FOI REQUEST
From: James Murphy
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2019 at 17:05
Subject: Freedom of Information request - Copies of periodic communications between the Vice-Chancellor and staff
To: FOI requests at University of Sheffield
Dear University of Sheffield,
I am writing to request copies of periodic communications between the Vice-Chancellor of your institution and all staff working at the University. These circulars might be sent by email and/or placed on the university intranet and may be described as Vice Chancellor’s Updates or something similar. Could you please provide all such communications for the last 5 years or as long as you have recorded if this is shorter?
Best wishes,
James Murphy
University of Sheffield response:
Please find below communications from our President and Vice-Chancellor to all staff between 27 June 2014 and 5 September 2019. These were sent to staff via email and are also published on our staff web pages.
Note: The below communications include those from our current President and Vice- Chancellor, Professor Koen Lamberts as well as from our previous President and Vice- Chancellor, Professor Sir Keith Burnett.
5 September 2019
Our vision for Sheffield - your invitation to join the conversation
Dear colleague
Earlier this summer, I emailed you about my intention to hold a University-wide dialogue about our future direction. I’m pleased to invite you to a series of town-hall style sessions where we can discuss the direction we want to take. Conversations at these sessions will be centred around a Vision Green Paper, which I have developed following my meetings with all University departments, with support from colleagues on the University Executive Board (UEB) and their teams. The sessions will give you the opportunity to provide feedback on the proposals in the paper.
The sessions are open to all staff and I would encourage everyone to attend. The majority of sessions will be themed around the four priorities set out in the Vision Green Paper. There will also be a number of broader sessions. Alongside the town-hall events, we will have a digital ideas board called Ideascale, which allows you to add your own ideas and comment on proposals. Whether or not you attend the sessions, please use this as another way to join the conversation with your colleagues.
From these conversations we will develop a new vision and strategy for the University.
To read the Vision Green Paper and to book a session visit: www.sheffield.ac.uk/staff/vision- green-paper
I sincerely hope you will be able to contribute to this important conversation.
With best wishes
Koen Lamberts
President and Vice-Chancellor
28 August 2019
Message from the President and Vice-Chancellor – Brexit
Dear colleague,
Since I last wrote to you about Brexit, we have a new Prime Minister who has said that the UK will leave the EU on 31 October this year, with or without a deal. However, there is still a lot of uncertainty about what will happen next and there are many unanswered questions about the UK’s future relationship with the EU.
I want to reassure you that we are continuing to manage risks surrounding a number of different Brexit scenarios, including no deal. Our Brexit Coordination Group, chaired by Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Gill Valentine, has been carefully assessing and taking proactive steps to help mitigate the impact of Brexit on our University, staff and students and this work will continue as a priority over the coming weeks.
We are also continuing to work hard to support anyone who has any questions or concerns about the implications of Brexit. If you are a non-UK EU member of staff, it is important you apply for the EU Settlement Scheme to ensure you retain your existing rights to work and study in the UK and access benefits and public services. If you have not already applied, our HR team can support you through the process. It is free to submit an application and the scheme covers all EU, non-EU EEA and Swiss citizens and their families living in the UK before it leaves the EU. In the event of no deal, applicants and their families would need to be living in the UK by 31 October 2019 and the deadline for applying would be 31 December 2020. If the UK leaves the EU with a deal, the deadline for applying would be 30 June 2021.
If you would like advice, our HR team is continuing to offer telephone appointments with immigration specialists Eversheds Sutherland. We are also hosting drop-in sessions for staff who need access to an Android device to apply for the EU Settlement Scheme. If you would like to make an appointment for either of these, please email [email protected]
For further information about the support available, please visit our Information for non-UK EU staff pages.
We are also continuing to update our Brexit Advice FAQs as more information becomes available from the government.
Please take some time to read these pages for the latest news and advice. You can also contact us with any questions or concerns via [email protected]
Our University is a truly international community and we are extremely privileged that staff and students from across the world choose to make Sheffield their home. I know that many of you will have concerns about what Brexit will mean for our University, but I want to assure you that our global outlook will remain the same.
Our outstanding research, excellent teaching and professional services are only made possible because we are a community of international talent. Thank you once again for your contribution to our University. I will continue to keep you updated.
Best wishes,
Professor Koen Lamberts
President and Vice-Chancellor
Staff survey activity update: July 2019
Dear colleague
On 4 June 2019, the University Executive Board (UEB) met to discuss progress with work related to the 2018 Staff Survey. You may remember I previously shared with you three priority areas for development that we had identified from the results – leadership and strategic direction; communications; and addressing the differences between responses from academic and professional colleagues.
Below is a summary of what we have been doing to address your feedback in these areas, as well as suggestions for future activity.
Faculty vice-presidents have also provided information about actions in their faculties and departments, and we will share best practice examples in future updates. I hope that you will have seen your own department’s results and had an opportunity to reflect on what they mean to you, and where you would like to see change.
Thank you once again for your useful and honest feedback. I will continue to keep you updated on activities and progress.
With kind regards,
Koen Lamberts
President and Vice-Chancellor
11 July 2019
Have your say on LGBT+ inclusion
Dear colleague,
Our University is a proud member of Stonewall and earlier this year we were recognised in the top 100 workplaces for lesbian, gay, bi and transgender (LGBT+) equality for the sixth year running.
To help us identify where we are doing well, and the areas where we need to do more work, we complete Stonewall's Workplace Equality Index - an annual benchmarking exercise.
As part of this, we invite all colleagues to fill in a survey seeking views about how the University supports LGBT+ equality.
The survey takes less than five minutes to complete and is open to all staff. The information you provide is entirely anonymous. It will go directly to Stonewall's workplace team and only aggregated scores will be shared with the University.
Last year we had a fantastic response to the survey, and we would like to encourage as many people as possible to have their say this year.
Take the survey You will need to enter our unique code: 1699. The survey closes on Friday 1 November 2019.
By fostering openness and increasing understanding we can support our LGBT+ staff and students, tackle discrimination, work towards removing barriers, stigmas and prejudices, and create a truly LGBT+ inclusive university. Your feedback will help us in this aim.
With best wishes
Professor Koen Lamberts
President and Vice-Chancellor
Professor Gill Valentine
Provost and Deputy Vice-President
Senior LGBT+ Champion
27 June 2019
Good luck Big Walkers!
President and Vice-Chancellor, Professor Koen Lamberts, wishes everyone taking part in the Big Walk the best of luck.
Dear colleague,
After months of planning – and training – tomorrow sees hundreds of staff, students, alumni and friends coming together to walk 23 or 37 miles in the Peak District for our annual Big Walk challenge. This year, we are fundraising to support Sheffield Scholarships.
I would like to wish everyone taking part in the walk the best of luck for the day.
Equality of opportunity
The Big Walk 2019 is supporting scholarships here at the University of Sheffield. We are passionate about encouraging young people to aim higher and fulfil their potential. Scholarships help ensure that all students have the opportunity to study here regardless of their financial or personal circumstances.
By getting involved in the Big Walk in whatever way you are able, you are playing your part in helping more students to experience a Sheffield education.
Support your colleagues If you are not able to take part, you can still support your colleagues by making a donation towards this important cause – simply follow the link below. Please also follow their progress and send messages of support via the University’s social media channels, including the #TUOSBigWalk hashtag.
Once again, best of luck to everyone taking part in tomorrow’s Big Walk.
Many thanks,
Koen Lamberts
20 June 2019
Dispute over the sector-wide USS pension scheme
President and Vice-Chancellor, Professor Koen Lamberts, provides an update on the ongoing dispute over the sector-wide USS pension scheme and reflects on last year's industrial action.
Dear colleagues
"I am writing regarding the ongoing dispute over the sector-wide USS pension scheme and the industrial action from last year.
"Unfortunately, as the USS Trustee seeks to conclude a further valuation of the scheme, some of the long-term issues with USS that led to the industrial action remain unresolved.
"Locally, we are working constructively with our trade union representatives to bring about the changes we all seek, to secure a high-quality pension scheme for the long term with sustainable contribution rates. In doing so, we will jointly seek to explore all possible options on the matter, challenging USS (and other parties, where appropriate) to find a mutually acceptable resolution and avoid future industrial action. We believe that by working together we have the best chance of effecting the changes we all see as both necessary and sensible.
"I would like to acknowledge the work of the local UCU branch in challenging consistently the approach taken by the USS Trustee since the introduction of a revised approach to scheme valuations in 2014. The Joint Expert Panel, formed as a means to suspend the industrial action, has confirmed the validity of the concerns expressed by our local branch executive regarding several key elements of USS’ valuation methodology and their work has helped to inform the employers’ collective views on USS. Across the sector, UCU and employers are now much more closely aligned in terms of their aims for USS, and locally the excellent work of our joint USS Valuation Working Group has been at the forefront of the effort to find a sustainable outcome for USS. "Although I was not in Sheffield at the time, I would like to reflect on the industrial action from last year. My University Executive Board colleagues and I understand that staff only take industrial action as a last resort, having exhausted all other avenues, and that no one wants to disrupt students' education. We acknowledge the hurt caused by the dispute, and regret that collaborative work with our UCU colleagues at the time was not sufficient to avoid the action.
"We appreciate the efforts of all members of the University to try to maintain positive relations across campus during the industrial action, and we acknowledge everyone’s continued contribution since the action ceased.
"As is the norm, pay was withheld from those who were taking strike action. As agreed with UCU and the Students’ Union during the action, we have redirected the pay deductions to activities and plans to better support our students across the University. Details of these projects can be found here.
"Since the industrial action has been suspended, we have been working closely with UCU colleagues to secure an acceptable resolution. However, it is possible that we will face more action if we cannot find a solution that works for all parties. At a national level, UCU have recently written to a number of employers, including our University, in anticipation of a potential further ballot on industrial action over USS. Locally, we will continue to work in partnership with UCU and other colleagues towards achieving the right outcomes for USS, in the hope that we can avoid further disruption to our students’ education."
Yours sincerely,
Professor Koen Lamberts
President and Vice-Chancellor
20 June 2019
Your vision for Sheffield
President and Vice-Chancellor, Professor Koen Lamberts, introduces plans for a university-wide discussion about our future direction.
Dear colleague,
"Since I started at the University in November, I have visited almost every department and spent time talking and listening to colleagues and students. I have also met with alumni and with many of the University’s key partners, both in the UK and abroad. I want to thank everyone for taking the time to meet with me and for being so honest and open. You have really helped me understand the University better. "I have now developed a proposal for the future direction of the University, with the support of my colleagues in the University Executive Board (UEB) and their teams. The proposal sets out a vision and strategy for the University that is aligned with our values. It is important to me that we now have a university-wide discussion about this, with the aim of seeking your feedback, ideas and suggestions, in the hope that we will be able to reach agreement on the direction to take.
"We will be holding a number of town hall sessions in October and November, where you can share your thoughts. There will also be other opportunities to take part in the discussion. I will share the proposal with you in the summer. At that time, we will also be able to provide further details of how you can get involved.
"I sincerely hope you will contribute and play a part in shaping our University’s future."
With best wishes,
Koen Lamberts, President and Vice-Chancellor
30 April 2019
Tackling the great global challenges of our time
Today we officially launch our four new flagship research institutes. Thank you to everyone who has worked so hard to bring them to life. President and Vice-Chancellor
Professor Koen Lamberts explains how the flagships provide an opportunity for impact across the University and how you can contribute your expertise.
Dear colleague
I am pleased to announce that today we officially launch our four new flagship research institutes:
Energy Institute at the University of Sheffield
Neuroscience Institute at the University of Sheffield
Healthy Lifespan Institute at the University of Sheffield
Institute for Sustainable Food at the University of Sheffield
You will hopefully have seen previous communications from our Vice-President for Research and Innovation, Professor Dave Petley, outlining our vision and plans for the new flagships. I would like to thank Dave and everyone involved for their hard work in bringing them to life. So far, the four flagships involve nearly 300 researchers from across the University. They offer a truly multidisciplinary approach and we are keen to get even more colleagues involved. I hope you will see the flagships as an invitation to consider how your own expertise might contribute to research in these four important areas.
The flagships provide an opportunity to ensure greater impact from and visibility for our world- leading research. Creating a bold focal point for some of our key strengths will allow us to talk differently about the research we do and to be more confident about the world-leading university we are. I hope the flagships will have a positive and invigorating impact across the University, including for areas of research that are not easily aligned with them. It is our intention to launch a second wave of flagship research institutes next year.
We can now start conversations with key stakeholders, funders and business partners to ensure the external support that will be essential for success. And within the University, we will be offering resources and support. We are also working towards individual launches tailored to specific stakeholders and objectives, at which time we will see more high-profile external communications.
If you would like to discuss how you can get involved, or if you have any questions, please email [email protected] or get in touch with me directly at [email protected]
With best wishes,
Koen Lamberts
President and Vice-Chancellor
18 April 2019
Message from the President and Vice-Chancellor - Brexit
Dear colleague,
I wanted to write to update you on Brexit following the special meeting of the European Council last week. The current position is that the UK is due to leave the EU by 31 October 2019, or earlier if the government's withdrawal agreement is approved. However, there is still a lot of uncertainty surrounding Brexit and the important work to identify and manage the potential impact of Brexit on our University will continue as a priority.
As you know, our University's Brexit Coordination Group, led by our Provost and Deputy Vice- Chancellor Professor Gill Valentine, has been carefully planning and taking action to mitigate the impact of different Brexit scenarios on a number of areas - including on current and prospective staff and students, student exchange opportunities, research collaborations, the procurement of goods and services, and travel. This group has been meeting regularly, and will continue its work over the coming months, to ensure we remain in a strong position to respond to developments as and when decisions are made by the government. We will keep you updated on this ongoing work.
We will also continue to work hard to support you and answer any questions or concerns you may have about the impact of Brexit. Last week the University held a legal briefing session, led by immigration experts from Eversheds Sutherland, with advice about the EU Settlement Scheme. If you are a non-UK EU member of staff, applying for the EU Settlement Scheme is the way to ensure you have ongoing legal status to live and work in the UK after Brexit. If you were unable to attend the briefing session, a recording is available on our international staff web pages.
Our HR team is also offering a legal helpline hosted by immigration specialists and drop-in sessions for staff to use an Android device if they wish to apply for the EU Settlement Scheme. If you would like to make an appointment for either of these, please email [email protected]
Our Brexit Advice FAQs have been updated with the latest information, including on Erasmus+, and will continue to be updated in the coming weeks and months. You can also contact us with any questions or concerns via [email protected]
As I have said before, whatever happens with Brexit, our University's international outlook will not change. We are proud to be a welcoming home for staff and students from all over the world and are committed to forging research collaborations with partners across the globe to solve the most pressing challenges facing society today. It is important we continue to support each other.
Thank you once again for your commitment to our University. I will continue to keep you updated.
Professor Koen Lamberts
President and Vice-Chancellor
25 March 2019
University fundraising for scholarships
President and Vice-Chancellor, Professor Koen Lamberts, encourages staff, students and alumni to fundraise for scholarships.
"Our students are at the heart of everything we do, and I am passionate about ensuring that they receive the highest quality education and the best possible experience during their time here. However, the reality is that for some bright students, going to university seems out of reach. "I recently met with a group of students who receive donor-funded scholarships at Sheffield. Hearing their stories highlighted to me the difference receiving financial support can make. Scholarships open the doors of the University to students from lower-income and disadvantaged backgrounds and mean they can have the full Sheffield experience once they are here. Last year we received £1 million in donations and were able to award 251 new scholarships. We would like to award more.
"I am now encouraging everyone in the University community - staff, students and alumni - to get involved and help ensure more bright students have the opportunity to study at Sheffield. I have been so impressed by the breadth of fundraising that takes place here and I hope you will join me in supporting this fantastic cause in whatever way you can."
Professor Koen Lamberts
President and Vice-Chancellor
16 January 2019
Message from the President and Vice-Chancellor - Brexit
Dear colleague,
Last night the House of Commons voted to reject the government's draft Brexit withdrawal agreement. We expect further decisions from the government and parliament, and will provide further information as the situation becomes clearer. I know this is an unsettling time for many of you and you are likely to have many questions about what happens now and what this means for you. As a University, I want to assure you that we will work to support you.
Our University is and will remain a welcoming home of global scholarship and we are deeply proud of our diverse community, which includes international staff and students from more than 140 countries around the world. Whatever the outcome of Brexit, people at our University will be affected in different ways and it is important that we support each other and are mindful of how our colleagues and students might be feeling.
As a University we are continuing to put together plans to mitigate the impact of different Brexit outcomes, including the possibility of a 'no deal' scenario, on areas such as the residence status of staff and students, mobility and travel, and the status of research contracts. Our Brexit Advice web pages will continue to be updated with the latest information as more details become available.
If you have any questions related to Brexit, you can also email [email protected]
Thank you for your commitment and the valuable contribution you make to our University. Professor Koen Lamberts
President and Vice-Chancellor
1 November 2018
Meet our new President and Vice-Chancellor
Welcome to Professor Koen Lamberts who joins us today as our new President and Vice- Chancellor. Here he tells us about his plans for his first few months and what impresses him about the University.
Dear colleagues
"Today is my first official day as President and Vice-Chancellor at the University of Sheffield. Thank you to everyone I have had the chance to meet so far for being so welcoming.
"The many colleagues I have met over the summer have helped bring me up to speed on the fantastic work taking place across the University. I have been impressed with the engagement and commitment of the people I have met, and I really look forward to working with all of you.
"Collegial working is very important to me. By working together, we can ensure that we benefit collectively from the many opportunities that lie ahead and develop better solutions to the challenges we face. My priority now is to meet with and hear the views of as many of you as possible. In my first few months I plan to visit every department in the University. I hope this will give us the opportunity to have open discussions about your priorities, ideas and suggestions for the future of the University, and about any concerns you may have. In addition to personal meetings, I will also share regular updates about key decisions and initiatives, which I hope you will find useful.
"I am passionately committed to supporting our students. I will have regular meetings with our Students’ Union sabbatical officers and I will seek to engage actively and openly with our student community.
"I feel proud and privileged to have been appointed to Sheffield. It is a terrific university with great achievements and a great future. Among the many things that impressed me about the University are our strongly held values, from speaking fearlessly and openly about the benefits of international scholarship to putting our role as a civic university at the heart of everything we do. I am committed to those values, and I will do my best to make sure that they continue to guide and inspire us. "I would like to thank both Professor Sir Keith Burnett and Professor Gill Valentine for providing great leadership to the organisation over the past decade and months. I look forward to building on their work to further enhance Sheffield's strengths as a genuinely world-leading university."
Very best wishes,
Professor Koen Lamberts
President and Vice-Chancellor
17 August 2018
Update from the President & Vice-Chancellor: Brexit
Dear colleague,
I’m sure that you will be concerned, as I am, about potential developments in our future relations with the European Union. This is something that will have such profound implications for us all. We have been living with uncertainties which have a significant impact on our work and lives for some time, and I know it has caused serious distress for many of you and your families.
I had hoped that by now we would have a better idea of the outcome of the negotiations between the UK government and the EU, but things are still very uncertain. Now there is even serious consideration of a No Deal scenario, which would result in the UK leaving the EU in March next year.
As a University, we are still fervently hoping that the UK and EU will be able to come to an agreement which will preserve crucial aspects of UK universities, including the residency and mobility of staff and students and the ease of collaboration on research that is vital to society in the UK and around the world. However, we also recognise that there is a possibility that an agreement may not be reached.
