Broadcast: News items

Today (Friday 11 September), the Vice-Chancellor Adam Tickell updated all staff, in his regular View from the VC email. You can read the full View from the VC below.

With just a week to go until our extended welcome weekend, I have been on campus again this week to oversee final preparations.

With most of us having worked from home for the majority of the past six months, it is understandable that there is some trepidation upon returning to campus. Within minutes of stepping back onto the site, however, we hope those concerns will soon dissipate. I have been on campus a lot over the past few weeks and the huge amount of detailed work that has taken place to ready the fabric of our estate for reopening is evident everywhere you look, from the physical signage on walkways and doors, to the sanitising stations situated across campus and new layouts for teaching rooms and lecture theatres. There are of course many less visible but equally important measures besides.

Our aim for the next few weeks is to give all staff a really clear picture of what campus is like, how things are working and what is expected of you when you do return, whether that is later this month or early next year. To that end, we will soon be sharing with you more new information such as a H&S guide on teaching spaces, details on the type of categories and control measures that have been put in place in relation to risk assessment and induction material, such as a video. I hope that this information, along with the other material that has been provided, will enable you to return with confidence.

You will be familiar by now I’m sure with the ‘Autumn 2020’ web pages; these continue to be the primary source of up-to-date information about our work around Covid-19 and the return to campus. Please do refamiliarise yourself with these pages by going to the homepage for staff and, in the top-left-hand corner, you will see a box marked up clearly as Autumn 2020. You may also find it useful to see what information we are providing to students, via the Student Hub, to help you answer any queries they may have.

If you have outstanding questions, I encourage you to join the final ‘return to campus’ webinar on Monday, where you can hear from key colleagues involved in campus reopening and ask any questions. Nearly 1,000 colleagues will have taken part in one of the five webinars. You can view a recording and questions and answers from those sessions on the website.

We will also be sharing information shortly about our track and trace system, building opening plans and other pieces of key information that are important to share with you.

As we have ever since Covid-19 entered our lives, we are continuing to adapt our approach in line with the latest guidance and advice from the government and official bodies. Just this week, we are adjusting our approach to student housing to further minimise interaction between different students based on new advice from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). Yesterday, the Department for Education issued specific guidance to universities and I’m pleased to say that the University is already compliant.

Looking after the mental health of both students and staff will be essential over the coming months. The shift to remote learning when lockdown happened was an important achievement in the context of what we faced at the time and one that some, but not all, schools also managed well. However, we do recognise that learning through a screen – particularly when social activities are being curtailed – is not a full substitute for in person learning and doesn’t allow students to engage in the same ways with both their fellow students and with staff. This will be particularly true for students in their first year of study. This is why we are retaining blended learning this autumn and why we have spent so much time and effort over the summer ensuring that the campus can be as safe as possible.

Although I recognise that there are some staff who have underlying conditions which preclude face to face teaching, we are asking other staff in essential roles (which includes those delivering face to face teaching/support for students) to return at this time to help us to provide the best possible experience for our students, at what is a very challenging time for us all and for the institution. The importance of this is strongly emphasised by both SAGE and the DfE’s guidance.

Until 21 September and then immediately after, all our efforts are focused on the safe return to campus for some of our staff and many of our students. In order to ensure everybody’s health and safety, this will be nowhere close to full occupancy and, at any one time, only a fraction of the usual numbers will be on site. This and the extensive measures we have put in place, above and beyond published guidelines, are in line with our health and safety-first approach.

As you can imagine, we are also listening closely to noises out of the government relating to Brexit. While Covid-19 has been the clear and present danger, we ignore Brexit at our peril. As we get closer to the end of the transition period, on 31 December, we should begin to get more clarity over what sort of Brexit we face. We will of course remind you where you can find all our existing Brexit information and guidance, as well as keep you up-to-date as things develop. There also will be plenty of opportunities to engage with the issues that will inevitably arise from this.

Being prudent and prepared is the best antidote to uncertainty. It was with these principles in mind that we decided to open a voluntary severance scheme over the summer. The process for deciding upon applications has now concluded and you may have seen that we have now reported on the final outcomes of the scheme. While we are saying goodbye to many valued colleagues, I would like to thank everybody who has engaged positively with the scheme. The savings we have achieved are helpful as we aim to keep the University on a sustainable financial footing.

Alongside, we continue to look for ways to reduce to spending in other areas of the University. If you have any ideas, please do sign up for one of our staff engagement sessions, which offer you a very direct way of influencing our finances. Some really interesting thoughts have already come out of the sessions so far and colleagues will be exploring which of these we should take further.

Finally, while it can be difficult to lift our eyes from the pressing, daily challenges, it is important that we do find time to step back to observe the bigger picture and sketch out where we go from here. A great example is coming up for all colleagues involved in teaching and learning, who are invited to take part in our next Pedagogic Revolution event, led by Kelly Coate and Claire Smith. This will take place almost exactly a year after the initiative to reimagine our approach to education was launched. If you received an invite, please do attend if at all possible – our greatest strength comes from our collective energy, will and brainpower. I know that it will be another great event with the potential for truly transformative outcomes.