VC'S Introduction
The start of 2021 is proving to be as challenging as the end of 2020 but I am optimistic that things will improve.
It is frustrating that we have had to delay the return of most of our students to campus, but we all understand the need to do this, however safe we know our campus is. Overall infection rates are now starting to come down in most areas in the UK. This, with the start of the vaccination programme, gives us a glimmer of hope for a gradual improvement and easing of restrictions.
For those staff and students who are on campus asymptomatic testing continues and our infection rates are low. I’m proud of our response to the challenges of testing and the success that we’ve had. We are now supporting others in the city such as Harbour School and Portsmouth City Council sharing our knowledge and skills as they look to set up their own testing programmes. At a time such as this it is so important that we can reach out to, and support, our community partners. It is what it means to be a Civic University.
As well as supporting testing initiatives in the city we are also looking at what else we can do to support our own staff through these difficult times, particularly those with school aged children. You will hopefully have seen communications about proposed plans for a School Study Buddy Club and a Chromebook loan scheme. A number of you have responded and we are actively pursuing both programmes and will communicate more on these as soon as possible. Neither of these programmes will resolve all the issues that so many face in another lockdown, but hopefully they will help.
While we deal with some of the immediate challenges and wait for further Government guidance about the return of students to campus we continue with a number of strategic priorities and projects. In this bulletin I share an exciting development in the creation of a medical school and initiatives to support our aim to be climate positive. You can also read about our student numbers and the success of a number of our researchers in having papers published.
Medical School
We’re taking our first steps towards establishing a graduate-entry University of Portsmouth Medical School. This has been an aspiration for us and our local health partners for some time.
The creation of a medical school would align with our Vision to be the top modern university by 2030, in part by creating new research opportunities, and would build on our strong and successful track-record of working with the local health service on new health educational developments. More importantly, a medical school would deliver huge benefits to our City and our region.
With the UK’s departure from the EU there is a greater need to produce more home-grown high-quality healthcare professionals, not least because the demands on health and social care will increase over coming decades. There is also a need to widen participation to a profession that, historically, has disproportionately excluded less advantaged young people.
A graduate-entry medical school would help address this problem by making access to the profession less dependent on undergraduate degree and A level subject choice. Widening access to the profession to young people in our City and region would also improve the local retention of high-quality healthcare professionals and so could deliver enormous benefits to the wider community.
There remain many issues to investigate – including the regulatory approvals process, securing funding and the appropriate clinical expertise – but UEB and the Board of Governors have agreed that we should develop a full business case so we are ready for an expected NHS/Office for Students call for an expansion of medical education training places.
There is much work to be done, but I hope you’re as excited as me about this potential development both for the University and our City and region.
Student numbers 2020/21
The University’s student numbers for 2020/21 were reported to the Office for Students in December. I am pleased to report that our student numbers were healthy again this year, with 32,000 students studying at Portsmouth and with our collaborative partners in the UK and globally. In common with all UK universities, we had significant concerns about our likely student recruitment and retention position for 2020/21 when we went into lockdown last March. So this is a really excellent position for us to be in and I’m proud that so many students will benefit from their experience with Portsmouth, albeit in very different circumstances this year.
University Strategy and resource planning for 2021/22
The University’s new Vision 2030 and Strategy 2025 were formally launched in January 2020. Our approach to planning for strategic delivery was interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, although work has continued to progress on a number of key projects. We remain fully committed to delivering our new Strategy and will be re-launching our approach to overall strategy implementation from spring 2021.
In parallel with this, we are introducing a new approach to resource planning for 2021/22 building on the strategic and financial planning processes that have operated in recent years. Guidance on the approach has been shared with budget holders. Within this guidance EPG have identified a number of immediate priorities that we must focus on through our resource planning for 2021/22. Progress in these areas is key to our future success:
Strategic ambition
- Meet changing demand and widen participation
- Reverse the ongoing decline in our Home/EU full-time undergraduate applications and boost conversions
- Engage every student in a life-changing experience
- Improve student experience and reduce variation in outcomes across courses and student groups across our portfolio of courses
- Rapidly improve graduate employment
- Deliver globally-recognised research and innovative solutions that improve society
- Focus our research and innovation efforts on engaging with thematic areas and international collaborations, raising more R&I income and surplus, and increasing funded PGR student numbers
Staff Survey postponed
Before Christmas we announced we would launch a new staff ‘pulse’ survey in February. However, in light of another national lockdown and impact on workloads, UEB decided it should be rescheduled to May 2021. While we agreed it would be helpful to gauge your views and feelings about working at the University, we felt no one had the time or capacity for action planning at the moment as so many colleagues have had to readjust their work plans in response to the current lockdown, while juggling home schooling and childcare. We expect we will be better placed by May as the vaccinations’ rollout reaches more people, and staff will have more time to commit to the staff survey and respond to feedback received. We’ll provide you with an update about a launch date nearer the time.
Climate action
Our University Vision and Strategy commits us to becoming climate positive by 2030; one of the most ambitious environmental targets across the UK HE sector. This sector-leading ambition remains a critical strategic focus for us and we now need to take concrete action to deliver it. In that vein, I want to update you on a number of initiatives we have taken forward over the last year to improve our environmental performance and build towards sustainability by the end of the decade. I am therefore happy to announce that UEB recently approved an updated policy on ethical and sustainable investment that ensures we use our financial influence to help the planet and society. The University is involved in the New Statesman’s Global Policy Forum: A Sustainable Recovery, taking place on 9 February. As part of our sponsorship of this high profile event, Professor Steve Fletcher, Director of the Sustainability and the Environment research theme, will be chairing a panel discussion of the role of universities in the sustainability agenda — particularly in relation to Revolution Plastics.
Next, working with our waste contractor Suez, we will extend our on-campus recycling to deal with a much wider range of recyclable materials such as crisp packets, cling film and office stationery. Finally, we now include our climate positive ambition in the induction material for all new staff thus emphasising the importance of personal action to help the organisation achieve our climate goal. These are positive steps forward but we need to do much more this decade, especially around the climate impact of our estate and our travel. I’d also like to remind people about our existing “Cycle to Work” scheme by CycleSolution (accessible via the Travel to Work quick link in Staff Essentials) that helps everyone buy a bicycle at a substantial discount. Likewise, our green electricity tariff for campus buildings encourages more investment in renewable energy by creating more demand for solar, wind and hydro generated energy.
Top 100 academic papers
I’m pleased to see our researchers amongst the Top 100 academic papers published in 2020 as judged by Altmetric. Our colleagues from Psychology, the Centre of Enzyme Innovation and Mathematics have three papers featured in the list with topics of cat-human communications (ranked 35), the engineering of multiple enzyme systems (ranked 39) and how to make a perfect espresso (ranked 55) respectively. This is not the first year Portsmouth has featured in this list but it is the first time we’ve had three papers in one year. These papers demonstrate our growing academic reputations in such emerging areas of excellence across the University and our ability to conduct impactful research. Congratulations to my colleagues on this achievement and more of the same please!