Broadcast: News items

Climate Coffee with Provost Rachel Mills (second from right)

This week (15 November) the Vice-Chancellor David Maguire wrote to all staff. You can read the email in full below:

Dear colleague,

It was a real pleasure to speak to and meet so many staff last week.
 
Some of you attended my introductory open staff forum on Friday. While we had only half an hour this time, I was impressed with your engaging questions, which covered a wide range of issues.
 
I know some were unable to attend and others had technical issues getting in to the webinar, so we will be sharing a recording of the session this week, just as soon as it has been captioned.
 
I won’t rehearse everything I said but I did spend some time talking about my five priorities and it is worth repeating these here.
 
First, the Governance Effectiveness Review. While I appreciate this might seem rather arcane, it’s actually a very beneficial piece of work that will help our governing bodies - and all of us - work better together in service of the University.
 
Size and Shape should be familiar to all of you and I encourage you to read the Provost Rachel Mills’ recent update on this. Good progress is being made and Rachel and I will say more about this at the start of next month.
 
I also spoke about the Education and Research Investment Programme. This pulls together a large piece of work that has been taking place in recent months, to decide upon priority investments for the University.
 
My other two priorities are addressing issues arising out of the National Student Survey, to improve the student experience, and enhancing the Sussex community. The latter is an important piece of work to address some of the areas of past conflict, but more importantly to bring us together to address the significant issues of the day. This will require action on all our parts.
 
Understanding where this University has come from is invaluable in enabling us to move forward. I was privileged last week to be able to meet staff who have worked at the University for 20, 30 or 40 years. These long service lunches have been on hold for a while, so many people (87) were recognised! I very much enjoyed meeting these colleagues and hearing about how the University has changed over the years. The irony was that I, the person with the shortest service and with the most to learn, was acknowledging those with years of exemplary contribution and great knowledge about Sussex.
 
I also had the opportunity to meet some other staff in person at one of the ‘climate coffee’ events organised by the sustainability team. It was great to hear about their plans for living sustainably and to grow awareness of climate change and action.

Meanwhile, the Provost and I visited the Business School to meet staff and students and learn about their thoughts on working and studying at the University. We hope to get around other Schools and Divisions in the coming weeks and months.
 
Have a great week.

David