For this reason, I wanted to let you know that we are working with colleagues across the Higher Education sector to urgently seek clarification and advice from the government on the many areas of activity which may be affected, while understanding that at this time there are only very limited answers to these questions. We understand that the UK government will be issuing guidance on a range of issues next week, including EU citizens in the UK, Horizon 2020 and Erasmus.
We will continue to play our part in making all preparations which are within our power and our Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Gill Valentine is leading work in this area, liaising closely with our colleagues nationally. We are also impressing on politicians and civil servants the detailed consequences of failing to reach an agreement on all aspects of our work and the pressing need to mitigate the consequences for the UK's internationally-respected universities.
It is my sincere hope that this work will be merely a prudent precaution and that, in the event of Brexit, the UK and EU will be able to secure an agreement which preserves as much as possible of our precious work and international community. We are right, though, to plan ahead and I wanted to assure you that we will not neglect this important duty.
On another subject, I would also like to thank all colleagues who have been working hard on admissions since the A Level results were announced this week. Early feedback is very positive and your efforts are much appreciated. Thank you all.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett FRS
President and Vice-Chancellor
16 July 2018
Graduation update from the President and Vice-Chancellor
Dear colleague,
This week will be the last time I shall be on the stage at the Octagon shaking hands with our graduating students. This is an emotional experience and I shall miss seeing the serried ranks of proud supporters surrounding the students in the hall.
I always feel that the University is an important place, but never more than when I see the visible pride, often tinged with relief, of the people who have supported our students in their time at Sheffield.
If you have been to a graduation ceremony, you will know that I take the opportunity to thank all of you for the way you have made their student careers possible. Well, in fact, I only get the chance to thank the members of academic staff on the platform so, before I thank them again, let me make clear that when I think of the University I really think of all of my colleagues here at Sheffield.
When my very dear friend Bill Phillips won the Nobel Prize, he told me that one of the most important things for him was the pride that everyone at his institution could take in the award. He truly meant this. The fact that the person who kept his office clean took explicit pride in his achievement, and told him so in person, was precious to him.
So I truly hope that all of our staff – each and every one of you, my dear colleagues – will take pride in the achievements of our students and their teachers. When I think of our University I certainly think of the cleaners who have kept this place spotless for us all. I think of the staff across the residences who run an award-winning show. I think of the security staff, recently given the highest accolade, keeping our students safe on their journeys around the campus and being on the front line during occasional moments of personal crisis.
I think of our award-winning library, which is a key element of so much of their study. I think of the estates department who keep so many aspects of this great place running.
I think of the counsellors and the doctors, the student advisors. I think of CiCS, our learning technologists and the staff that keep our critical infrastructure running.
In fact, there are so many aspects of our University that I have seen working. I suspect I have seen more than many and how much dedication it takes to make our University what it is. I should stop or this will be too long. Whatever role you play at the University of Sheffield, thank you.
But I do come back to thanking our teachers. Forgive an old teacher for giving them an extra dose of gratitude, because this place cannot be what it is without its scholars. Scholars who learn new things about the world and teach our students about them.
Aristotle said that the true test of our need to learn is to teach. That is the truth.
We have heard some strange and distorted views on teaching of late, mostly driven by the view that universities can be organised according to market forces. This is a view of humanity stripped of the real forces that matter.
These are the values that drive the vocation of those who learn and teach. It is the drive to understand the world in all of its exquisite complexity and beauty. To be able to understand it so that the insights can be passed on to future generations. That it can be used in so many ways to make our society – yes, I’m going to say it – a civilisation.
Of late we have had a government that believes that civilisation can be built using a market, or is it a meerkat, approach to almost every aspect of our public realm – from trains to power to water. I have never believed this was anything but an ill-conceived, badly-implemented right- wing ideology. I could not believe it would be used on our beloved universities, but it was.
It was, therefore, a comfort to read in the House of Lords report on the funding of Higher Education that the opposition to such a view – an opposition this whole University, both staff and students, has steadily put forward – is entirely correct. We were right to think that higher tuition fees would lead to new problems and perverse outcomes. That it will be a great burden on students now and in the future. That it would not lead to a true market in the provision of Higher Education. It never could and never will.
It was an even greater blessing to hear that our own approach to teaching is strongly endorsed by the most rigorous independent and international ranking system available, produced by the Times Higher Education. We are listed in the top ten of UK institutions for teaching, equally placed with one of the other places I have
taught, the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine. Sheffield teachers, be proud!
You should also be confident that Sheffield cannot be fairly accused of dropping its standards in the degrees it awards. I have personally looked at the examination papers from Sheffield over the years and can tell you we have kept the extraordinary standards of a Sheffield degree along with the classifications we award.
So in this Graduation Week, take pleasure in all that you have done to make this the great University it really is. I have never been prouder of the place I have worked in.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE FRS FLSW
President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield
21 February 2018
Update from the President and Vice-Chancellor
Dear colleagues,
Many staff have expressed to me their deep concern about strike action planned for tomorrow regarding the proposed changes to the USS pension scheme, and their desire to avoid a protracted dispute. The University is also keen to avoid a dispute if at all possible and I and other colleagues have spoken to UUK directly in an effort to seek a solution.
The position of our University and Council is that we understand change is necessary to ensure pensions remain sustainable and affordable. Having said that, the University has always sought to ensure any changes extend only to what is necessary to achieve this aim.
There has been much comment on this issue in the media and I recognise there are concerns regarding the valuation underpinning the current proposals for change. We have been in contact with UUK again today to seek clarity over the specific points being raised and are awaiting a response.
It is important that we all have confidence in the valuation process and we are keen to check this is the case. The University Council's position is that the scheme assumptions should be prudent but not unduly pessimistic. I will continue to represent this approach for necessary and reasonable change only. Even at this late stage we urge national representatives on both sides to return to talks so an agreed solution can be found, delivering a high-quality and sustainable pension scheme for the sector. As you would expect, if industrial action does take place, we are committed to minimise the impact on our students but we will continue to work with all concerned for a positive solution.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett FRS
President and Vice-Chancellor
15 February 2018
Staff update from the President and Vice-Chancellor
Dear colleague,
I would like to start this message by thanking all of those who have written to me following the news of my retirement. It has been very humbling to hear from my colleagues and it has certainly made me reflect again on what our University stands for and how this has driven me over the years in Sheffield.
Many of you will have heard me talk about the historic poster displayed in Sheffield's factories which made the case for the establishment of a university which would be 'for the people'. I have found this the most moving of documents because, in it, I have seen the hopes and efforts of those who came before us.
One of the people I particularly relate to is the young Welsh scientist and the Principal of Firth College, John Viriamu Jones, who later went on to found Cardiff University. Like me, he studied physics at Oxford. But Sheffield was where it began and where he made a passionate case for a broad and excellent education that made a difference to the lives of people in this industrial city. He imagined a university where students would not only learn mathematics, but where teachers would be trained and where medical research would be crucial to improving the health of local people.
Sadly Viriamu Jones never saw the university he had worked so hard to establish gain its Royal Charter. He died at the age of just 45 - but, having read this biography and diaries, I am absolutely convinced he would have recognised the spirit I have also seen in Sheffield during my own time as Vice-Chancellor.
Some of you have said that you are glad that I have tried to make a public case for the purpose of universities that challenges the idea that higher education is simply a private investment within a marketised system. In doing so, though, I have, of course, reflected for our own times the instincts which led to the establishment of this institution.
What does it mean to be a university 'for the people'? The founders of our University focused on putting the highest quality of education within the reach of the child of the working man; improving industry and the economy; and work which would directly benefit the health of local people through the understanding and treatment of diseases.
This is exactly what we do today, and what must still be our focus no matter how strong the pressures on us are. We would be foolish to think that current debates about reduced or cancelled fees and the cost of loans will not potentially lead to a real-terms reduction in funding to universities. There will, no doubt, also be far greater pressures of regulation with the establishment of the Office for Students, ranging from expectations around the subject level Teaching Excellence Framework to free speech.
In the face of this, what matters is that we do not retreat from public benefit, but make it even more the unique selling point (USP) of Sheffield, with the good we do translating not only to our local region but into the wider society and across the world.
Nowhere do we see this more clearly than in our Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health, where work with our NHS in areas such as neuroscience and cancer is fundamental to the lives of local people, and also to our global reputation. If ever anyone is to doubt the public value of our students and faculty, they have only to visit one of our local hospitals where they will meet medical students and consultants from around the world who are bringing the very highest quality of medical care and understanding to this northern city. Ask yourself why there is a specialist cancer hospital in Sheffield or how we can hope to attract world-leading academics from Harvard or individuals who have developed vital cancer drugs. It is because of what we believe a university is and who it is for.
Viriamu Jones would also recognise our work to improve the economy. Now, of course, the University itself is vital to Sheffield's prosperity. According to the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI), our constituency benefits from international students more than any other in the country, with those students learning in The Diamond building that their families helped pay for. The Faculty of Engineering has more than doubled in size since I became Vice-Chancellor. I truly hope that we will be able to create the same opportunities in our Faculty of Social Sciences through developing a dedicated interdisciplinary building for them, and other subjects might also be expanded in the years to come. Of course, money is a challenge, as it was too for Viriamu Jones, Firth, Earnshaw, Stephenson and those names we have come to know. But I feel sure that to secure our future we must focus hard on what really matters and prioritise around that.
We also see the impact of our work with industries. This week I welcomed to the University both the Conservative Northern Powerhouse Minister Jake Berry, a former University of Sheffield law student, and Lord Sainsbury, the former Labour Science Minister who helped fund our fledgling Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) more than a decade ago. Both were astonished by the facilities they saw, the powerful impact on the regional economy and the potential of the young apprentices they met.
Does this work make us locally civic at the expense of being global leaders? Far from it. In fact, we are working with China's top Tsinghua University precisely because our founding spirit and determination to translate research with industry, drawing on the very latest in artificial intelligence (AI) research, is internationally relevant. From health to advanced manufacturing to technical education, our Sheffield USP which seeks to put knowledge at the service of the people is, ironically, precisely what identifies us as the very partner wanted by the world's leading institutions, companies and governments.
So it is a poster in a factory that has left us with what is, in effect, a manifesto for our future and, in a few lines, an outline of the values we hold close. It is also a source of real pride to me that our University is increasingly known as a progressive place with this commitment to public benefit at its heart, shared by our students and staff. It is what was seen by the BBC Today programme when it visited us recently and what made the CEO of McLaren say Sheffield is "the perfect place for us" with "a whole community committed to providing a terrific labour pool" of graduates and apprentices.
All of this is achieved by people committed to this work. Our University has been built over the past century by men and women who have shared this vision, but there are dangers. Recently, many of you have written and spoken to me about your concerns about changes proposed to the USS pension scheme and what this might mean in the long term. I have been asked to do what I can to help us avoid a protracted industrial dispute in which people who have dedicated their careers to research and teaching communicate the strength of their feelings through strike action.
My own position is that I very much hope that this can be avoided, and that changes which I believe are necessary to the scheme are made only as absolutely necessary with the very best advice and following full and proper consultation. I am also concerned the fact that the government supports pensions provision in post-92 universities and not in our vital research- intensive institutions acts as a kind of state aid to just one part of higher education. I have raised these issues this week with both the CEO of Universities UK and with the new Universities Minister, and remain hopeful that, even at this stage, there may be some hope that all sides will return to the table to seek a solution.
Beyond this, I would like to thank my colleagues for your ongoing efforts to the education and research that are so important to our students and to wider society. It is this commitment to learning and to teaching made relevant to the world which has been a continual thread in the history of our University, and which I trust will remain so in the years to come.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett FRS
President and Vice-Chancellor
10 January 2018
Retirement announcement: thanks and next steps
Dear colleagues, Following the announcement that I will be retiring around my 65th birthday, I have been asked to write a few words to add to those from the Chair of our Council. He is a man whose commitment to the University and its city is unbounded and I am most grateful for his generous words in the announcement he circulated on Monday.
As you might expect, I have been thinking about my retirement for some time. It will be a wrench to leave Sheffield, but I know I'm leaving our University in good shape, with great senior leadership and talent, and dedication to scholarship and teaching at all levels. I am under no illusion that we are perfect, but I have been strengthened to know that I represent such a strong international community of staff and students who share a belief in the difference education can and does make.
Looking back, I am truly grateful that this University chose me to be its Vice-Chancellor more than a decade ago. People told me then that it would be unlike anything else I had experienced and they were right. It has been a blast!
At that time in 2007, I knew most about the University from my daughter who was then an architecture student here. Now working in London and married to another Sheffield architect, her affection for the University that gave her a start in her career is undimmed. And I have come to know this place fairly well. Not as well as a local, but well enough to know and love its byways. Almost every week I have walked through Endcliffe Park and along Ecclesall Road into the city. I bought old books and pictures from Rare and Racy until it closed recently. That is a place I already miss! I am a regular visitor to the Sheffield Market and I have got to know the Peak District's beauty through the seasons and the wealth of heritage in its historic buildings.
I have also met and spoken at length to many of our wonderful alumni who, filled with affection for their University and what they learnt here, have given me tremendous support. They have never let me forget the lifelong impact of good teaching. And I have worked alongside and for students who, year after year, have inspired me with their courage and determination to use their talents and privilege to make the world a better place.
The University of Sheffield that I have come to know is not only a collection of buildings or a crest, but people whose work reflects years of effort to live up to the vision of the University's founders. People who persist in the face of challenge to discover and understand, and who apply that understanding in local hospitals, in model factories, in Sheffield schools and in a refugee camp in Jordan.
So before I retire, I have work to do for you. It is, of course, my duty to ensure that the things that need to be done this year really get all the support I can give. At times like this, we cannot suffer from planning blight. Particularly as higher education and indeed the whole of the UK try to work out the challenges of constrained public funding and relations with the rest of Europe. I do not doubt that we will have our share of challenges. It demands that we ensure the best and smoothest possible transition. I am determined to do my very best to help with that. I will be working in close partnership with colleagues on the University's Council, University Executive Board (UEB) and Senate to make sure I actively support the various important projects we have underway at the moment. We discussed how we'll do this at the UEB meeting this week. There was a shared determination to secure and progress the opportunities I have tried to develop on your behalf in the UK and overseas, to celebrate areas of strength in our University and highlight the ideas we believe must be heard.
It has been my honour to be your Vice-Chancellor and to carry the baton of a university founded in the public good more than a century ago. I will continue to work and sometimes fight for this University, our work and our students in the year ahead, and I will do all in my power to continue to promote its strengths once that time is done.
With my sincere thanks,
Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE FRS FLSW
President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield
2 January 2018
New Year Update to Staff
Dear colleagues,
As we begin a new year of teaching and research, we know that we are also entering a new chapter for UK universities. As the new Office for Students (OfS) takes effect, it is clear that we can expect a very different environment for higher education - one which overtly thinks of universities as a marketplace in which students are customers and 'value' is measured in ways which often feel alien to the world of academia.
How should we think about this new world?
Like many of you, the holidays have allowed me some precious time to reflect on the work we do and what really matters. These thoughts were triggered even more by seeing a video recording of a Christmas in Wales 30 years ago. My dear father, long gone, is holding in his arms a Sheffield-trained architect-to-be, my daughter Elizabeth. I am also caught on film as a younger Keith, then an Oxford University lecturer, finding it a challenge to be a good scientist and even harder to get the funds to buy the equipment to do the work.
Looking back, I could see my younger self doing a good deal of science and meeting the most remarkable people on the way. I felt a modest sense of achievement remembering those times, but much more a sense of blessing for a career that has been full of things I thought were worth doing and a deep gratitude for the wonderful students I got to teach. My research and teaching took place in Boulder in the US, in London and Oxford. But this last part of my career at Sheffield has given me an opportunity to move beyond science to consider how education and knowledge should serve society and what I believe a university should be. I am very grateful to have been able to do this thinking in our University, where I have led an institution committed from its founding to putting education at the service of the public good. And what wonderful colleagues and students we have, who share this dedication to knowledge which can and does change lives, which is so much more than an investment to be measured in purely financial terms.
It may be that this perspective on universities was born in another age but I will not describe myself as a dinosaur, as I do not like to use that name as a denigration. After all, dinosaurs lasted longer than we have and did a lot less damage to the planet! There are times, though, that it is right to be strengthened by voices from our past, by the wisdom of our literal or academic forebears and teachers.
In the things we are doing at Sheffield, we are keeping our University true to the mission it was given in 1905 - a founding vision as fresh and relevant as it ever was. Thankfully our students also embrace this for themselves, courageously thinking about what education should mean for the next generation - not simply as customers but as members of our University.
So I urge you to have confidence in the year ahead. We do know what our students and communities need and we must not let others tell us that we don't. They need a university able to command an international position while serving the people it was established to serve. They need a university which is still 'for the people'.
We will, of course, have to understand and respect the new regulatory framework set up by the government for higher education. There is no avoiding the need for a detailed awareness of the new requirements which will be placed upon us. So I have asked our colleagues to do the most thorough job they can in examining and, where necessary, modifying our governance to ensure we are fully compliant.
This is a good deal of work and will take effort by many of you to make sure this works well. Our duty though remains to preserve the education and scholarship which have been the hallmark of our University for more than a century. It is my hope that we shall respond completely to this new regime while keeping as much as possible to the vocation of our 1905 charter.
But let's not in any way lose sight of what matters. We should continue to take real pride in the work that we undertake as a global University rooted in our local community, and which I have tried to describe in the media without fear or apology.
Our students will continue to need our diligent efforts as teachers. Society both locally and globally will benefit from the insights of our scholarship. I will continue in the year ahead to do everything in my power to build our reputation both in the UK and internationally, securing global partnerships and ensuring your work is known around the world, as I have been tasked as your President and Vice-Chancellor by our University Council. The challenge is great but I am confident that we have the people needed to thrive even in this new era. We will, I believe, continue to grow in reputation not by seeking accolades but through gaining understanding and sharing it in ways which make a difference. Our society needs our expertise, even if some are wary of experts.
Colleagues helping to manage necessary change will need all of our encouragement and support in the transition period as the OfS takes up its new statutory powers. We will not deny our new environment, but will seek to fulfil our mission in this changed regulatory context. I would like to thank you for your commitment and hard work to scholarship and its preservation in the hearts and minds of our students - it is this which should remain our vocation in the year ahead.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE FRS FLSW
President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield.
15 December 2017
Staff update from the President and Vice-Chancellor
Dear colleagues,
Before many of you leave Sheffield for the Christmas break, I wanted to take the opportunity to thank you for your hard work and dedication to teaching and research throughout this year.
In many ways, this has been a wonderful year, full of achievements. At the heart of our University is our students, and we are deeply proud that scholarship and challenge in a progressive environment continue to be the hallmark of teaching at our University.
Nationally and internationally, our University has risen in both global reputation and subject rankings. Individuals have contributed to life-changing research. Siemens chose to place its first Industry 4.0 collaborative lab - the MindSphere - in our wonderful Diamond building. And the impact of our Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre has led to major companies such as Boeing and McLaren investing in production facilities in our city region, creating local economic growth and apprenticeship opportunities at our training centre. In so many inspiring ways, we have fulfilled our founding mission.
