Interim Vice-Chancellor, David Maguire

This week (6 December) the Vice-Chancellor David Maguire wrote to all staff. You can read the email in full below:

Dear colleague,

As we enter the final week of teaching, it is natural to reflect on another eventful term.

Our return to in-person teaching has been a huge success. More than 95 per cent of on-campus teaching sessions over the Autumn term were timetabled as being in-person, some of which were held in hybrid format. Last-minute changes may mean the exact proportion was slightly different but, nevertheless, this is a fantastic achievement. I know that students have appreciated it greatly.

This has been aided by our collective vaccination efforts where rates in our community are in excess of the population at large. Last week we held our vaccination prize draw and randomly selected 10 double-vaccinated students to each receive a prize of £5,000. Congratulations to the winners and thank you to everybody in our community for everything you are doing to keep each other safe. This is even more important given the rise of the Omicron variant – we continue to respond to the latest guidance, so please do continue to read the communications. As an extra precaution a number of non-essential events are now being moved online-only, and some are being cancelled.

In the course of the past few weeks, I have been visiting many Schools within the University to meet staff and students. Thank you to everyone for making me feel so welcome and for giving your honest reflections on life at Sussex. The overwhelming sense is one of expert, committed and passionate people who enjoy their work and are doing their very best to advance education and research within their subject area. There are also some things I have taken away for UEG to work on in service of our excellent Schools and directorates.

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting a selection of our hard-working MPs in parliament. To a person they are all enthusiastic supporters of the University of Sussex and the spoke highly of the contributions we make to the region directly and indirectly through our education, knowledge exchange and research. Some were surprised to learn that the University adds around £350m to the regional economy and supports something like 5,000 jobs each year.

Whilst it was regrettable that we had three days of industrial action last week, I am thankful to all staff – both those striking and those not – for the respectful approach taken. This isn’t easy – for everyone involved – and I do hope that resolutions can be found at the earliest opportunity so that our staff and students can continue to experience the very best of Sussex next year.

We should also welcome the good progress we have made with the Size and Shape programme. You will all have been invited to a meeting in your School or Division this week, where you will be given greater clarity about the vision for your part of the University. Provost Rachel Mills and I will also be speaking about this at the UEG Open Forum on Monday afternoon. If you are reading this on Monday morning, you can still book a place to attend.

As a reminder, the over-riding goal of the programme has been to enable the University to invest in areas of excellence, strength and potential. We have these all across many parts of the University, but I was particularly pleased to see last week that Sussex is to lead a new £12 million research centre for inclusive trade policy.

This expands the vital work of the UK Trade Policy Observatory in our Business School, which has been the UK’s foremost source of expertise and analysis on trade since the Brexit referendum in 2016. With this considerable backing from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), its impact will surely grow further.

I wish you all the best for the week ahead – and for teaching staff, that the last few days of formal teaching in 2021 go well. With Omicron prevalent in the UK do please take extra precautions to look after everyone in our community.

Warm regards,
 
David
Interim Vice-Chancellor