s Mine, the largest mine on the Isle of Portland, Dorset. This creamy white stone has been used for centuries notably in major public buildings such as St Paul's Cathedral and Buckingham Palace. It is a premium quality limestone that has been chosen because of its lower carbon footprint and aesthetic qualities.
The stone is mined using a room and pillar method, which is a means of extracting the stone using an abrasive tool chain cutter mounted on a machine. The stones are gently broken off at the back without placing any stress on the resulting blocks. This method of extraction is more expensive than blasting, but results in a higher yield thereby saving valuable reserves for future generations and benefits the environment by reducing the impact on wildlife. Ravelin Sports Centre will open later this year.
Confirmation and Clearing
As many of you are aware we have a new date for A-level and BTEC results day: 10 August. This is a Tuesday instead of the usual Thursday, and is only one week earlier than normal. More significantly this year A-level grades will be determined by teacher assessments. Hopefully we should avoid last summer’s disruption, although it’s possible there could be more change to come. There may also be more grade appeals this year which may mean some students may take longer to commit to their university choice. However, please be reassured that plans are being put in place. If you have any thoughts or concerns please contact your local representative on the Confirmation and Clearing Working Group:
- Christine Giles (Chair), Department of Student and Academic Administration (DSAA)
- James Treagus, DSAA
- Nancy Jefferies, Information Services
- Ken Bissell, DSAA
- Peta Tattersall, Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries
- Rhia Weston, Marketing, Advancement and Communications (MAC)
- Sam Bowden, Planning
- Sue Davies, Faculty of Business and Law
- Rachel Geary, Student Housing
- Mary Williams, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
- Michael Cushway, DSAA
- Margarita Litcan, DSAA
- Shanice Ballaram, DSAA
- Mark Ovens, UoP Global
- Fiona Bell, Estates and Campus Services
- Sophie Dear, MAC
- Sarah Watkins, MAC
- Tom Hallett, MAC
- Kirsten Farrell-Savage, Faculty of Science and Health
- Sarah Warrington, MAC
- Lee Woods, Faculty of Technology
VC Awards open
There are many people at the University who do amazing things, and it’s one of the greatest pleasures of my role to recognise those individuals or teams through the Vice-Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence. It has been an extraordinary year - in every sense of the word! Yet our staff, students and partners have stepped up to the many challenges with creativity, courage and commitment. I feel great pride in what has been accomplished, but we need your help in shining a spotlight on deserving colleagues, students and community members. Please nominate before the closing date on 23 April 2021, so we can recognise and celebrate excellent achievements as a community.