In other ways though, it has been a truly tough year. As the implications of the Brexit vote became clearer, our fears grew for its impact on our staff, students and shared research programmes. The concerns of precious EU staff who are not British nationals have been especially painful, particularly given the enormous service these colleagues and friends have given to UK universities over many years. The Higher Education and Research Act received royal assent and the Office for Students will shortly take up its full role as a 'market regulator', in the process requiring all universities apply for registration to award degrees. For many of us, universities are now subject to a very different environment than the one we entered as teachers and researchers. We share with our own students - who we continue to see as members of our University rather than simply customers - real concerns about some of the likely consequences of this new culture, although we are of course preparing carefully for the requirements we know will come. We have also seen a growing awareness of the long-term impacts on graduates of introducing a system of student loans for tuition and maintenance.
Now, of course, universities also face challenges around the USS pensions. I know that there is continuing debate about changes to the USS and that our University is attempting to provide honest answers and to engage with our unions on this.
However, I've also been asked by a number of staff for my view and I recognise the deep concerns of staff about the proposed changes. As a Vice-Chancellor I also see the particular impact this issue is having on the UK's leading research-intensive universities, such as Sheffield, whose teachers and researchers are disproportionately represented in the scheme.
Unlike the former polytechnic universities where the majority of staff are members of a government-backed pension scheme which offers defined benefits, research intensive universities - so crucial to the UK's global competitive position and future prosperity - are facing significantly higher commitments on staff pensions.
In the regulated market in which we now find ourselves, this effectively represents government support of pension benefits to one part of higher education and its staff not available to others. This is not only unfair, it is a bias which weighs heavily against those institutions and their students being asked to make investments which are then unavailable for teaching and research. Given the state support of one part of higher education for historic reasons, in my view this cannot be a question for universities alone but rather demands that the government also considers how it might address this imbalance.
Yet despite our many challenges, I hope we can still focus on the core aims of our University. These have been a continuous strand since 1905 when we received our charter - a determination to be a university 'for the people', one which put education within the reach of students who may not have been born into affluent families, whose research would benefit the health and prosperity of our own city and the wider world.
So as you prepare to take a break and, in many cases, enjoy times with friends and family, I'd like to personally thank you for the support you have given to our students, to me and to one another. It is deeply appreciated.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett FRS
President and Vice-Chancellor
6 December 2017
Update on the Sheffield Scanner Appeal
There are many reasons why I am proud to be the President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield.
Today, you are that reason.
You may have already seen from the University’s homepage our Sheffield Scanner appeal is now more than half way towards reaching its £2 million target. This is a significant achievement, given that the fundraising campaign started less than 12 months ago.
How have we got here? It is thanks to the hard work and generosity of the University of Sheffield community who have got behind this campaign and have helped us reach that £1 million milestone in record time.
It is thanks to you.
Our University has a long history of philanthropy. The office I am sitting in is part of a building that was paid for by Sheffield’s community – its local residents and business owners who responded to public appeals for penny donations.
That tradition of giving has continued, with our alumni and supporters helping to fund scholarships, student activities, and projects that demonstrate excellence in teaching and research.
The Sheffield Scanner is undoubtedly a flagship project for the University. As a physicist, I can’t help but be impressed by how two very different and highly complex imaging techniques can be brought together to answer questions about an even more complicated subject – the human body. MRI-PET does just that.
The potential power of MRI-PET is quite incredible and I look forward to the scientific discoveries and clinical breakthroughs that will come from our internationally-leading research teams here at Sheffield once the new facility is up-and- running.
I am not alone. More than 5500 of our staff, our students, our alumni and our many friends of the University have contributed towards the campaign total in the hope that Sheffield will become the home of Yorkshire’s first MRI-PET facility.
We are not there yet, though. I am well aware that the fundraising is continuing in earnest as we move ever closer to our £2 million goal. Christmas decorations are being knitted, race entries are being planned, proposals to sponsors are being considered. Staff in Development, Alumni Relations & Events are working hard to coordinate the fundraising and drive this campaign forward, whilst the project team, under the inspiring leadership of Professor Dame Pam Shaw, are preparing the groundwork for the scanner’s arrival and installation.
But amidst all of this activity I want to pause for one moment and recognise how far we have come in such a short time.
So whether you have been walking, running, swimming, singing, sewing, baking, marshalling, driving, printing posters, holding a collection bucket, wearing a Sheffield Scanner T-shirt, buying raffle tickets, writing quiz questions, sponsoring a friend or colleague…
However you are helping the Sheffield Scanner campaign reach its £2 million target – I say thank you.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett FRS
President and Vice-Chancellor
4 December 2017
The President and Vice Chancellor reflects on giving evidence to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee on the financing of higher education.
Dear colleagues,
This week I gave evidence to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee on the financing of higher education. They had many questions about how universities function, pressing me and colleagues from Cambridge, Imperial and Brunel about everything from 'value for money' to whether a so-called market in higher education will lead to a better quality of education for students.
As I answered the committee and tried to help them understand the realities of higher education, it made me reflect on my 45 years at university. This is such a different academic world to the one I entered in 1972. I’m sure it is different from the world that many of my colleagues joined too.
How to convey the value and purpose of what we do to the scrutinising Lords? I certainly never expected to stay at university after my degree. I had presumed I would leave Oxford, most likely to work in some professional job or another. Indeed, I very nearly did work for Royal Dutch Shell in London or as one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Taxes. The selection procedure for both of these posts was fascinating! But my teachers were encouraging, as well as occasionally and quite rightly brutal, and said that I should be thinking of going on to doctoral studies. And so I did, with the strong encouragement of my wife-to-be, Anne.
It wasn't easy. But as my doctoral work progressed, my supervisor and firm supporter Professor Derek Stacey encouraged me to do a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the United States. By that time I had caught the research bug which meant I could work tirelessly for months on a technical issue that intrigued me. When I look at my notebooks from that time I am shocked at my determination. I certainly needed it as I quickly became an Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado.
My first years as an academic were tough but rewarding times for me as a scientist. I found though that I could be a success as a teacher and researcher and in many ways it set me up for my future career. My colleagues in Boulder were inspiring and challenging with their ambitious research programmes. I even remember discussions about gravitational wave detection in the early eighties, never imagining what breakthroughs we would see!
I also learned the crucial role of science in driving innovation, technology and commerce. In the USA, I saw first-hand how new experimental laser systems became products sold to institutions - technical and medical - around the world. I learned how scientific prowess led to international reputation. I understood PhD students doing research were the fundamental powerhouse of innovation.
Those lessons have stuck with me and are surprisingly relevant in my unexpected later role of Vice-Chancellor. I've worked now in many different places and as part of a wide range of universities and organisations, and in every one it has been clear that there is no structure or policy that can be effective without the most crucial of all ingredients - brilliant people.
Strangely the Lords didn't ask about the scholars themselves, and perhaps that was one reason I felt a gap between their questions and the reality of the universities I know. Teaching and research don't exist apart from the people who make that effort their life's work.
How do you describe what makes a university what it is without naming names? Last week I had dinner with my dear colleague Eric Cornell in London. It is decades now since we first met, but I remember him as a brilliant young scientist coming to work with Carl Wieman, who I had helped come to Boulder in 1984. After our meal together, he took a picture of me with his daughter Eliza who I had once looked after as a baby, now herself a student. To me, Eric is not only an academic and Nobel Laureate, he is a fellow physicist and a friend. I know that the web of relationships such as these is what underpins our best work.
Of course, scholarship and talented people also need dough.
Back in the UK, first at Imperial College and then at Oxford, I saw an academic system with poor funding compared to what I had left behind in the US. Funding in particular for doctoral students was meagre compared to Boulder. People didn’t seem to understand they were the true researchers, not simply students. The academic life sometimes hits times of deep frustration. To be blunt I did not see how I would be able to do the science I wanted to and in my early thirties I started looking for jobs outside academia.
But my scientific life was changed by a windfall. I can claim no credit for the money that the University Grants Committee gave to the laser bunch at Imperial, apart from the fact that Pete, Henry and I did have a dream. That vision was sketched on a few sheets with rudimentary costing. That turned out to be enough and we started the Laser Consortium that still does superb research in the Quantum Optics and Laser Science group at Imperial College. After that my career turned up and became a wonderful life in science that I could never have dreamt of.
What followed were, we now realise, golden days of funding under the Labour government’s enlightened Science Minister Lord David Sainsbury. He has just celebrated his foundation having given £1 billion to science and education. He knows what is truly important in building people’s lives through investment in things that can improve them.
Will scholarship once again be saved by a decision to fund talented people? I hope so. Surely the UK needs it, though at the moment it also risks losing some of the very academics and students it will need most.
It is hard to convey to a committee the frustrations and accidents of scholarship, the chief of these being people. I was reminded of several of the true blessings of being a teacher this week. The first was speaking to a brilliant woman who did her D.Phil in theoretical quantum statistical physics with me in Oxford and is now at the European Central Bank, after working at the Treasury and Bank of England. The second was planning a visit to China with another of my Oxford students who is having a phenomenal career in the science and technology of virtual reality and artificial intelligence in the People's Republic. He is working with me to help us develop our University's Chinese industrial partnerships and was back in Sheffield talking to people in the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre. I am as proud of his achievements in his own companies as he is of now being a Sheffield professor.
These are just two of the gifted people who made my own scientific career a magical one as well as making me proud as a teacher. Our relationships are affectionate with lots of memories of shared challenge and success. I am proud of the science we did together. But they have also brought knowledge and ideas to worlds as diverse as banking and virtual reality.
And that is what university is to me - a world in which scholarship transforms individual and collective lives. And, of course, measuring its impact on those individuals and society is really hard. So as we talked in the House of Lords about the present system of funding higher education, I realised how tough it is to reconcile different world views. One is a vision of customers and competition and the other of scholarship, affection and shared adventures in knowledge that can change the world or how we understand it.
As their Lordships questioned about students in the abstract, I looked over to the corner of the room where I could see one of last year's Sheffield sabbatical officers who has landed her first role supporting the committee. I thought of the heartfelt conversations we had together about fees and the Teaching Excellence Framework. I remembered principled concerns and deep frustration at a direction in HE policy which alarmed our students. I thought of all the colleagues who make up a university.
I know that the rewarding experience of scholarship I have had is not universal. I recognise I have been truly blessed. But the forces now bearing down on my colleagues are harsher than I have known. I see that the great and life-changing public good of education I once took for granted is now being questioned.
We need to find ways to better explain what we do at universities. I will do my best on that front. But it is not only the pressure from a government committee that reminds me that we shall need to change, as we always have. We already want to be the place in which young people can learn well, where knowledge can thrive and its applications can transform industries and the health and wellbeing of society. I know this commitment is shared by my colleagues, and I thank you once more for the great effort you put in to make this a reality in sometimes frustrating circumstances.
I am wary that not all see just what effort goes into our work, sometimes a whole lifetime of a labour of love. So I also pray we do not make a better world for our students by making a worse one for their teachers.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE FRS FLSW
President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield
20 July 2017
Message to all staff from the Vice-Chancellor
Dear colleague
First and foremost, I want to say thank you to all of you for making this such a wonderful University to study, teach and do research at. This thanks goes to each of you, in whatever part of our University you serve.
When I look at the world around us, I have to say that we have had one of the most depressing academic years in my lifetime and even I have found it hard to keep ‘up’ at times. By contrast, seeing the wonderful work you do has been a true inspiration to me.
I know that, at times like this when things are uncertain, it is crucial to keep doing the things you do best. To keep making yourself the very best you can. In the end, that is the greatest protection against the dangers of this world. Here I see real reasons for hope. In our University, the two things we do supremely well also happen to be of the utmost importance to the future of communities across Yorkshire, the UK and the world. We work to understand this world around us, and then teach our students about it.
At this time of graduations, I am always reminded that the greatest impact we have on the world comes as those who study with us, at all levels, leave and pursue their own lives, prepared and enthused with what we have taught them. When I stand and speak some words of encouragement to our newly-minted graduates, I know that the work that went into their whole lives here at Sheffield was worthwhile. I also see their families and friends arranged on the seats around the Octagon. I often think of the time I sat in those very seats to watch my own daughter cross the stage, and I know how big a deal it really is.
I could also recite a long list of achievements across all of our research activities and that would be wonderful, but perhaps a little tedious, so I will not do that. But you should be assured that we are pursuing many of the most intriguing and important aspects of the world in all its fascinating and challenging aspects. You should be particularly clear that our research is well- placed to make a substantial contribution to virtually all the problems you hear discussed in the media, and some of those you don’t but perhaps should.
Together we are working to make this a more prosperous, safer, healthier, more civilised and inclusive world. And what is more, people of our city, our government, and around the world see this more clearly than ever. I am deeply proud of our hard earned reputation for work which is insightful, relevant and which truly changes lives, and I’m sure you are too.
But don’t think for a moment that I am complacent about the problems ahead. We have many tricky issues to face in an environment in which our work as universities is often underestimated or misunderstood, and my thoughts and efforts will be focused on addressing them. Changes we are making to the operation of the University, led by our new Chief Operating Officer, Andy Dodman, are a crucial part of this preparation for the future.
As with our triumphs, our challenges are also legion. The area that concerns me most, and on which we await news with deep concern, is the outcome of the talks on the proper rights of non- UK European citizens.
We must continue to be clear about what is simply the right thing to do. Our dear colleagues should be given the full rights that they deserve and to continue to live with us as our valued fellow scholars and professional staff, our neighbours, family members and friends. So I will continue to do my best to make the case for our greatest and true treasure, our students and staff from around the world.
I am confident that we are doing the right things for our institution, looking outwards even as the politics around us may focus on the party political, petty or parochial. We are not perfect, but we are indeed bloody marvellous. This is why I wanted to finish this academic year with my thanks. We are keeping fully true to the mission in which this truly great institution was founded over one hundred years ago. Let’s work together for those who come here to study, for the communities that we serve and for ourselves.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett FRS
President and Vice-Chancellor
19 June 2017
Staff update from the Vice-Chancellor
Professor Sir Keith Burnett outlines his thoughts on the challenges we face as an institution and thanks colleagues for their help in ensuring we can protect and build our University even in the face of adverse conditions.
Dear Colleagues
Since I last wrote we have seen some truly momentous and, for some, utterly tragic events in the UK. The uncertainties ahead for our University are also now beyond those we could have expected even a few months ago, from national policy to the implications of the EU referendum.
I am still telling everyone in positions of influence or power, whether they are inclined to listen or not, that my first concern is for staff and families left uncertain of their status in the UK after Brexit. I know this is a worry and offence to many of our colleagues, and I fervently hope this has the speediest of resolutions once negotiations with the EU actually start.
The true nature of our international universities here in the UK continues to be under threat. We have yet to see whether those parts of the Conservative party manifesto make it through the maw of the negotiations with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), and following that the vagaries of a hung parliament, but we have to be ready.
In particular, if the manifesto commitment on immigration numbers were to be implemented to the letter, the impact on UK higher education would be devastating. That is why a good part of my efforts are aimed at redoubling our work to lobby and support those in government who oppose this absurd proposal. We are also deeply concerned about the impact of ‘hard Brexit’ on our research collaborations and the mobility of talent. We shall work for the best, and think about how we might handle the worst.
I am sure you will not be surprised that I am thinking a great deal about how we can make the best of the difficulties that may face us. And please don’t worry that I would be tricked into sharing that absurd notion that we can simply morph every crisis into an opportunity. We do have opportunities of course, but they are going to be tougher to pursue with money getting tighter, and we shall have to be damned careful in choosing where to invest when current activities are being challenged. We are looking at some strategic directions for developing our research and teaching but we shall “dream with our eyes open” and use precious resources prudently.
First though, let's understand the challenges we face.
The reason times are tougher at present is not that hard to see. Over recent years, public funding of research and teaching has decreased in real terms. Across the UK, research funding in many areas simply does not cover costs. Public money for our buildings has almost disappeared.
We have worked hard despite this and our University has continued to grow its income helped by an increase in international students; however, our income has not grown as fast as our costs. That is something we have to face and do our best to rectify.
As I explained last time I wrote, I have been considering how best to work together in these more challenging times. I am convinced there is much we can do, if we implement sensible measures across the board, to avoid the need for any drastic actions. We must not overreact to possible changes, but we would be neglecting our duty if we did not prepare for further challenges in every part of our world. A key consideration in this is how we run the University, always bearing in mind that this must serve our core purpose of how we do the best for the teaching and care of our students, along with the research and innovation we pursue. Any structure must have, as its primary aim, the need to preserve and defend the scholarship that makes this such an important place of learning.
So what should we change in the way we do things, and what should we retain?
As part of the broader discussion with colleagues across the University, I have heard a great deal of support for the departmental structure along with the faculty system we brought in just after I arrived in Sheffield. I am pleased to hear that, as I am proud of the work our faculties have done; they have achieved a great deal.
However, there are concerns around how we draw closer together as times get tougher; how we collaborate more in key areas; how we make sure our strengths are supported and defended; how we make clear the values we hold dear and the contributions we make to a broader community yet more obvious.
I welcome this feedback and it coincides with my own view that somewhat greater coherence in our operation across the University would be warranted in trickier times. The key issue will be to seek a balance which allows us to act with common purpose without removing local flexibility and responsibility.
Without being tempted to pursue the Roman route of dictator I see it will be essential that we keep the strengths of the devolved authority that faculties need to be effective, while acting decisively to preserve our common goals. I am also mindful that changes at the senior level will increasingly warrant direct guidance as we look and plan ahead.
This does not mean we will be insular in our approach - far from it. The latest QS Global Rankings saw our University rise in the international tables, due in significant part to our international reputation. This success is key for our future, so I shall continue to champion your work overseas and seek opportunities for our University both nationally and internationally. I will also do my best to shape government policy in our interests, but I know challenging times will necessitate a strong-er central direction at times.
This means I shall be working more closely with colleagues in the months ahead. I have total confidence in their capabilities and see it as my role to support this senior team as the seas get rough. I will be asking teams of staff to work across disciplines in key areas such as our approach to research and innovation, teaching and new technologies, developing ideas with our Senate and University Council.
And in this common endeavour, I also include my determination that we work with staff and students to ensure that our community of scholarship remains united, speaking wherever possible with a common voice and drawing on the insights of the whole University “to make our own history, even in times not of our own choosing.”
There will be times when we shall need to rethink our approach and structures, develop new collaborations and be willing to challenge our assumptions. There will be other occasions when we should preserve continuity, battening down the hatches as we, in all likelihood, face a storm.
Knowing which approach to apply in which circumstance will take judgement and care. I thank you though, for your support in doing what we can to secure the research and teaching of which we are rightly proud, and for your help in ensuring we can protect and build our University even in the face of adverse conditions.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett FRS
President and Vice-Chancellor
24 May 2017
Challenges and opportunities in a changing world
My dear colleagues
I am writing this to you at a time of great change in our country, and potentially also for universities. I began writing this message before I learned of the terrible news from Manchester, but I know we will all be thinking of the people of that great city. And of course we are in the midst of an election campaign and in the process of moving towards leaving the European Union with enormous significance for so many areas of our national life, including universities.
You will not be surprised to know that I am spending a significant part of my time thinking about these matters and the changes in policy towards higher education currently under discussion, along with how we shall need to respond in order to preserve the things we hold dear.
Personally, I am particularly saddened that we still do not have any satisfactory resolution of the issues that confront our colleagues from other parts of the European Union. There is also, of course, the matter of funding for our research that comes via Brussels and opportunities for student exchange via programmes such as Erasmus. A great deal for us to ponder and plan ahead.
Much that we cherished and took for granted in relation to our universities is now being questioned. As the historic steps to leave the EU take place, we are anticipating upheavals in so many parts of our country's life.
