Broadcast: News items

Rachel Mills, Provost

Today (Thursday 2 September), the University's Provost, Rachel Mills, wrote to all staff with an update. You can read the message in full below.

Dear colleague,

I was last in touch with you on my first day working at Sussex. I now feel like a full member of the Sussex community thanks to the warm welcome from staff on campus and in online meetings. I look forward to meeting our student community in the next weeks as we approach the start of term and the new academic year.

I have taken over leadership of the Size and Shape programme and, over the past month, have immersed myself in understanding this portfolio of work, the scope and vision for the various projects and the enormous amount of progress that has happened this summer. I would particularly like to thank Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and Enterprise, Keith Jones, who has been leading the programme over the summer and remains a key member of the Programme Board.

I have already met with Senators this month, in an informal meeting, to discuss how we take forward the proposal for a Senate Working Group on Size and Shape and refine our academic vision. I am also very keen that we continue to regularly engage with the whole community on the progress of the Size and Shape Programme and, today, I want to share with you some important upcoming dates.

I’d like to meet with staff from across the University to provide an update, so, on 17 September, I will be holding an open forum for all staff, where I will talk in more detail about the programme and answer your questions. You will be sent an invite for this shortly.

Then, in early October, your Head of School or Divisional Director will be holding a session for all staff in your part of the University. At these sessions, we expect to be able to share the details of what the Size and Shape programme means for your School or Division.

I strongly encourage you to attend both of these meetings, if at all possible.

We have performed well in student recruitment this summer and I would like to thank all of the teams that made this happen – I was very impressed with our slick operations when I visited the Shawcross Clearing Hub, where our volunteers were enthusiastically taking phone calls from prospective students and filling our courses across all of our Schools.

There is, however, significant variance across different disciplines, with some areas experiencing significant upturn and the pressure of resources that this brings, while other areas are falling short of student number targets. While our recruitment position is welcome, and we are in a better position than we might have been, the underlying structural challenges and impacts on workloads that we need to address remain.

We are also, as you know, operating in an environment of rising costs, including pensions and pay, and falling real-term value of tuition fees. Put simply, our expenditure is rising faster than our income, projected out over the next few years. This income is invested in our people but also our estate and infrastructure, which desperately needs an uptick in investment, and upgrading for future success in research and education delivery.

Delivering an outstanding experience for our students is at the heart of our academic vision for Sussex 2025. Never has this been such an imperative for our institution – the students that join us later this month have had extraordinary disruption to their lives and studies and this next year is key for recovery from the pandemic.

We need to get the resource and infrastructure right in each area to deliver an outstanding student experience. The Size and Shape programme puts us back on course to deliver this and the approach we are taking will ultimately become part of our annual business planning cycle of fine tuning our investment and budgets to ensure academic excellence across our research and education portfolios.

As we progress with the Size and Shape programme, I want to reiterate that we are absolutely committed to exploring all avenues for new ways of working across our Schools, delivering savings from improved procurement processes and exploring a range of voluntary means for reducing our salary costs. I will talk more about this at the open forum later this month.

Thank you again to the many people who have given me such a warm welcome to Sussex so far, and I look forward to speaking with many of you (and hopefully more in person) as we begin the new academic year.

Best wishes,
Rachel