Yet we also see opportunities in our times. For years our university has emphasised that, as well as being fully international, we have a crucial civic mission and a role in transforming skills and technical education, working closely with industry to create opportunity and economic benefit. Now these areas of activity are at the heart of UK political thinking about universities and we have a head start. The Business Secretary Greg Clark even referred to this as 'the Sheffield model', saying the whole country should be proud of the way our world-leading Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre had won new investments from Boeing and McLaren.
Still, I'm under no illusion about the scale of the challenges. This is no time to make any false assurances about how difficult it is going to be for our university to ride out the storms ahead. Many of our challenges will also be felt by other parts of society and our local community, but we have particular issues to handle because of our international emphasis on scholars, students and funding.
In one sense it may seem selfish to focus on our own problems but I think they will be quite enough to keep us busy for many years ahead, and I do want to tell you about what we intend to do. And that must start with what our guiding principles should be. I do not think you will find them surprising.
First and foremost, we shall stay committed to being one of the finest research-led teaching universities in the world.
We shall stay committed to being an open international community to the fullest possible extent – a beacon of hope which is increasingly important.
We shall also stay committed to being a fully European university, which is why we have, for example, established a new office for our White Rose partnership in Brussels. In practical terms we are studying how the various aspects of Brexit and the outcome of the election will impact on all aspects of our university life and on our staff and students. We will support individuals where we can and speak positively nationally and internationally. We will also carefully review our activities to ensure we continue to make the best of our circumstances. This will enable us to act in ways that make the minimum impact on our university as well as be able to take up opportunities that open up ahead.
I know that many of you will feel that it is difficult to see how we could have got into this mess. Could we have done more to explain to people why being international is so important to us and to the United Kingdom? In fact, your university has led the push on this issue working with business as well as over a hundred universities to make the case for our international universities. And we are not about to let up.
A recent Hobsons survey of 27,000 potential international students cited our #WeAreInternational campaign as making a difference. 84 per cent said the films we have produced and which are used around the world made them feel more welcome and went some way to mitigating their anxieties about the UK and Brexit. We haven't won the concessions we need from politicians yet, but we have every reason to keep speaking for our international students and staff, and we will.
In the midst of this, the achievements of my talented colleagues continue to shine. It is my particular pleasure to congratulate Professor Shearer West on her appointment to become the next Vice-Chancellor of the University of Nottingham.
I owe Shearer an enormous debt of thanks for the wonderful work she has done as Provost. She has served our university with great dedication and thoughtful leadership, and she will no doubt bring these and her many other qualities to our neighbours and colleagues in Nottingham. She has also allowed me to more freely undertake crucial work nationally and internationally to develop new opportunities and partnerships for our university. This work is more important to us now than ever, so we will shortly begin the process of appointing a new provost who can help lead our university and support our determination to deliver internationally-leading teaching and research in this crucial period.
I know from my discussions with many colleagues that I can rely on your support in meeting the challenges ahead. I would not wish to be at another place at this time. My commitment to this great place of learning is unswerving and I will do all I can to protect and support this university that I have come to know and love.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett FRS
President and Vice-Chancellor
3 April 2017 Our University – Open to the World
Dateline: Shanghai
When I first came to China I knew nothing about it. I had taught some Chinese postgraduate students in Oxford, but the country itself was a vast mystery. My knowledge of China, like many of us, was gleaned from kung fu films and depictions of the life of the last emperor.
Beijing in 2005 and visiting Peking University transformed my view of the world. I was so disgusted at my own lack of understanding of this giant and still-emerging powerhouse that I started learning Chinese.
Little did I expect that ten years later I would be sitting in Hefei with the head of one of China's premier manufacturing companies, talking partly in Chinese about Sheffield's illustrious reputation in material science – a reputation which makes a leading-edge company wish to do research with us on the latest methods of making complex components for helicopters, planes and nuclear energy.
Little did I expect to be speaking in that same room about how our university might help train the next generation of young people in research, in engineering and manufacturing, and to extend this to excluded groups of Chinese youth as our own apprentice centre has done in Rotherham.
We share a love of ideas and research, translating into jobs and lives for young people. That's what Open to the World actually means, and it is what being a global university means. It is true global engagement.
On this trip I have benefitted from the work of a new team including Malcolm Butler, previously Faculty Director of Operations in Engineering; our new Director of Global Engagement Dorte Stevenson working in Global Opportunities; and Dr Lucy Zhao our Confucius Institute Director who has taken on a broader role of supporting partnerships in China. Now in Shanghai, we are talking to the Faculty of Engineering and Nuclear AMRC to see how these collaborations will fly.
The day before, we had met with China's leading engineering university, Shanghai Jiao Tong and signed a new agreement for student exchange. This partnership will however not only encompass engineering and science, but we discussed the ways we might collaborate in areas such as architecture, planning and landscape, and in history and the humanities more broadly.
This evening, scholars from Beijing University are flying to meet us to speak about creating a partnership backed by the Chinese government. And back in Sheffield our colleagues are hosting a visiting party from Tsinghua University to develop joint studentships with Imperial College and Manchester.
These are the top universities in China who – mindful of our reputation for engineering, material science and advanced manufacturing, but also of our considerable efforts to show that we are open to building relationships in this astonishing country – now want to partner with us in broader ways. I want to thank all of you for making us a place where this is a reality. At the same time, sitting here in Shanghai, I have not forgotten our European colleagues across the whole university who have been so much part of this reputation and capability and who we must not lose. I want to thank the scholars who have taught international students from across the world, and particularly those who come to us from China who spread our reputation across this land.
The UK government is asking us at the moment to comment on its Industrial Strategy and I have taken the opportunity at the highest level to reinforce the message that, without the presence of international students and European scholars, there will be no industrial strategy for the United Kingdom.
People may think that we are swimming against a tide of narrowness and misunderstanding. But I feel confident that the new relationships we began to build long before the referendum vote and the initiatives we have with China will make it abundantly clear that we are a university that will need, demand and deserve continued investment from the UK government. We are also discovering that these values in action are acting as a magnet to new partners in our own country, with the information giant Microsoft drawn to our ambition and commitment to being truly international.
The work we are doing internationally is no sideline. It is utterly relevant to the work we do together. We are not only mourning the errors of nationalism which are engulfing so many nations at this time. We know that the best defence is attack. We are going out into the world and by doing so we will do good for our own university at home and the community which founded us.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett FRS
Vice-Chancellor
9 February 2017
A wonderful and sad day for our University
Today is both a wonderful and sad day for our University.
Wonderful because later today we will formally announce a partnership which will see one of the leading motor companies in the UK move a key part of its capability back to this country creating jobs, opportunities and apprenticeships. It is doing so because of its longstanding relationship with our University through the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre and our outstanding research in composites and high-performance manufacturing. This is news of national significance and a much-needed boost for our region. I am sure you, like me, will be truly proud that we can make a difference in this way to our local economy. Yet it is also a truly sad day. Last night I attended an event held by the Financial Times to discuss the future of Britain. To an international audience drawn from business, an eminent panel sought to define a positive future for our country which is optimistic and open to the world.
At the same time, our parliament voted on Article 50 and specifically on an amendment to preserve the residency rights of EU citizens after Brexit, which was rejected. I can only imagine the dismay that must have struck deep into the hearts and minds of those of our dear continental staff and students who came to the UK in good faith and who now fear that the residency and freedom to travel that they once took for granted may be under threat.
I have no power to reverse this decision, but I want you to know that your University deeply values your place here with us. I know your powerful contribution without which the many successes of our University would simply never have happened. As our campaign has repeated so often, we are international. I assure you that I will continue to assert this and to speak at every opportunity for the preservation of your right to live, work and study without hindrance in this country.
Thank you all for your support and consideration of one another as we both celebrate the successes of all kinds and face a time of deep challenges to the values we cherish.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE FRS FRSW
President & Vice-Chancellor
29 January 2017
Statement on US travel restrictions
I'm sure that you will have seen the news over the weekend on the restrictions on travel to the United States of America established by an executive order by President Donald J Trump.
There are few things more precious than freedom. And nothing more precious than a home safe from fear of death and oppression. The ban on travel has snatched the hope of such a sanctuary in the United States out of the hands and hearts of many people.
You may well be as deeply troubled as I am by this action.
I am troubled because I am sure that anything that restricts the movement of people on the basis of country of origin or religion alone is wrong. Wrong in all respects. It is wrong according to the principles of freedom that the United States has been rightly proud of, wrong as a practical way to protect the United States from attack and wrong I believe as a matter of the law. But we shall now see how the argument for and against this ban works its way through the courts in the United States. And we shall see the separation of powers established in the written constitution of the United States being tested in just the way it has in the past.
There will be many who support the action by President Trump and see it as the only way to defend their country and we cannot dismiss their concerns. It is rather our duty to show why we believe this to be deeply counterproductive to the purposes of peace and freedom.
But how can we do that?
By telling the stories of all the people who have given so much to the places of refuge that gave them a home. We must try to convert fear of the faceless into appreciation of a real person's gifts to us.
Let's do that.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE FRS FRSW
President & Vice-Chancellor
2 December 2016
Planning ahead for our University
I want to tell you about some tricky issues ahead, but first let me thank you for all the wonderful work you have been doing this year.
I am immensely proud of the work our University does in so many ways for all the communities it serves. This goes on in spite of the difficulties we face in getting the funds we need to do all this important work.
I'm sure you will be aware that things in all likelihood will get tougher in the years ahead. In addition to the real terms reductions we have faced in the public funding of both teaching and research, there are considerable uncertainties around the impact of the EU referendum and possible reductions in international students.
In order to be able to keep doing the things we want and need to do, it is therefore prudent to reassess our planned spending in the years ahead and to look across the board at our costs and priorities.
You are most likely aware that the first impact of this has been on hiring staff. I do realise that some of you will have been disappointed that the University has had to put quite stringent conditions on making new appointments. I'm convinced this was however a sensible measure given the constraints we face. You may be concerned however that we do not appear to be applying the same stringency to our buildings plan. Let me reassure you that we are reviewing all areas of planned expenditure, including our capital spend.
I will be working closely with senior colleagues to scrutinise all our capital projects. As was the case when I first came to the University, I think it is right to take a very close look at these major areas of expenditure and to ensure that our commitments are both affordable and in line with our academic priorities.
I understand it may be frustrating to those who were looking forward to the development of new buildings sooner rather than later, but it is necessary for me to be able to say to you, as well as to the Council of the University, that our spending is fit for these new more difficult times.
Thank you once again for all your work and commitment to delivering the very best education to our students and to the scholarship which has such a vital role to play in our city, nationally and across the world.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE FRS FRSW
Vice-Chancellor
22 November 2016
Tata and Firth: A new beginning?
Last week I visited the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru. I met my hosts in a wood- panelled room that could have been in the Mappin Building, but alongside portraits of the King and Queen who opened our own beloved University was a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi, or Gandhiji as he preferred to be called.
The Institute of Science or IISc is the premier institution for scientific and technological research and education in India. It is home to over 3,500 students and its commercial partners include Boeing, Bosch, Google and Microsoft. IISc research ranges from cyber security to DNA, from food to rapid diagnosis of HIV.
All this is set in 370 acres of beautiful wooded grounds donated by the Maharaja of Mysore. But beyond the impressive scholarship, it became clear that Sheffield had more in common with IISc than you might imagine.
Outside its grand administration building is a magnificent statue of the Parsi industrialist JN Tata who founded the IISc in 1909. His motivation, like that of our own founder Mark Firth, was to build a place which would provide the skilled engineers and scientists he knew industry would need. I recognised a shared heritage. So beneath the portraits of the King and Queen, we talked about what we had in common. We both carry out work, for example, on environmental challenges funded by our graduate Jeremy Grantham, a visionary who makes no distinction in the importance of this issue to the future of children in India or the West.
Scholarship with purpose created a common language. I told my hosts about our projects to provide low-carbon power in West Bengal and Professor Mohamed Pourkashanian's research on carbon capture. I described the collaboration Professor Sheila MacNeil has led for many years with the L V Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad.
It was good to hear too that they had already been looking at what they might learn from us. They already have plans to visit the AMRC early next year as India's prime minister is determined to increase and improve India's manufacturing prowess, and they were keen to know more. I showed our hosts pictures of our reconfigurable Factory 2050.
Together we also spoke about opportunities for young people. A key challenge in this developing nation where only 10 per cent of the population have regular work is bringing training in advanced skills to India's youth, particularly those who cannot participate in higher education.
As we talked together, the miles between us lost significance. In this room I realised that this was the moment to reach out and build a new partnership. One built on humility with a strong sense of joint academic purpose. One dedicated to doing good through the finest of scholarship.
How important it is that we remember this is what really matters. The week before I had been in New Delhi as our prime minister landed to open the India-UK Tech Summit. I spoke at the session on how industry works with academia and was in the posh seats when Theresa May opened the Summit, welcomed by India's prime minister Narendra Modi. But what did India make of her?
I wish I could tell you that she used this opportunity to praise our universities, to recognise the impact of Indian scholars or to adjust policy to make post-study work easier for Indian students in the UK. Yet on all these issues there was conspicuous silence, something which was not unnoticed by Indian politicians or the media. Instead the prime minister spoke of free trade, mentioning in passing the problem of the UK taking too much for granted in our work with India.
It was a massive understatement. At a dinner in Delhi the distinguished historian William Dalrymple had made the point far more forcibly, as perhaps only an historian could. We Brits did not come to India without baggage, and we needed to recognise when some humility was in order. He suggested it would be better for a Brit to behave as a German might when visiting Israel – conscious of a painful history, sensitive and respectful. I should add that reading Jawaharlal Nehru's biography, and his experience of British rule written in a British gaol, was reinforcing the same thought.
So with this background in mind, I sought common ground. As I told the Summit audience about Sheffield's work with industry and the desire of both nations to draw on technology to lift its people, I began by saying that without free movement of talent our efforts are futile. It was a statement which triggered a spontaneous round of applause from an audience keen to hear a British voice acknowledging this core concern. The reality is that Indians are truly perplexed and dismayed at our Government's policy to count Indian students as immigrants. Yet this approach flies in the face of British public opinion which doesn't believe our students should be counted as immigrants at all.
There are moments when it is our duty to challenge, to persist in speaking truth to power. Time and again I found myself speaking about the international nature of scholarship, just as many of our students did as they peacefully marched in London this weekend. This message was emphasised again this week at the All Party Parliamentary Group on International Students which we helped establish, and in the House of Lords debate to which we submitted evidence.
I reminded my audience that I have an Indian boss. Professor Sir Venki Ramakrishnan, a Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, is my president at the Royal Society. It is the role once held by Isaac Newton and I'm proud to be representing him and our international fellowship around the world.
It was in this spirit that I sought opportunities for our University in Bengaluru – a truly extraordinary place.
This great city is home to a great number of Muslims, as well as to Christians of many denominations and, of course Hindus. The afternoon before visiting IISc, I had heard a sweet voice calling across the roofs of Bengaluru then realised that it was the call to midday prayer from a local mosque. It was by far the sweetest call to prayer I have ever heard.
Once known as India's Garden City, Bengaluru is rich in parks filled with flowering trees. The people are welcoming and warm, and we had many pictures taken with family groups as we strolled in the park.
But the city is also the great centre of India's burgeoning tech and cyber industry – a true powerhouse in the IT giant that India has become. So as well as scholars, I took the opportunity to meet with a number of corporations based there. Our Faculty of Engineering is building up its work in cyber security and we know that Bengaluru is a great place to look for ideas and collaboration. As I had hoped, there is a strong connection between these companies and UK technologists, and connections have been made which I hope will bear fruit for our academic work and our students.
Encouraging these connections are our alumni, because we must never forget that – while our University campus is in Sheffield – our graduates are found across the world. Truly, we are international. So I met in Bengaluru, as I had in Delhi, with some of our over two thousand Indian alumni and heard their affection for the city of Sheffield so far away from the warmth of southern India.
This is what I wish our prime minister had grasped. The beginning of global connection is human connection. Our graduates' memories of the teachers who helped them on their way was truly moving. Some of them were local to Bengaluru, but others took flights from Hyderabad and Chennai to be with us. Dedicated to study in subjects such as structural engineering, molecular biology, management and chemistry they all came to Sheffield some years ago. What precious relationships these are in a world where we see divisions being driven.
I was in India when I heard the result of the American election. I am only too aware that around the world the current trend is from global openness to nationalism, protectionism to building walls.
This is not where our future lies. It is our duty to connect, to be a human bridge across which knowledge and understanding can flow.
I come back to Sheffield with a sense of possibility. We shall work with our Indian academic partners inspired by the words of our founding principles: "The University shall be for the people". But we will define who our people are in the widest terms. We will see talent and opportunity beyond borders. We can then honour the founders, the Tata and Firth, of both our institutions, and it is even possible that Gandhi might smile on us.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE FRS FLSW
Vice-Chancellor
24 October 2016
Gone with the Wind?
Our University after the Brexit vote
Dear colleague
Do the autumn colours seem more intense to you this year? They do to me. Walk through Weston Park or look at the vivid reds cladding the walls of Firth Court. Really look at the defiant flash of autumn colour.
I have to admit to pangs of loss too as I watch delicate blue skies in England descend to winter. And if conversations with some of my colleagues and students are anything to go by, I'm not alone in feeling this has been a year of dismay as well as of beauty.
But shouldn't I just be getting used to our new situation? Do falling leaves simply remind us of the fading of something dreamed of in the long summer days? Did I not always know that beneath a cosmopolitan life and a seemingly progressive society there could be decay?
An increasing number of us sense something fundamental has shifted along with the referendum result, and its consequences have yet to play out. In earlier times of struggle there was a hope, and even expectation, that our efforts would lead us to overcome the obstacles we faced. Optimists including academics like myself dreamed that a better-fed, better-educated society would lead our country into a better place.
But now the mood is different. Our politics is divided, experts are seen as contributing to the problem. Politics has found its dog-whistle on immigration. The young worry about unreliable employment and scarce housing. The post-war promise of sunlit uplands is fading fast.
So what do we do, as we witness this new landscape from our position of privilege in a university? Simply sigh and give in to loss? No, we must not let the evil of complacency take hold. We simply don't have to accept it.
“Tis not too late to build a better world."
We in universities are experiencing attitudes and policies which confound what many of us have long believed were fundamental to our work. But the reality is that we must not give in to weary passivity for reasons far more important than our own self-interest.
Our University was founded on a commitment to the public good, committed to using knowledge to make a positive difference. We have expanded our sense of purpose without contradiction from our immediate locality to the communities represented by our scholars and students across the world. In fact, we know that we do good for ourselves and those in greatest need locally precisely because we are international.
So no matter how dismayed we may feel by some of the challenges to our core values, now is no time to retreat. It was never more important that those who have seen the possibilities of a better place for our children work together to make it possible.
And we should not feel that we are alone. I am so grateful to those politicians still brave enough to speak of that dream. And I am calling on our colleagues and students, fellow citizens and brothers and sisters, to unite around a stubborn desire not to give in to an isolationist view which will in the end impoverish us all intellectually, materially and spiritually. Every voice is needed in telling the truth.
And what should we say together, as a university? That human life is not forced to give in to despair. That it is possible to discover, to understand, and to apply what we learn to make our lives better. That intellectual mountains can be climbed for the good of society, equipping students and our partners along the way. And most of all, that we cannot achieve this alone.
By contrast, fear and rejection of those different to us will rot hearts and minds. It is only by knowing, respecting and yes loving people from across the whole world that understanding and life will be fuller, better, and safer.
If you need encouragement, just think of the great teachers of your own disciplines drawn from across the world. There is no nation who can claim exclusive ownership of language and mathematics, whose scholarship is so complete it does not need the insights, challenge and conversation of another. Think of colleagues from many nations, the graduates you helped equip to make their contribution across the world. The great teachers of all the world's religions were right about the power of welcoming others into our midst.
But seeing and knowing this does not mean we dismiss the needs of those who feel the fear and hatred, or who have the sense that for too long policy and resources have left their interests and communities behind. Not at all. We must live with them and show we care for them.
And here is where we must really raise our voices and challenge. Our University does care. Our medics work in hospitals across the region, we seek to understand the causes of disease and better ways to offer care. Our students and staff of all nationalities are fundamental to the economic and educational life of our communities.
But more than that our willingness to be truly progressive in our partnerships with industry and in piloting degree apprentices sponsored by companies is transforming regional strategy and the possibility for working class young people in the areas central government have too long neglected.
Our identity as experts and intellectuals is not one which hides in an ivory tower or which sees local communities as a place to observe only through dispassionate criticism. We are much more involved than that, and always have been. We can connect hearts to minds, and minds to jobs.
I want our whole University, regardless of nationality or subject, to understand what this means because we have together made it possible.
We have not only shown an interest in industrial strategy once it became politically fashionable. Go to the wasted land of Orgreave today and you will see a world-leading research campus with industry – ours.
Last week I invited the policy unit at 10 Downing Street to come and see for themselves how research really can create wealth and opportunity for all. I will be speaking to senior members of the Lords this week to explain the same. And the following week I will travel to the Tech Summit in India with our Prime Minister and Minister of State for Universities and Science, where I will ensure nobody is in any doubt about our ambition and values.
What will follow? Could we build a new manufacturing city on the plains of the north? A place where talent from around the world build the future? Where a Chinese PhD student teaches Rotherham lads and lasses, and together they make things to sell to the world?
Does that sound implausible? It shouldn't. This week I took the headmaster of Thomas Rotherham College to visit our apprentice training centre. He is a historian and, like me, from Wales. He is no stranger to the challenges of social deprivation. And he saw hope in action. Together we met the first 20 undergraduate engineers fully sponsored by industry. They were being taught by our AMRC engineers using progressive teaching approaches, mixed with the best of our tradition. We have postgraduates already following a similar track. It is a beginning.
How does this relate to our global, open view of education? The first student to engage with industry in the very earliest days of the AMRC was a PhD student who came to the UK from Vietnam as an asylum seeker. Our first major corporate partner was Boeing, led from the United States. We have just announced a research collaboration with the Chinese space programme.
Our University brings international talent and purpose to the service of all – from our hospitals and scientific scholarship to our work on vibrancy, health and economic renewal.
I will be working with our Council and Senate to help us respond to this time of narrow nationalisms with ambition turned to delivery. The President of our Students’ Union knows apprentices are also our students and is deeply proud to represent them and the change they represent. We speak as one on the subject of education beyond borders.
Our University is not an island. We know we must be part of the continent, and the world. We must reach out to communities made up of many who never walk through our doors as students. We must show them that fear and isolationism will not go unchallenged.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE FRS FRSW
Vice-Chancellor
21 July 2016
Staff update: Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation
Dear colleague
I am delighted to let you know that we have appointed a new pro-vice-chancellor for research and innovation; Professor David Petley will take up the role from 1 November 2016.
Professor Petley will lead our commitment to internationally excellent research and innovation across the faculties of science, engineering, medicine, social sciences and the arts and humanities.
His work will include promoting and supporting our prestigious research institutes and centres, including the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre and the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures, as well as the development of international research partnerships with other academic institutions and organisations.
He will also be a member of the University Executive Board. We have an excellent reputation for research and innovation which impacts on the lives of people in communities around the world and Professor Petley's own research in the area of landslides, in often poor, high-mountain areas around the world, is a clear example of this - and that insight mixes with an excellent track record of senior leadership within UK universities.
Professor Petley began his university life as a geographer and then studied for a PhD in earth sciences at University College London. He then became a lecturer in environmental sciences and engineering geology, joining the University of Durham in 2000 where he became the Wilson Professor of Hazard and Risk.
While at Durham he also served as Deputy Head of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Health, then Dean of Research and Dean of Global Engagement. In 2014 he joined the University of East Anglia as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Enterprise.
My sincere thanks once again to Professor Richard Jones FRS who will step down as Pro-Vice- Chancellor for Research and Innovation on 1 September 2016 after seven years in post.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett FRS
Vice-Chancellor
7 July 2016
Post-Brexit world
Dear colleague,
I wanted to tell you how I think things now stand with regard to the post-Brexit world we are entering. I realise these are very troubling for all of us, and particularly difficult for colleagues who joined us from other parts of the EU.
I know we are all shocked by the continuing uncertainty that they face and I'd like to thank all of you who have sent your stories about work involving EU staff, collaborations and funding across our university to [email protected]. These are a powerful testimony to what the UK needs to preserve and we will use them to make the strongest case possible, and I would welcome as many of these examples as possible. The impacts of the referendum hit the University world rather fast, with the down-grading of our credit rating and some Universities experiencing particularly harsh assessments of their credit worthiness. We escaped that at least.
A rise in racist abuse of people from many countries has caused many of our international student applicants to question whether the UK is a safe place to study in. That is why we encouraged the wonderful statement of welcome to Sheffield from our local leaders, and have written to all our applicants overseas as well as having provided updated information to our agents. I have written an article in China Daily reassuring our welcome, and will be making a trip China shortly in which I will seek to secure our position and profile.
Brexit of course raises numerous specific questions. Our EU students alone bring millions a year, so we are talking to Jo Johnson about assurances on their fees going forward. Our lobbying with the sector and research bodies is continuous and we we are also working with other voices, such as our city region, Yorkshire Universities and the CBI.
But no matter what efforts we make to lobby for greater certainty, we would be kidding ourselves if we thought we could escape the impact of such momentous change, and concerns that our finances could be threatened are right.
We were already seeing tougher times before the referendum due to increased regulation, flat cash and a reduction in the public funding of teaching and research. Now we are in a new world.
So while we must lobby hard, this is also a time to be clear-headed and prudent. This means hoping for the best but preparing for the worst, if we are to preserve what is most important of our University in these turbulent times.
What you will see locally is our determined efforts to make sure we have the tightest ship possible. We will need a drive to reduce costs without losing the capability to learn and teach, and to do the internationally-leading research which is so crucial to our reputation and to the world.
We'll need your help in this. I have asked the Deputy-Vice-Chancellor to work with me and other senior colleagues to lead this work. A sense of purpose and reality is key.
I believe this is the greatest challenge for our university of our times in many ways. We must hold together - defending our values and the core of our scholarship. But we must also be ready to rethink and repurpose, and I can assure you that we will not duck this responsibility.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE FRS FRSW
Vice-Chancellor
4 July 2016 We are European Scholars
By far the worst aspect of Brexit inside the University is the awful hurt it is giving many of my colleagues. This hurt comes in many parts. The first is the shock and dismay at being labelled as nastily ‘other’. A second is the dark sense of insecurity that has enveloped them.
The effect on them is truly profound. I am inclined to think that some, perhaps many, will never be able to overcome the feeling of rejection and insult.
But I want to do more than just feel ashamed of my country.
I know that there are people in government – in particular the 15 per cent of the staff at BIS from other EU countries – who are desperate for there to be clarity on their future rights to work in the UK. Our Minister for Universities, a committed internationalist, is clearly aware of the dangers to our community of having to wait.
But every day this uncertainty that hangs above one's head is tough to get through. Every day the thoughts of leaving grow. Jo Johnson, or anyone who follows him, will have to fight damned hard to get the full rights our staff need to sleep soundly.
So what will he need to succeed? If we do not win, the loss will devastate our campuses and the work which is so precious to us and needed by the world.
It makes me sick to think of the wonderful scholarship across our University that is being threatened. The prospect of the loss of such teachers would be so awful for our future students who could be denied the prospect of learning from my EU colleagues.
I also know that there are members of staff who, in good faith, voted for us to leave the EU who are just as dismayed with the impact on some of their colleagues and the work we do. I know that none of us would knowingly cause this hurt or damage to our beloved community.
But let me tell you the deed has been done. This is no politically motivated exaggeration. I say it as your Vice-Chancellor, determined to do my best in preserving our University.
I will fight in the media and the corridors of power, but I need your help. So what can you do to bring some healing and fight for our colleagues’ rights?
We have had great success in promoting the importance of being truly international. Our #WeAreInternational campaign unites staff and students as well as institutions.
This week we hosted colleagues from across the UK committed to supporting international students at the annual conference of the UK Council for International Student Affairs. It was an opportunity to reboot these efforts and it was eagerly welcomed by staff from far beyond the 100 universities who had already backed our work. We have already been in touch with all other universities in the UK to unite around this work and have told them how they can join us. So let's do the scholarly equivalent by showing that "We are European Scholars". Let’s make it abundantly clear how much we need to value the work, and presence, of an EU colleague.
This week I have had a wide range of meetings in London with the Higher Education Funding Council for England, with the Russell Group and national policy bodies, as well as with our government department. In each, the feeling of an urgent need to answer the questions about EU staff and collaboration which would shape our future has been tangible. And what I have seen is the need, not only to reel from shock, but to act.
The Minister has asked us to give him the evidence to make the most powerful case possible for our pan-European work. I believe this must be said not just in statistics, but in the united voices of those who know it best.
Would you help me by writing a paragraph on what an EU member of staff or student has done for the UK or the world? You could do it with a colleague or student if you like.
You see, if you are not being threatened by right-to-work issues you may have more energy than those who are living with uncertainty.
Even if you are a UK citizen, your EU funding may be threatened by us being outside the ERA.
You may have already found it harder to be part of a European collaboration, for example. We all need to show how important mobility of scholars is to us, and to the country.
Let's work with our European Scholars and demonstrate the impact they have on UK society in all its aspects. Joint work with EU colleagues counts. Work that came out of an EU collaboration counts. Teaching and service to our fellow citizens' health and future counts.
I am asking you to help us say what we know. Scholarship has no borders, never has and never will. Scholarship with borders is not scholarship. Tell us how this happens in the areas you know best.
We need a stock of stories to tell our politicians, and the people who will influence their decisions, our fellow citizens in Sheffield.
This might well be critical in any negotiations that are ahead. I want us to help our politicians to know – in technicolour – what would be lost if we are not part of the ERA.
I'll start the ball rolling by asking Research and Innovation Services to look at our Research Impact statements to begin part of this celebration. Our communications colleagues will amplify what we reveal.
You may have seen that I am putting time and effort into making this case crystal clear to the wider public. I am doing so in both the UK media as well as publications overseas, and I will keep this up. But now I need your direct experience and specialist knowledge to help secure the next stage of answers needed for our colleagues, our students and our work. These will be collated as an undeniable chorus of the value we place on scholarship beyond borders, and will be an intellectual resource in winning the ground we need to sustain our work.
These are the most challenging times many of us have seen in higher education, not to mention our politics. There is change on every front and it is easy to be dismayed.
I am asking for more. I am asking for your support, for your help and your action. In our difficult hour, I want us to lead. We will not be alone.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE FRS FRSW
Vice-Chancellor
27 June 2016
EU referendum: what next?
Dear colleagues,
After the shock of the EU referendum result last week, and as the implications become clearer for our University and beyond, I wanted to write to let you know what this University is doing to ensure that we preserve the scholarship and values of an inclusive global community which are so precious to us all.
As I said in my message to staff last week, I am personally dismayed at the harm we may have done, but I am determined to make the very best of our strengths and to seek the reassurance many of you will need.
In some cases, answers will be slow in coming, with a timetable outside our control. However, I will keep up the pressure to do all I can.
This coming week I will be in London meeting with the Minister for Universities as well as the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) of which I am a board member, the Russell Group of research intensive universities and the Higher Education Policy Institute. I will also be meeting with colleagues from the research community and a number of key partners.
In each of these meetings, I will be seeking to continue the work which is so crucial for our students, scholarship and communities. I will also be seeking opportunities which we shall need more than ever in the months and years ahead.
I have also tasked a number of colleagues to work quickly in support of key groups, drawing together advice we can share with home and international students (in particular those from other EU states), applicants, our own staff, research leads and research partners, alumni and other advisers.
Our Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Shearer West will work closely with me on longer term scenario planning, supported by expertise from across our University. I had already asked her to lead vital work to consider the most efficient use of our human and financial resources against a background of reduced public funding and a national downturn in international student numbers. This whole-university perspective will be even more essential in the current situation.
It is also important that we remember our wider communities. This University is essential to the wellbeing of its city and region and our success is the core of opportunity and economic growth. As an employer, bringer of inward investment (through students and our research partners) our city leaders all acknowledge that our role is key. I will be making sure they know we have not forgotten that, and I am confident they will be with us as we lobby for crucial policy changes or investment.
As I said last week, the challenges we face will be many, and the uncertainty and sadness felt by many of you at this outcome is tangible. I am heartened at the support I see our students and staff showing for one another.
This morning we have heard that EU nationals or their family members, currently in higher education or due to begin courses this autumn, will continue to receive loans and grants until they finish their course.
But those of you who have specific questions do please share them with your line managers or email directly to [email protected]. I will also be making time in my diary as far as possible to speak with many of you over the coming weeks, and I will share with you more concrete information and our response to that as soon as I can.
To all those of you who have offered me your support at this difficult time of transition, thank you. We shall face our challenges together, knowing that we share the privilege of teaching and seeking to understand which have sustained this institution for over a century.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE FRS FRSW
Vice-Chancellor
24 June 2016
University response to the outcome of the EU referendum
Dear Colleagues, Following the EU referendum, we now know that the UK has made the decision to leave the European Union. I know that many of you, like myself, will have strong feelings about this decision and deep concerns about what it will mean for the future of our continent, our country and our University.
Our University is a community of international scholarship which includes many who are citizens of other EU countries. I know that those of you who are in this category will have many questions about what this will mean for you personally, as will all those who are directly involved in work dependent on EU collaboration and funding.
I want to first of all make clear to you my personal commitment that we shall do all in our power to hold together as a University community and to secure answers at this difficult time. This may take some time, but we will work closely with our colleagues in other institutions and higher education bodies to give you the answers you will need.
The advice I have received so far from Universities UK is that we should remember that the UK leaving the EU will not happen overnight.
The Lisbon Treaty foresees a two year negotiation process between the UK and other Member States, during which time the terms of the UK’s exit from the European Union will be decided. For this reason there will not be any immediate material change to the immigration status of current and prospective EU students and staff or to the UK university sector’s participation in EU programmes such as Horizon 2020 and Erasmus+.
However, I have asked colleagues to focus on the questions I know we will have and to develop answers to questions which we will share via a dedicated web page (requires University login details) over the coming days.
This information will be extended as we know more ourselves. You can also email us your questions at: [email protected].
Clearly this is a worrying time for many. I would like though to thank all of you for your dedication to the scholarship which brought many of you to Sheffield in the first place, and the care for students and inspiring research which changes lives in so many ways.
I will be doing all in my power to ensure that this precious contribution is protected and that you receive all the advice you need to continue to thrive as part of this University.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE FRS FRSW
Vice-Chancellor
20 June 2016 A question of identity
I don't know about you, but these last few weeks have left me wondering what I should think of our country. I've been shocked at the opinions that some have been voicing. I have felt at times that I am not in the place I grew up.
Have I misunderstood what this land of my birth really is?
I am reflecting on the fact that I have nearly always been a student in a university. I have had the blessing of living in a community of scholars in Boulder Colorado, in London, in Oxford and now in Sheffield.
Over recent months I have felt great comfort from my conversations with colleagues across the UK. They have buoyed me up when I felt down.
I have worried that our oasis of intellectual and societal tolerance is threatened by the storm that swirls around us. Could we even suffer a 'Stockholm syndrome' and start sharing the emotions that live and breathe around us? Could we lose the centre of our lives as scholars?
We know we cannot be completely independent of the world around us and we don't want to be. We think, too, of our students. I am deeply grateful for the efforts made by my colleagues to encourage and enable our students to vote in the referendum. Given that they will live with the consequences of the result for most of their lives, I really do hope their voices will be heard at full throat.
We are lucky - we love what we do. We work to increase the understanding of what our scholarship can give. And we know that academics have confronted ignorance down the ages.
But I think we'll need to do more.
So what should we do now? Just keep our heads down? 'Keep to our knitting'?
Unfortunately, we have even heard some saying that they are tired of 'the experts'. Others are saying that we are part of the elite that doesn't care about the common man; that we are part of the problem.
Well I believe that we do care, and that much of our work is often aimed at the improvement of the lives of our fellow citizens.
If we have failed to explain what we do, then let's go back to the task of explaining and doing, with a conviction as well as with humility.
With thanks for the students who come to learn from us.
With thanks for the funding we get from charities, industry and government. (We may need to work harder to get the funds we need, and to make the very most of what we do receive). With renewed commitment to our founding principles.
I believe our work will be needed more than ever, whatever the outcome of this week's referendum.
So we shall continue to drive innovation in science, technology and medicine; to understand our society through the ages and what we can be in the future; to protect the food we eat on this planet.
We know that our home is a speck in a vast universe. But on that speck we have built observatories where we see the ripples in space time from the truly violent events of far, far away.
We'll do our best to learn and inspire future generations, and to be a refuge - a refuge for those who seek a place where discovery and debate over ideas are its King and Queen.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE FRS FRSW
Vice-Chancellor
31 May 2016
A test we must not fail
Last week I was in New York City with The University of Sheffield in America. The reunion took place in the University Club on Fifth Avenue, a historic refuge of calm and comfort on the bustling Isle of Manhattan.
Before travelling down to Washington for meetings at the Brookings Institute, I took the chance to visit Ellis Island, the reception centre for millions of immigrants to the United States. It is now the National Immigration Museum and a popular tourist destination.
When I first visited Ellis Island many years ago, I was struck by the pain of separation of loved ones that migration caused. I had even been an immigrant to the USA myself, but by the time of the visit then had returned to family and friends in the UK. I keenly felt the sadness of those who never saw their families again.
This time my reaction was oh-so-different. Now it was the grandeur of the reception buildings that hit me in the eye.
I saw an efficient one-stop-shop for all the issues a migrant faced, including financial, legal and healthcare – everything to look after the need of the new arrivals. I learned that over 40 charities brought clothing and legal advice, as well as doughnuts and coffee, to the people waiting to be processed in the grand arrival hall. The pictures of the migrants showed families with trunks full of belongings arriving with trepidation but clear dignity. The men wore their suits and hats as if on a Church family outing. They had travelled in humble fashion, in steerage, but safe from the elements in the great ocean-going liners of the day. When they arrived at Ellis Island, they certainly had to prove they would not be a 'charge on the state', but only two per cent were turned back.
On this visit I thought what a paradise this would seem to those trying to cross by a smuggler's inflatable boat across the Mediterranean, fleeced of their possessions and in danger of drowning. The money they might have used in starting a new life too often stolen from them by the evil exploiters we have failed to nab. I remembered those living under canvas in filthy camps, or risking death on the underside of lorries.
And then I thought, why is there no Ellis Island in the English Channel?
Why do we let 'them' die in the sea? Do we just feel justified because we presume the deaths will discourage others?
Some Americans of that time would have believed this, no doubt. Anti-immigrant feeling is nothing new.
In the museum we saw posters for meetings of the groups that opposed immigration. There were banners proclaiming America for Americans – although I'm not sure what the great nations that lived across America before the Europeans came thought of that. There were notices for town commerce meetings which were Anti-Chinese.
Now we are seeing the same in England. The objections raised to migration were, of course, precisely those we hear today spoken in the UK. And I mean precisely the same. They were also stuff and nonsense.
Try to imagine what the USA would be without the migration that made it strong. It was and is 'the power that has made and preserved a nation' as much as the God in whom they trust.
While in the US I visited my fellow physicist and friend, Nobel Laureate Bill Phillips. Bill has a Welsh father and an Italian mother. His grandmother came through Ellis Island. Bill's scholarship ensures the US is at the forefront of science and technology in measuring time – his work has applications which make America great in everything from commerce to navigation.
So how can we overcome the fear that migration seems to cause, despite such a wealth of evidence of its benefits?
I am sure there are many appeals to reason we could make but first let's be clear about what we know we should do.
It is our irrefutable duty as civilised people to welcome and help these distressed brothers and sisters. Don't try to wheedle out of this. If you do happen to have any religious leaning, just remind yourself that all religions are damning (many literally) of those who fail to show compassion.
So now to the other good reasons. We should welcome the stranger because we shall and do benefit from the talents they bring. Because we need their ambition and drive, the work and resilience which brings a transfusion of determination and thankfulness into more comfortable societies.
How do we know? The real question is, ‘how could we forget?’ After all, this has all happened before in the 1930s.
Anyone who works in higher education has special reason to be aware of this history. Our great universities welcomed and were then lifted by scholars from Nazi Germany and those fleeing Hitler's laws on ethnicity or political views.
The story is told in a book by the reformist economist Lord Beveridge called A Defence of Free Learning. He tells how 2,600 refugee scholars were taken in by Britain in the darkest of days supported by a group of people who just couldn't stand by.
These scholars called themselves The Society for the Protection of Science and Learning. Their first President was the then-President of the Royal Society, the Physicist Lord Rutherford. Although committed to other work, he 'exploded with wrath at the treatment of scientific colleagues he knew and valued'. He did all in his power to bring his influence to bear to welcome those who needed help.
Endorsement also came from eminent thinkers such as John Maynard Keynes and AE Housman. Appeals for funds were supported by Winston Churchill.
British universities each did their part. By the time Beveridge wrote his book, the refugee scholars they had helped included 64 professors, 32 Fellows of the Royal Society, 17 Fellows of the British Academy and four Nobel Prize winners. One of these was our own Hans Krebs.
I know we cannot convince everyone about the benefits of immigration, but if we don't understand how much they befitted academia we are truly ignorant.
So what should I do? And what will I ask others to do with me?
To my surprise, the work has already begun. As I share what Rutherford called 'outrage', others want to help. Our students and alumni respond as one. Some like Edmund de Waal are the children of refugees. Others such as our former Students' Union President Abdi Suleiman came to this country in later waves of desperate humanity.
But from New York to the streets of Sheffield I have found those willing to assist. And there are modern day leaders in the Royal Society and British Academy who I am certain will feel the same. I shall ask them and other university leaders to support the call for aid. In the meantime, we will raise funds to welcome scholars here to Sheffield. On 5 June we will walk together – scholars, students, city leaders and refugees – from the beautiful rural edge of our city to this University. We will show solidarity for those who walk not by choice but from need. I hope you will join us. Together we will pledge to do what we should in our own times.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE FRS FRSW
Vice-Chancellor
17 March 2016
Walking in support of refugee staff and students
Surely one of the most powerful images any of us have seen this year has been the sight of thousands of refugees making the long walk from countries where they fear for their lives to what they hope will be a new life for them and their families.
In the mass of people making journeys across forests and oceans, it is hard to pick out individual stories or to seriously imagine ourselves in the same situation. Yet in our University we have a particular reason to hold faith with those who make such a perilous journey; some of our own community had to do just the same.
Think of our Nobel Laureate Hans Krebs who fled fascism and later spent "nineteen happy years" in our University. Think of our former Students' Union President Abdi-aziz Suleiman who left Somalia with his mother when he was three and found refuge in our own city of Sheffield, growing up in Broomhall.
I personally think of our Syrian Academic Fellow, Dr Moaed Almeselmani. Dr Almeselmani was previously a lecturer at Damascus University and a Senior Researcher at the General Commission for Scientific Agricultural Research in Syria. After being threatened in his home by regime forces he fled to Turkey and then to Jordan with his family. Their home was destroyed by missiles.
Dr Almeselmani was awarded a fellowship by the Institute of International Education's Scholar Rescue Fund to allow him to resume his academic work in a safe country. The fellowship required matched funding by the host institution which the Faculty of Science and our alumni fund provided. Dr Almeselmani undertakes research on drought tolerant wheat. His work fits perfectly with our plant research which will benefit communities around the world.
We are a university with a long-standing tradition of welcoming refugees as academics and as students based in a City of Sanctuary. Yet we want to do more, to welcome more refugee scholars and students who will in turn be able to give back to our communities. Which is why I am personally committed to supporting a series of events as part of this year's Big Walk.
What is the Big Walk?
For the last two years, students, staff and alumni have come together to raise funds and the profile of an important charitable cause (previously hearing and lung research) as part of the Big Walk. This year two teams of ten walkers will spend five days walking the Trans Pennine Trail (one team from the east coast - one team from the west coast - meeting in the middle at Tankersley on Friday 17 June)
Big Walk One-Day Challenge
On Friday 17 June, the two teams will walk together to Sheffield and will be joined by staff, students and alumni who want to undertake a one-day 18-mile fundraising challenge. It is hoped that both those taking part in the Big Walk and the One-Day Challenge will raise sponsorship funds for refugee scholars.
Sheffield Walk for Refugees
However, this year we want to add something more.
Over recent months, our staff and students have worked closely with partners across the city of Sheffield to reach out to refugees and asylum seekers. We have offered support, shared stories and raised awareness. And those asylum seekers have reached back to us and astounded us with their hard-won wisdom and gifts. People like the Professors of Surgery and Anatomy who escaped conflict in Iraq and who have worked with Professor Nigel Bax and the School of Medicine to share their knowledge with our students, the doctors of the future.
So this year I am also linking with our Students' Union President and leaders from our city and faith communities, those staff and students who wish to join us, as well as asylum seekers themselves on a walk to the University. The date for this event will be on the afternoon of Sunday 5 June.
It would be wonderful if those who participated felt able to make a donation to support refugee scholars and students. But whether walkers are in a position to make a financial contribution or not, we want to demonstrate our shared values of solidarity with those in the greatest need.
Colleagues from DARE will shortly be in touch with those of you interested in being one of the 20 walkers covering the Trans Pennine Trail or taking part in the final day 18-mile hike. If however you would like to do the shorter five-mile walk to express solidarity with refugees and raise some funds on the way, please do register your interest via the link below. Once we have a clearer idea of numbers, we will confirm the route of the walk for this larger group.
The Spanish philosopher Y Gasset wrote, "Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are." When we look at an asylum seeker, what do we see? Do we recognise the person who may be desperate to learn, to complete a PhD, to share their research and teaching, to train students in our Medical School?
I would like to thank you in advance for your support of this initiative, and the sense right across our community that we continue to be a home for scholarship which crosses borders of every kind. I am deeply proud to be the Vice-Chancellor of such a University.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett, CBE,FRS,FRSW
Vice-Chancellor
11 March 2016
How should Sheffield respond to the challenges facing higher education?
Last week the Minister for Universities and the Secretary of State for Business, Industry and Skills (BIS) sent a letter to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).
The letter outlines details of funding for English higher education and the policies which are likely to shape how universities work over the coming months and years. Alongside a steady increased reliance on student fees, English universities face a 7.9 per cent cut in their teaching grants in 2016–17, with protection around more costly STEM subjects. Capital funds for teaching fall from £300m this year to £140m next year and £100m the year after. Funds earmarked for widening participation were halved in the Spending Review and will be re- targeted by HEFCE. Spending on research and innovation will remain flat.
We also see some recognition that higher education must be much more deeply involved in any changes. The government will ask HEFCE to take responsibility for delivering the Teaching Excellence Framework in 2017. The future of quality assurance mechanisms for English higher education remain uncertain and subject to review. The future of government research funding is also less clear, as we wait for the findings of the review led by Lord Stern, and although the dual system of research funding is recognised as important, the respective roles of HEFCE and the Research Councils may change.
The relationship between EU membership and the effectiveness of UK Science will be much debated in the coming weeks and months alongside the free movement of students and graduates in a single labour market.
So what does all this mean for our University and for higher education more widely?
The BIS letter follows the publication of a green paper on higher education with proposals ranging from the future of various sector bodies to the controversial Teaching Excellence Framework and the greater marketisation of higher education. Our University responded to that green paper in detail but also in principle. In addition to a careful response to a series of detailed questions, I submitted a joint statement with the President of the Students’ Union reinforcing our shared concern for the wider public benefit of higher education and the need to avoid a monetarised view of the value of a degree purely as a private investment. We also spoke of the importance we placed on access to higher education in practice, holding faith with a vision of education which would have been understood by our University’s founders.
Many of us also raised our concerns in public and in private. We can see that higher education is again being asked to change. We can debate whether these latest reforms represent a fundamental change or business as usual. The important question for me is how this squares with our own aims and values, and our determination to be a progressive civic university? How does it sit with our commitment to excellent scholarship and genuine innovation in teaching, with our deep care for access, our commitment to delivering social mobility and the ability of a university to bring genuine societal and economic change to communities?
When the University of Sheffield was founded in 1905, the people of the city had a clear vision. They wanted a world-class university that would bring the highest standard of teaching and research to Sheffield, powering the economy, addressing social problems and transforming lives.
Time and again our University has sought to do what we believed was right rather than the obvious thing to do. We’ve continued to apply the latest technology and innovative thinking, finding extraordinary solutions that help to shape a better future for everyone. We’re working to ensure that the University of Sheffield is an international centre of excellence for centuries to come. And our vision is clearer than ever.
We have set out ambitious goals in our new Strategic Plan. We are on the record for speaking up early for the value of international students to our research and learning communities, to our city and nation. We have received numerous awards for our sincere efforts to create new ways to fulfil the promise of our founders to bring higher education within the reach of ‘the child of the working man [sic]’. When others initially cast doubt on its relevance, we built a state-of-the-art apprentice training centre at the heart of our advanced manufacturing research campus and worked with HEFCE to develop a degree programme in manufacturing engineering which would offer young people and employers the skills of the future, without debt.
Personally I have increasingly written on these issues for an audience beyond higher education, explaining the value of what we do to our country and the ways I believe we must change. We have taken our apprentices with us to speak to the great and good in our capital city, and to challenge misconceptions. We have spoken with our international students in the Houses of Parliament. I have said the same things to ministers as I did in the privileged setting of the British Academy when I gave the annual address to the Council of the Defence of British Universities. I have done so because it has become apparent to me that we cannot take for granted that what we have long valued will be understood by those who shape our future. I am deeply grateful that in doing so I have so often had the support of colleagues, students and alumni, and of the civic leaders and employers within our city region.
The issues we face next are, however, deeply challenging. These are not only questions for Sheffield, but I believe we have a vital role to play.
As the saying goes, we would not choose to start here. Many of us benefitted from education funded by the state, and we are deeply concerned that this has been withdrawn for current and future generations. We fear that rhetoric around immigration might undermine our international community. But we also know that we must make our own future, albeit not in the circumstances of our own choosing.
I believe Sheffield has something important to offer at a time when the government is asking people to personally meet the costs of higher education. We have values to defend, areas where we must be open to change and we need to be ready to seize opportunities – inspired by the same spirit which led to our founders building the University of which we are custodians.
I’m holding a staff event in May at which I will personally address colleagues on these issues, giving time for discussion of the challenges we face on many fronts. In the meantime, I would also like to thank each of you for your tremendous efforts in making our University what it is and what I believe it can be.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE, FRS, FRSW
Vice-Chancellor
23 February 2016
What is The University of Sheffield’s position on the European Union?
As the debate about the UK’s place in the EU gets underway, I am being asked by individuals and organisations about what position our University should take. Should we stay or should we go?
This is not as easy to answer as you might imagine. No matter how clearly, or strongly, you or I may personally feel about this, our University is a charity and constrained in speaking on political matters. So what should we do? What role should we play?
We should be what we have always been.
A university is first and foremost a place of understanding and proper debate, with a tradition of allowing different sides to be heard in an atmosphere of respect and challenge. When the Council of the University discussed this issue yesterday, we began the planning of campus events needed to promote the healthy debate we all want. We shall all have our own views and will be free to express these respectfully and with conviction.
We shall also do all in our power to ensure that our students find it as simple as possible to take part in the democratic process; we have an excellent success rate in ensuring those who are studying with us can take up their legitimate place on the electoral roll.
One big issue that we all agree on, and the Council would want me to shout across the rooftops, is the extraordinary importance of our students and staff from across the whole world. We are an immeasurably better place to live, work and do real good in the world because of being a global community. We are in the top 100 of universities and very proud of it. Many of our wonderful staff and students come, of course, from the EU.
So when asked as an individual scientist, I will of course speak out. But I will also bear in mind that my personal view may differ from the views of others. I hope that the debate can be broadly based on all the issues that will affect the future of the United Kingdom and not the rather narrow base of issues that I have seen in the press. You will not be surprised that I will also want to talk about the benefits that membership of the EU has brought to vital research or how regeneration funds from Europe were crucial to building our Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre.
Beyond this institutional perspective, my personal belief in the value of the European Union stems from a precious peace between former foes. I count myself deeply fortunate that, in my lifetime, conflict has not engulfed our continent. I also think of my gratitude to and admiration for those who taught me from across Europe, and those who I have in turn taught. I know that the quality of our universities owes an enormous debt to scholars who travelled (or occasionally fled) to the UK from neighbouring nations on the continent.
So how should we speak about Europe? Over the next few months we will listen to and take part in a debate which I hope will be shaped by facts and purpose, but which I fear may occasionally be saturated in myth and xenophobia. I already know that the tone of discussions in the media and politics has made hard listening for some of our colleagues, including those who have lived in the UK for many years and in some cases brought up their children in this country. For the first time in their experience, some people are feeling uncomfortably foreign.
Our University prides itself on being an international community, one in which we attempt to model the cooperation and respect for difference often sadly missing in our world. I trust we will do our best to ensure that whatever decision is made on 23 June our University is not divided.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE FRS FLSW
Vice-Chancellor of The University of Sheffield
11 February 2016
Gravitational waves – why today is a wonderful day for our University
Today is a great day for our University and for science. Truly we live in an age of wonders!
At 3.30pm today came the formal announcement that gravitational waves – predicted by Einstein a hundred years ago – have been directly observed for the first time. The sight of these ‘ripples in space time’ offers a way of looking into the furthest and oldest reaches of the universe.
As a physicist, I feel a particular pride and awe. As Vice-Chancellor, I am deeply proud to say that physicists here at our University have played a vital part. The work of Sheffield has been led by our own Dr Ed Daw from Physics and Astronomy.
The news led me to reflect on the great scientific endeavour which led to this point. One of the most remarkable experiments I did as an undergraduate involved using a Michelson Interferometer. It is my favourite instrument. Albert Abraham Michelson was a quite remarkable physicist. Born in Prussia, he left for the US with his asylum-seeking parents when he was just two years old and eventually started his career at the Naval Academy at Annapolis. He was the first US citizen to win a Nobel Prize.
Michelson is most famous for his work with Morley in showing that there was no ‘Aether’ that would define a unique frame of reference for the world. This was part of the confirmation of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity.
The experiment I was doing as an undergraduate used the Michelson as a way to analyse the spectrum of light from a light source. Perhaps the most beautiful instruments of this type that I ever saw were in Harry Kroto's lab at Sussex. Harry was using his interferometers to study the infrared spectra of molecules that could be present in the interstellar medium. Part of these studies led to his Nobel Prize in discovering C60.
I even built a type of Michelson of my own that looked at atom, rather than light, interference. At one stage I thought atom interferometers might get a steal on the optical kind. I also tried to look at how to make a Michelson super sensitive using quantum tailored states of light.
And now we have seen the announcement of the detection of gravitational waves using the most sensitive Michelson ever built. With arms 3km long, it is able to detect the ripples in space time created by two black holes spiralling into each other in a distant part of our universe. There is no other way to ‘see’ this event and it is an extraordinary achievement.
The baby Michelson I used as an undergraduate sat on a small bench in the lab. The Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational Observatory has a Michelson bigger than our University! (There is even a joint project between NASA and the European Space Agency to build a Michelson using satellites which would make it bigger than our planet.) I have been lucky in my career to meet many of the scientists involved in this extraordinary quest – we should really pay tribute to the epic journey which has led to this day. It has taken the development of a range of formidable technologies.
Where does the courage come to pursue this quest?
No one really doubted waves existed, and their role in the binary pulsar confirmed their existence, but to detect them on earth, surely this was too much to expect. It demanded a range of new and ultra-sensitive technologies in optics and instrument control that had never before been attained.
Over the years I have visited the laboratories that built these instruments. The first one I looked at in some detail was at the Max Planck Institute in Munich in 1982. The work was already mind- blowingly impressive 30 years ago. I heard my colleagues talk about the financial and the social aspects. I so admire those who kept going through decades of challenges that would only yield to the very smartest and most dedicated of people.
Today’s announcement marks a triumph for those who pursue knowledge to its furthest reaches, and to live at a time when this is possible fills me with joy. It is also a testament to our civilisation and its political leaders and funders that they kept the faith in this way. Long may they continue to see that sometimes it is vital to fund research which spends decades seeking the evidence of that which you knew must be true but had not yet witnessed.
One of my favourite textbooks is Albert Michelson’s Study in Optics – a text which will also be familiar to Ed Daw. In its foreword, Harvey Lemon says of Michelson that when asked to justify the investment of large sums of money in researches in pure science, he was ‘quite able to grasp their point of view and cite cogent reasons why industry and humanity could be seen to have direct benefits from such work.’ But his own motivation was described by his associates as artistic, an aesthetic pleasure. He simply said, ‘It is such good fun.’
Today the work of many bears fruit. We should be both humbled and grateful to live in an age when such wonders are possible. And to those in our own community of scholars, both academics and the PhD students who have been working with them, we salute this wonderful achievement.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE FRS FLSW
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield
21 December 2015
Render unto Caesar... At the moment there are a lot of smart people thinking about how to make the most of the changes proposed in the Higher Education Green Paper. They are putting a great deal of effort into the consultation and I am sure this will produce crucial advice to the civil servants charged with constructing a new way of regulating higher education.
In the last few weeks I have been reflecting on my own feelings on these proposals that will create profound changes for universities in the years ahead. It would be a real comfort to me if I could see an approach to universities in which new private providers can make higher quality and lower priced higher education products.
I am not a proponent of the status quo. My own University was founded on a progressive idea, supported by local citizens and private philanthropy as well as an instinct to widen participation. I expect the fledgling universities in the industrial North didn’t feel much like the familiar environs of an Oxford college like St John’s, where I spent two decades as a teacher.
There are plenty of assumptions in universities that need to be challenged. Originally higher education in this country was open only to those of the official religion of the nation. Catholics, Quakers and Jews were all barred, confined to the world of trade – where they thrived and indeed contributed massively to the prosperity of the nation. Women who now make up over 50% of undergraduates were once also on the outside of the so-called ivory tower. It is right to ask ourselves what we do, why we do it and whether or not it is time for a rethink.
So I have been thinking. Over recent months, I have written about the marketisation ideas that I see driving government proposals. Again, I don’t want to dismiss ideas without fair consideration. Markets can be enormously effective when deployed and regulated in the right way. But their limitations are equally enormous.
Yet as I have considered the implications of our proposed new world, I have also felt more and more aware of having been brought up in a different age for universities, and that I might be a dinosaur who cannot appreciate the benefits of change. I expect in the corridors of power, the word Vice-Chancellor is seen as synonymous with protecting privilege.
But are my concerns only those of someone who sees what about our past we need to protect? My discussion with our student sabbatical officers has convinced me that I am not so far away from their reactions, and this has spurred me on to think and say more.
Along the way, I have read the work of those with deep insights into the nature and operation of markets, as well as their intrinsic limitations.
In my simplistic view, the debate boils down to that between two of the truly great social scientists of the twentieth century - Friedrich Hayek and Karl Polanyi. Hayek says markets make for a better, and crucially freer, world as each and every transaction is completed for the mutual benefit of the parties involved. Polanyi says the underlying cost of each and every transaction is the destruction of a relationship that could make a true society possible. They are both right in some sense, and we may even be able to have some cheaper and ‘better’ courses under a market approach. But this is a solution with a heavy price. The result will be a loss of all the relationships we hold dear, which are fundamental to what education is at its best.
If this sounds sentimental then you are hearing me right. But don't think for a moment that sentimentality is weak. Surely the most important people in our lives are those who see us as more than a customer. If your parents saw you as an investment vehicle you would be shocked. And you would be right to be shocked. If your teacher saw you as only a source of their income you would be right in thinking that the world had gone wrong.
Why do I love listening to our alumni talking about their teachers of many years ago, often retired, sometimes no longer with us? Why do I read out the names of staff and students who have passed since our last Senate meeting, as we stand to mark the loss of a Professor of 80 years and the tragic accidental death of one of our apprentices, aged just 19? It is because I am a sentimental old fool, who believes that these memories are precious, that our University is an extended family. And I am not alone in thinking this.
What is more, I am sure that a world, in which these family ties are substituted for by transactions, where values have to be grafted onto a vital commercial growth, will not stand the test of time. In our institution, each year I privately lay a wreath with our own students to the hundreds of students and staff who lost their lives in the world war. We do so at a University of Sheffield memorial, a tradition which has been maintained for over a hundred years. Identity runs deep.
Markets require ease of entry, and of exit. What happens to an interest in preparing a student for a lifetime, if their degree provider ceases to exist? Can we outsource our care for the next generation? Can we TUPE our relationship with our children?
Private provision is not automatically a problem – the crucial factor is what it is offering. Private companies driven by shareholder interest naturally focus on short-term reward. A private provider may teach you a skill – offer driving instruction or teach you to master a project management package.
We are not trying to close down shops. We are not against customers and we may be these ourselves at times. But we are trying to do something different. Simply calling something a degree or a university does not make it the same ‘product’.
Students are with us for formative years as they make a transition from home to independence and the careers which will shape their future, not to mention the world around them. Intrinsic to this is both private and public benefit. They will study a subject in depth, along the way learning how to think and also creating knowledge – taking their ideas and energies into communities around them, identifying challenges and discovering friendships which often last decades.
In each of these situations, they are learning and so are we. Teaching excellence is not restricted to a lab or a lecture theatre. It is found throughout our community, it is a mode of being. And it changes how our graduates then think and act in the world for the rest of their lives.
So how do we explain, without complacency or stridency, what matters to us and why?
We have to work with our elected government to keep what is the best of higher education. This will be tricky to say the least. But for my part, I think we must carry on doing what we have done since the founding of our University, which was first and foremost to be ‘for the people’. We shall learn and teach. We shall study and learn all we can about this wonderful – and occasionally bleak - world we live in, because it is the right thing to do.
We shall teach what we have learned to the best of our abilities, because it is the right thing to do. And our students will change and show that our greatest product is not modules but people.
In doing so, we shall pass on the best of ourselves to a new generation, and help them to pick up the mantle of responsibility for our planet. They will do so – like those who came before them - fortified with knowledge, a spirit of enquiry and the courage they will sometimes need to say what is important, even against the trend.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE FRS FLSW
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield
27 November 2015
Scholarship and courage
On Wednesday I had the great pleasure of listening to Sir Paul Nurse, Nobel Laureate and President of the Royal Society, give our final KrebsFest lecture. It was an inspiring account of the great ideas of Biology, and was a truly fitting celebration of the legacy of Sir Hans Krebs in Sheffield. Sir Paul’s presentation followed lectures by Nobel Laureates Sir Richard Roberts and Professor Jules Hoffman.
What a treat we have had in hearing these inspirational speakers. The events and the wonderful artistic work brought forth by our academic impresarios, Professors Vanessa Toulmin and Simon Foster, have wowed the audience, and shown how artistic creativity can fuse with science to move the human spirit.
We are justly proud of the tradition of research in biology that Sir Hans Krebs established here in Sheffield, a tradition that continues to the present day to enrich our University. The events and lectures have been a great and proper celebration of that tradition. As I gave some words of thanks to Sir Paul for his lecture, I was filled with thoughts of others, such as Hans Krebs, who had been forced to leave their homelands. I was also acutely aware that the night of the lecture was the centenary of Albert Einstein's presentation of his work on general relativity to the Prussian Academy of Scientists. That most brilliant of scientists, just like Hans Krebs, was expelled from his University post by the Nuremberg laws in 1933.
And so the evil that drove those brilliant Jewish scientists from their homes brought us their talents. Einstein, along with many German scholars, ended up transforming the United States scientific community and our own. We in Sheffield were blessed to receive Hans Krebs with his ideas that would transform our understanding of the biochemistry of life.
At the same time, Sir Rudolph Peierls, who was one of the first to understand the power of nuclear weapons, and whose work ensured the Allied powers had nuclear capability before the Axis powers, was welcomed by the University of Birmingham. (He lectured to me in Oxford and said he was teaching us in the way the great Sommerfeld did in Munich in the 1930s.)
And, closer to me personally, Heine Kuhn, moved from Goettingen to Oxford and established the atomic physic group there. This is the group of academics who taught me as an undergraduate and who guided me in my doctoral work.
Many others came, fleeing the persecution, and brought a giant wave of ideas and talent that has changed all our lives for the better. Their loss of home and hearth brought us the greatest of gifts.
So why is this so relevant now?
Our history, our survival as a free nation, was transformed by migrants who by transforming our academy, gave us the ability to win a war against fascism. And it is a great failure of mankind that the bulk of the Jews, who could not move to a new life, were left behind in Germany to die in the Holocaust that followed.
So when I thanked Sir Paul I had to remind him that we would be welcoming some Syrian scholars and students, fleeing the awful situation they face due to war and its desolation. In fact, the very first of these desperate but able academics arrived in our University this week. I asked the audience to think what blessings he and others like him will bring us in the years ahead.
I did not need to wait long for answers. At the wonderful installation of our new Chancellor yesterday, she spoke powerfully to a spellbound audience of what will truly unleash the power of education.
She did so by describing two scenarios in which a woman of great intelligence and moral strength thought for herself and acted with purpose. That woman was our Chancellor’s own mother:
“So, my theme, directed primarily at the youngsters Sheffield embraces, but at all of the University’s family, is that I’ve shown you fierce intelligence, highly educated and what? What’s the distinguishing third? It’s courage. It’s courage and the determination to do what is known to be good, and strong, and true. Courage will not alone always prevail. It needs to be fortified by that rigorous analysis, by that ability to reason, and then it finds its voice. There’ll always be people who are as clever as you or who, in intelligence, can out-play you. There’ll always be people who are as well educated (assuming they went to Sheffield) but what will distinguish is the trio.”
The Chancellor then awarded an honorary degree to Helena Muller, founder of the charity Lost Chord which brings music to people with dementia in care homes across the region and now the UK.
Helena, a warm force of nature, is the daughter of Polish refugees born in a military camp for refugees near Barnsley. Her husband Franz escaped the Nazis. With his support she has poured back into her adopted country the life that is her own unique gift. She has melded her skills with courage.
Our students also share this vision. All this week they have celebrated World Week, reminding themselves and one another that We Are International. This year, it seems, we need more reminding than ever.
This week we have focused on more than the news from the Spending Review that Science funding will be protected in real terms or that our CATAPULT centres at the AMRC will maintain resources – crucial though that news is for more than science and engineering at Sheffield.
We have given our attention to what a University is for, and who we welcome to make a contribution to discovery and understanding. It is for this reason that this year the usual Firth Court Christmas trees will be relocated so we can enjoy the wonderful Krebs Festival sculptures and the reminder that sometimes wise men from afar bring truly precious gifts.
What will others give? What will we give? The answer to that question will take courage and openness, but it is at the core of our University.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE FRS FLSW
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield
25 November 2015
A Letter from the Thessalonians
Professor Sir Keith Burnett; mayor of Thessaloniki; CITY College Principal Yannis Ververidis
This week I met the mayor of Thessaloniki: what a meeting. It was the best meeting I've had in some time, but it was also the worst. It was the best, firstly because the mayor is a wonderful and truly wise man, who some say would be prime minister of Greece, if he were not already in his seventies. It was also the best because I felt the commitment of the mayor's team to help the rising tide of people entering Europe through Greece. They are doing this with a powerful spirit of humanity that made me feel privileged to be with them.
And yet it was also a difficult meeting.
We were in Thessaloniki for the graduation of students through the International Faculty of our University, which trains exceptional undergraduates, postgraduates and PhD students in professional areas across the Balkans. Our alumni are truly impressive people, building the businesses and civic society of these countries. They are doing this at the highest levels and have made Sheffield's name respected by presidents and ministers.
You can see the economic crisis that goes on and is draining the country of money, talent and energy. (We even saw a demonstration in Athens that showed the fatigue in those wanting a better life than international banks are offering!) And now they have the waves of migrants entering and coming up against the closing frontiers of a failing European dream of free movement.
Because of the events in Paris, people are now confusing our duty to displaced people with the need to keep our streets safe. The mayor's team is not confused. They know a kinder world is a safer world.
So it was right that we met with the mayor of one of our own places of teaching and research. Yet as the meeting went on, I started to hope that we could help Thessaloniki, the home of CITY College, a part of our University and many exceptional graduates through our International Faculty. Could we do that, should we do that? Don't we have enough problems to solve closer to 'home'?
The Greek parents we had met earlier know that there are far too few jobs even for their own highly-educated Greek children – a nation which has had 80 per cent participation in higher education for many years. How could we possibly help these newcomers who might take the bread from their own precious children. It is, of course, only by helping all children that we can help any.
We had also learned that students trained by Sheffield in Thessaloniki had an astonishingly low rate of unemployment – 2-3 per cent. This is in a country where average unemployment rates are 25 per cent and as much as 40 per cent amongst the young. The rigour and reputation of our International Faculty opens doors. It made me proud but also sad that many of these, our students, have to leave Greece to find work. In itself that is not bad, having to travel to find work is as common as mankind, but the city and country is being drained of the lifeblood of talent.
As we talked my thoughts went to the great tragedy of the loss of the vibrant Thessaloniki, a truly cosmopolitan place where the Ottoman Empire welcomed different faiths. Its port which traded with Venice and Genoa shut on the Sabbath so that the Jews who ran it could celebrate that holiest of days of the week. It was common for traders to hold citizenship for several lands. What if all those merchants and makers – who had once brought the printing and technologies and education that drove the city – could somehow return to join their Orthodox and Muslim brothers and sisters?
Such thinking is needed for so many reasons, not just to assist the recent migrants who are an immediate cause of concern and need. Let me name a few: So that the wonderful students of our International Faculty at CITY College can stay in Thessaloniki to work. That the dispossessed of the Middle East now huddled on the city borders will be able to settle and find work. So that Jews can return to Thessaloniki and make it a place of vibrant life rather than past trauma. That people feel at home rather than feel left out of a society.
There are many more reasons, but they all come down to money of some sort or another.
How could we – just one university with policy and funding challenges raging in the UK – possibly help? How could we not?
The first and most crucial way to assist is, as the mayor made clear to us, to continue educating our students in a way which is quite clearly extraordinarily successful. This outpost of Sheffield is deeply impressive with exceptional teaching, and research undertaken by the South-East European Research Centre (SEERC) led by our former Pro-Vice-Chancellor Professor Tony Payne. We in Sheffield learn more about the fantastic work of our Thessalonian colleagues, and share crucial insights.
But our International Faculty does not only teach and research. As in Sheffield, students and staff are involved in superb public engagement work and changing civic society. They are motivated by academic values and committed to using their understanding to make the world a better place.
And now they are truly being put to the test, as are we. As we repeatedly stress, we are not a British-only university. We are international and we are European. And in this, we have experience and people who may well wish to help. We have seen in the UK what happens when we bring together students, industry and our friends and alumni who are in positions of leadership in industry and government. We understand about the need to offer training and to work with companies, to remember the needs of disadvantaged local people.
The city of Thessaloniki, despite its own challenges, is expecting to give shelter to 20,000 refugees. We know for sure that many of those who need help have a great deal to offer, that given the chance they will even create opportunity and much-needed prosperity. The University of Sheffield is already part of its city and we are a university of sanctuary, from Krebs to the present time, richer as a result.
Thessaloniki was once known for its golden age of diversity and commerce. It is still a gateway and could be more. We began working together two decades ago and we have built deep connections of real quality. Now it is time to see if we can help it have a new vision and will, so it can thrive once again for the sake of our students, the city, the Balkan region and those who are camped on the borders of Europe in such desperate need.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE FRS FLSW
Vice-Chancellor
20 November 2015
The Higher Education Green Paper - An emerging consensus?
This week I sat around a table with a dozen Sheffield graduates, ranging from a young woman who has just finished her degree and secured her first job, to experienced professionals in their forties and early fifties. The conversation turned to their experience of university and particularly of teaching. What, I asked them, mattered most to them?
The answers were varied and may surprise some who are currently trying to change how we measure teaching quality in universities. The key message was that courses had been genuinely challenging... and that was a great preparation for what had followed. Lecturers and Professors had pressed students hard, demanded essays on time, expected independent study and effective team working. All vital skills in later life.
But they also spoke of encouragement. Of university teachers who knew and cared about them, who remained the source of inspiration and warm memories. And they stressed how beyond this, the wider reputation of the institution had opened doors. Many had drawn on this reputation as they had worked around the world. They knew they had benefitted from what several said was 'one of the most important choices of my life'.
Following the publication of the Higher Education Green Paper with its recommendations on the measurement of teaching excellence, fees, marketisation and private provision, I have now had the opportunity to talk to a number of our students as well as some parents, and I thought I should share some of their reactions. The sample is small, but the emerging picture fairly clear.
The main reaction I have seen so far is a concern that we think of students simply as customers, rather than partners in an important part of their lives. University is not simply a preparation for a perfect future existence in employment, it is an important time of development and change. It is three to four years, crucial and exciting years of a person's life. Or, in my case, my whole life!
But students and parents alike know that they cannot afford to take a purely philosophical view of education. They are also clear that they want us to take the issues raised in the paper with utmost seriousness. Questions about value are no longer 'academic'. Students and families are now explicitly paying a significant amount for higher education beyond general taxation and need, and want, to be fully aware of their possible paths to a career. Many families will not have considered such a major investment for anything other than buying their own home, yet the return often seems intangible. What will they own at the end of the repayment period? Clearly the way we approach issues of employability is now impossible to ignore.
In fact, we totally agree on this and we are always looking for ways to make our University a better place to build the skills, knowledge and confidence to be a success in whatever career our students wish to pursue. Our Careers Service and academic departments are constantly looking for ways to help give our graduates vital advantages in a competitive employment market.
Graduate salaries and teaching excellence
Yet measuring the quality of teaching and the success of our students primarily against graduate salaries is another matter, and both parents and young people want reassurance, and sense the danger of unintended consequences.
The path to highly-paid and secure employment often relies as much on continuing family support and a network of connections as a good degree alone. There are also vast differences in subjects to consider. Some essential areas of study leading to vital and honourable work, create careers in teaching, social work or nursing. No matter how good the teaching, the truth is that remuneration in these roles is in a completely different league than areas such as finance.
Yet we do not want to simply train a cohort of bankers, nor is that what the nation needs. Metrics - even well-meaning ones - are full of traps for the uninitiated in the possible misinterpretation of data. Our students are also concerned that we could start to see them purely in terms of their future earnings capability.
Contact hours and feedback
Students and parents also want us to reflect on the parts of the student satisfaction surveys which point to problems. We already know what these are in individual areas of study and I know departments are working thoughtfully on them.
Contact hours and feedback are most often highlighted as an area of concern, and I have sometimes thought there should be ways to make these more straightforward to address. My own view is that time to reflect on a particular student's work, and then tailor feedback to their needs, is one of the most important and difficult of duties in our profession. When it is successful, it is simply wonderful to see the positive change in an individual. But this can be a fraught process, with a student feeling short-changed. In any case, it takes a lot of time, and time is the most precious of things in our lives. Making yet more hoops for academics to jump through will not help. Our student sabbatical officers are, however, even-handed, understand that one size does not fit all, and want us to celebrate the great teaching they have seen around the University. We are planning how to do this with them, so we can learn from the best, rather than simply respond to the worst anecdotes.
Even the demand for increased contact hours and the desire of many parents to make their offspring visibly work harder for the money are greeted with caution. Rather than legitimate concern, our students tell me they quickly see TEF performance as a way to increase the fees they have to pay and not a way to improve what they get.
Perhaps it is just our students who have such a long term view about what education and life are about. But I doubt it. I think many students regard themselves as being much more than simply customers.
Parents will have a different view of our students' lives and often focus on whether we are testing and challenging the junior members of their families in the right way. Contact hours are a perennial concern and one we sometimes struggle with.
Again it is time consuming and we look for ways to reduce the load on busy academics. We have failed to explain why academics are really busy, or how students are genuinely pushed. That a profound learning experience may not only be in a lecture, but in an experience or enterprise or engagement which takes what has been learned out of the lab or library, and into the world.
Yet the suspicion remains that we are overcharging, despite the reality that often costs are subsidised. We are still seen as pursuing our research for selfish ends. This is simply untrue but the slur is pervasive and often retailed by lazy commentators. It ignores the fact that research can and does enrich much teaching. And parents, students and graduates all stress that the overall reputation of their university is a net asset when they add our crest to their CVs and job applications.
Valuing teachers
So, I have been reflecting on what we do to genuinely support and celebrate teaching as the crucial vocation, without uncritically accepting some of the more questionable elements of what is clearly a move to greater marketisation.
One key question is how teaching is valued in both status and reward.
Speaking honestly, we all know that this has been a changing picture across universities, and often the result of the introduction of previous national metrics. In my earlier career in Oxford, the title of Tutorial (Teaching) Fellow was core and aspirational. Historically, research output was not the centre of academic life, with even truly brilliant scholars producing only one or two great works in a lifetime, unaffected by the timescales of a REF. Later 'research-led universities' clearly prioritised research assessment performance and citations. Some of us have always felt that this had inherent risks, and even Gareth Roberts, who was the author of the modern RAE, questioned how measurement would affect the experiment itself. Yet, when I was first interviewed to become a member of the HEFCE Board a number of years ago, my comment that we had perhaps over-emphasised research at the expense of teaching, led to a polite decline of my help.
Years later, things have changed. You will know that in Sheffield we have had, for some time, a promotion route with teaching at the core. The appointment of the first Teaching Professors was a shock to some, a cause of celebration to others. Our Senate has also commended Teaching Fellows and our Students' Union have given academic awards for teaching and support in all the key areas covered by the TEF, and many others which might be helpfully added. We will be asking all these genuine experts for their insights in what matters, and I have asked our Pro- Vice-Chancellor for Learning and Teaching to lead this vital work in close collaboration with our Students' Union as we formally respond to the Green Paper.
Teaching and learning happens in many places. Our students see that this experience of a quality education is also delivered by truly exceptional librarians, lab technicians and personal tutors. Our Union President reminded me that, in addition to the challenge he received in what was the top department in the country for his subject, he was mostly helped and inspired by a PhD student who had recently trod his own academic path, and knew just how to help.
All of these elements make up what our students truly need along the way, and what we are duty - not only monetarily - bound to provide, as we prepare a new generation of young people for their own future and what society needs.
So how will we respond to the TEF?
We will almost certainly face a new raft of measurement and regulation, and we will treat this seriously and try to use it to improve where we can. We need to continue to develop our teaching in the ways our students need.
But we must think hard about how to express the truth about great teaching, in ways which will not be conveyed by ideological critics simply as excuses. It won't be easy. But anything less would be a dereliction of our duty to our academic ideals, and to those young people who are so much more than customers, rather full members of our University and our chief gift to the future.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett FRS
Vice-Chancellor
16 November 2015
University statement following events in Paris All of us will have had our own private moments of shock and disbelief at the awful events in Paris. I thought of the times when I have been lucky enough to be in Paris, sometimes on holiday, more often on business. I thought of colleagues, students and friends who will be profoundly affected by the scenes we have witnessed and the implications to come.
When I was in school, two of my favourite subjects were French and history. When I visited Paris for the first time, I was thrilled to see the physical evidence of the history and culture that I so loved to learn about. To see the blood flowing in these much loved places decades later made me cry.
And yet we have a national history filled with conflict with France, one which rings with accounts of the enmity between our countries in the past.
One of Britain's most familiar tales of battle described the plucky archers of olde England defeating the French knights at Agincourt. Today that is replaced with messages of solidarity. We can almost see with their eyes and express our own pain at their suffering.
It is the greatest of gifts to able to see others' suffering as our own. Who has given us that gift? What has helped us understand each other and think of the French as brothers and sisters? And how far is the reach of our compassion?
A growth in mutual understanding has had many false starts across the years. It has been earned despite centuries of conflict fuelled by seeing others as fundamentally different, and exploited by those who use our vulnerability to influence us.
Yet after two devastating world wars where corners of French fields became 'forever England', something changed. As we understood each other's language, as we as we worked on the great scientific problems of the age, as we ate each other's food and visited each other's cities and towns, we grew to see how much we shared.
Now the idea that the French feel the pain of violence and death any differently from the British is simply absurd.
But where do we draw our borders? We know that the violence is driven by people who see us being fundamentally different from them, who want to punish and avenge and are caught up with a view of the world which has no space for compassion. One which is expressed in stark cultural and religious terms.
How should we respond?
We have to start from the most important principle that we human beings are all the same. As our greatest writer once said, "If you prick us, do we not bleed?"
If we don't feel that, and believe that somehow we are fundamentally different from others in the world, we are truly lost. But let's suppose we accept that we are fundamentally the same. What should we do? Do we simply need to fight?
It pains me to say that I believe tolerance which allows us the freedom to learn from one another must sometimes be defended, but I know that there are those who will never desist from their murderous path.
But what about the future recruits to the hatred, anger and violence? What of those within our society who may grow to see us as enemies?
That is where we do come in, and why I as a Vice-Chancellor and academic would dare to add my voice to the sorrow not only of Paris but of all the brutal losses and violent deaths of our deeply troubled world.
As a university, we are a community of scholars from across the whole world. We have every race and creed and culture among us. We are in many ways unique and because of that we have something to give. In our city people from around the world come to study the world and think how to make it a better place. And they do - serving as doctors in our hospitals, offering tuition to disadvantaged pupils, building bridges of understanding.
Our almost solemn duty is to make sure that within our community no one can feel that they are not understood. No one must feel that their traditions are unwelcome. No one must feel their insights have nothing to add to our understanding of the world. No one must feel that our differences are irreconcilable, or that they cannot learn from others. For the beginning of knowledge is that we have more to learn.
As teachers and as students, our task is to replace ignorance and hostility with understanding and discourse.
So can I ask you, as you grieve the loss of our brothers and sisters in Paris and elsewhere - human beings of many nations and creeds - to rededicate yourselves to being true international scholars. To open yourselves to comprehend the ideas that left misunderstood can divide us, and work to build the understanding and friendships that can make us one community.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE FRS FLSW
Vice-Chancellor
11 November 2015
Pro-Vice-Chancellor for the Faculty of Science
Dear Colleagues, After his eight years of service as a Pro-Vice-Chancellor, I would like to express my thanks to Professor Tony Ryan whose term of office as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for the Faculty of Science comes to an end in May 2016.
In addition to his internationally-leading work as a scientist, Tony has been a tremendous supporter of international partnerships which benefit both researchers and students. He is also deeply committed to public engagement through which he highlights the urgent need to address the challenges of climate change and sustainability. He played a vital role in helping to found the cross-cutting Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures, and I am delighted that he will continue to make these contributions as a valued member of the University once he completes his term as Pro-Vice-Chancellor.
Externally to the University, Tony is influential in the development of UK science policy, is Chairman of the High Polymer Research Group, as well as being a member of the Advanced Materials Leadership Council, and former Chairman of the STFC Science Board.
In addition to his work on the University Executive, I would also like to particularly thank Tony for his commitment to wider issues such as equality and diversity and the development of sport for staff and students.
Given the opportunities and challenges facing UK science, it is of course vital that we recruit an outstanding Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Science to pick up the baton of leadership in the Faculty and to ensure that both science research and teaching go from strength to strength. We will therefore shortly begin the process of identifying and appointing a new Pro-Vice-Chancellor, ensuring that the Faculty of Science thrives and continues to make the wonderful contribution to society and the world which has been the case throughout our University's history.
Best wishes
Professor Sir Keith Burnett, FRS
Vice-Chancellor
9 November 2019
Higher Education Green Paper: Are we all consumers now?
As most of you will be aware, on Friday the Government published the first draft of higher education legislation in more than a decade. The Green Paper - Fulfilling our Potential: Teaching Excellence, Student Mobility and Student Choice - reads like what one commentator called 'a brave new world of consumer choice and statutory rights'. How should we think about these proposals and the assumptions which underly them? As the green paper was finally released to the public, I found myself in the company of academics and students who span much of my own academic career at the opening of the National Quantum Metrology Institute at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Teddington. It was almost a family affair, as one of the prime movers for the Institute is my close colleague and friend Sir Peter Knight. Peter was my mentor in the early days of my own academic career. I was often his collaborator through the years as he brought a wave of understanding of quantum science to the UK.
Peter taught a generation of scientists about what could be done with the new quantum based science that is now revolutionising many aspects of technology. The new centre at NPL is part of the new GBP270M effort in quantum technologies in which our Physics department plays a crucial role. Its world-leading research on accuracy in measurement is at the crux of numerous areas of breakthrough technology which can transform our understanding of the world.
I also had the deep pleasure of seeing one of my former PhD students working on real triumphs in the measurement of time, the ytterbium ion based clock at NPL. I thought about all the wonderful students, undergraduates and postgraduates that I had been privileged to teach. Seeing her beautiful research project was a delight. I told her that I was looking at her thesis along with that of other students only a few weeks ago, memories triggered by the death of my first UK PhD student, Professor Danny Segal. He was as brilliant a scientist, in the area of quantum information science, as he was a delightful student and colleague.
The contrast with the emphasis in the green paper was stark. The NPL event followed a session at the HEFCE board where the Universities Minister briefed us about the green paper on higher education, now the subject of so much debate amongst policy wonks and misleading headlines in the popular press, seemingly quick to assume that the main need of students is for consumer protection from universities who ignore 'lamentable teaching' in their desperation to increase fees.
Now it is our turn to respond. Rolled into the green paper are many issues which we shall have to think through as we answer the consultation. It signals a set of potentially important changes for us all, and not least of these is the question of what we measure, why and how.
I should start by saying that it will be difficult to find fault in many of the aspirations for what universities should be expressed in the green paper. We shall be putting a great deal of thought into the proposals and will address with great seriousness the questions posed in the green paper.
But I think it is important that I lay out my instincts. I don't wish for a moment to suppress the debates that will run in the consultation weeks. No more do I wish to anticipate what our students will say. I do though want to tell you where I am coming from on the issues. I want to tell you about my personal concerns, centred on three areas.
A market for higher education? The first is the emphasis on a market approach to a higher education. Markets can work to increase quality and decrease costs if you have a set of commodities that we buy and sell in the market place. I do not believe, however, that the great successes of British Higher Education have been produced, or will be sustained, by further marketisation of the kind the green paper envisages. I may be wrong, but my instincts tell me there is more potential for damaging effects than beneficial ones.
The change in relationship from student member of a university to a customer is profound, and one which we in Sheffield have actively resisted. When I was asked at my interview for my present role whether I thought of students in this way I said 'No'. I said no because I had always thought of my students as...my students. This is not equivalent to any other relationship. It is closer to a family friend role than a consumer relationship. It means that it is more important to me.
But the country has decided that students must pay for their higher education and that is now a matter of fact. So it is right that we ask how we do the best for our students in this new world, told increasingly often that they must think and act more like militant customers to avoid being short-changed by those who are saddling them with debt.
In fact, here in Sheffield our own students have resisted this line, and see down the road to where it can lead. Instead they have thought diligently and hard about what they think matters in a university and have resisted any sense that they are simply picking up a product off a shelf.
But I would go further. My view of the greatest danger of a customer satisfaction approach is that it can lead to insufficient challenge of a student's progress. A real teacher takes the long view, knows that gain may involve short-term pain and frustration.
Listening and learning from feedback is one thing. But if universities shape education to receive the payback of an enhanced NSS score, we could risk harming our students' long-term interests as we focus on satisfying rather than pushing a student to be what we feel they could be. This process sometimes feels more like discomfort than a pleasant path to perfection, but our duty is to do what is right, not what is easy.
Measuring value
My next area of concern is the notion of 'value for money' for a university course, and how we define the importance of research.
In the early days of Margaret Thatcher's premiership, I moaned to my Father about the government now wanting to know the true cost of research. My Father picked up a research paper I had written and said that I simply needed to find out how much someone would pay for the research I had done. If I put it out to tender I would get the market price.
My Father was right in one way, wrong in another. If I were to simply add up the costs of much of what we offer to students the equation would show a loss. Universities are forced to charge no more than GBP9k a year. But this is far less than the cost of many degree courses. So do we have a miracle on our hands, a product worth more than it costs?
The reality is different. Fortunately for this country and for the UK students who study alongside them, international students still travel from around the globe because they and their parents are prepared to make deep sacrifices for what they value. Not only the course itself but the quality of the university, the cohort of able students, the accommodation and excellent facilities they help to fund.
This is far nearer to a real market price, and one in which government so far has given us the autonomy to be able to use the resource we receive to do great good for our students, our city region, our nation, our world.
So why aren't UK students and parents deliriously happy about the amazing deal they are getting?
Of course, the first objection is that this generation is now paying for something which was covered by taxation for others. There's a deep and understandable sense of generational injustice. But another powerful, but in my mind distorting, view comes from the idea that value of a course is not measured in cost or effort but simply in the quantity of contact hours. It is in the comparison between subjects that don't involve practice and those that do that the sharpest comments arise.
So what should we do?
I think we need to listen and understand. We must also show genuinely and honestly what we in Sheffield do and what we value. We must pay attention to what our students feel about their teaching experience.
Funding research
The third issue I want to address is that of research or QR funding. One of the risks is that all QR funding goes to a new research council body. It is heartening to hear the commitment to what we call the 'dual-support system' but I think we know that it has become a decreasing amount of funding that we have to pursue innovation in scholarship and research.
We have been bold in our development of new ways of inclusion. Indeed, in many of these areas Sheffield is considered an exemplar. We have pursued new ways to support and grow the local economy. We have developed new apprentice training with progression routes.
In the face of significant pressure, we have tried to do the right thing for our own times. Many universities have simply closed their continuing education provision but we are integrating part- time study.
And we have not forgotten our roots. We have become a central component of the Advanced Manufacturing Innovation District. We are in every sense an Anchor Institution for the Sheffield City Region. And don't forget the GBP600M turnover and all the jobs and inward investment without which Sheffield would be so much the poorer.
These are reasons to be proud of the way we have attempted to put our principles to action, but they are none of them metrics in themselves. My sense is that we must be serious and careful about the way we measure what we treasure the most, and we will all need to think about how we do this. This is a proper academic endeavour, not restricted to those who work on atomic clocks.
I suspect that we will have to preface any response to the green paper by defining our own means of assessment, so we do not slip into the trap of knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. I continue to value your support as we continue the important work of this University which has been entrusted to us.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE FRS FLSW
Vice-Chancellor
1 July 2015
Our University in Greece
Wednesday 1 July 2015
I am sure that many of you, like myself, have been thinking about our dear Greek colleagues in Thessaloniki. I find it very difficult to imagine how hard it must be for them to keep going in spite all the awful times they have had to face.
The person from Thessaloniki who I meet most often is the Principal of City College, Yannis Ververidis. He is a deeply cultured man who has worked tirelessly to make City College the success it is today. His city is of course one of the greatest cultural significance. The home of oratory, it has also seen tragedy and exile. For all its beauty, Greece is no stranger to times of great hardship.
Those of you who have met Yannis will know the dedicated effort he, along with his superb staff at the college, have put into the education of our students in the region. Their commitment to the college and its work in Southern Europe is much admired in both the public and private sphere. They have given us many reasons to be proud of their efforts and that of their students. In recent years they have already gone through extraordinarily challenging times and now they have to face even more uncertainty.
My personal view is that the pressure being put on the Greek nation at the moment is wrongheaded, and will do more harm than good. My reading of the situation, supported by a number of well-respected economists, is that the results will be even greater contraction of the Greek economy and have deleterious effects for the whole of Europe.
I am sure that many of us have sensible worries about the effects on the already traumatised Greek people. Speaking to our academic colleagues there, we begin to understand the extreme pressures which have been placed on teachers and researchers, but even more so on the students and graduates who often feel they must leave their country and even continent to find work. As one of our computer scientists observed when she last visited Sheffield, it is one thing to travel by choice, quite another to leave family and friends because you see no alternative. Families are deeply concerned about what future they can offer to their children.
Such relentless pressures on a society try the resilience of its people to breaking point. I truly hope it does not have the effect that other deep recessions have had in promoting the worst in politics.
Our Greek colleagues and students deserve our understanding, solidarity and respect.
We can only hope that Europe's leaders with their hands on the finances will pull back from the brink and help the Greek nation through these dark hours for Europe.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE FRS FLSW
Vice-Chancellor of The University of Sheffield
29 May 2015
Sailing for Liberty's Sweet Shore
Friday 29 May 2015
The title of one of my favourite folk songs by John Doyle is ‘Sailing for Liberty’s Sweet Shore’. It is a song which is often associated with the journey from the old world of Europe to the possibility of America. When I listened to it last, I was on a bus moving across Kentucky thinking about immigration in the 19th century.
For those who don’t know the song, it tells of the cost of a one-way voyage to a new life. In one verse, we hear how a child of an Irish immigrant dies and is thrown overboard after a short prayer.
We cannot watch the news today without realising that this song is far more than the voice of history. I am even more moved by its lyrics now, when I think of the multitude of people who are trying to reach the Island of Lampedusa, people I first heard about from one of our own academic researchers. What would the Sicilian Aristocrat the ‘Leopard’ - who took his name from that Island – think of us leaving people to die short of his island's shores?
The story of human society is so often one of migration. On the coach I reflected on how the immigrants from Ireland to the U.S., once despised, are now quite rightly seen as brave pioneers who had to withstand so many hardships to live on ‘Liberty's sweet shores’. The power of the US as a nation owes so much to them, and they are proud of the heritage they carried with them.
Yet America is also still grappling with questions of identity. A few days before, I had been in Memphis - across the state border in Tennessee. It was there that another group were reaching for freedom and a better world, courageous African-Americans who were aiming for a dream and who had lost their leader Martin Luther King in a murder. Now memorialised with a great statue in Washington DC, he is the object of deep reverence. But the struggle for civil rights, it seems, is not finally over, despite America freely voting for its first black President. Freedom’s shores can elude us. Our perceptions can be trapped by our fears.
And now our own country is wracked by thoughts of immigrants – how to reduce numbers, stop a ‘flood’. The upcoming vote on EU membership promised in the Queen’s Speech this week will be defining in many ways.
What do we as universities – as people – have to say about that?
Academia is nothing if it is narrow. Ideas are not separate from people, and they travel with them and always have. From Egypt and India, from Syria and Spain, from China and Africa.
This is especially true in our own times. Consider the giants of so many disciplines. How many of them made their contribution in countries and languages which were not those they were born into? And it is particularly true of the UK, surely a nation which has absorbed and sometimes appropriated from all over the world. We simply must remember how important immigrants are to our country.
In his short but powerful new book, What have the immigrants ever done for us? Kelvin MacKenzie blasts out a truth he now knows he should have proclaimed when he was editor of the UK’s most read tabloid. Do read it for an excellent vade mecum of pro-immigration studies.
What has this got to do with us?
We have a generation of scholars who came to the UK, particularly from Europe, because they wanted to join our academic life and vision. They have done great things for this University and their adopted home. They are part of us. Which is why I think it is important that we make sure our colleagues from across the world know how much we appreciate them. They have had to withstand the onslaught of balmy Yorkshire weather. Please let's value their commitment to us and make sure they know that we want them to stay with us. We need to do this because it is right, but also because what we perhaps took for granted about our future is now being questioned. In my role as Vice-Chancellor, I will be trying with others to help make sure our European colleagues in particular are clear on how much we appreciate them. I would not want my children to look back and ask what we did when faced with these dangers.
History charges us to think beyond the immediate, and to remember the lessons which have been hard won by those who travelled before us. Universities are also places which reach, albeit in a less perilous way, for freedom’s shore. We should not take for granted what this means in our own time – if we could only ask ourselves if our descendants would be proud of what we think and do today.
On my coach trip in the American South I heard the music of aspiration with its roots from all over the world, and thought of the people who had made it. One was BB King who famously asked people on Beale Street to 'Stand By Me' - the song our students chose to accompany their shared pictures of friendship without borders.
Our University should stand with values and people who have crossed international boundaries, and I would ask for the support of our staff and students as I do so. Our future must be neither narrow nor fragmented.
The song faded as we arrived at Abraham Lincoln's memorial and I remembered his words: "A house divided cannot stand."
Professor Sir Keith Burnett CBE FRS FLSW
Vice-Chancellor of The University of Sheffield
27 March 2015
UPDATE FROM THE VICE-CHANCELLOR
Dear colleagues,
As we approach the Easter break, I felt it was important to write to you to share my thoughts on what matters most in our University and the purpose we share together.
First though, let me begin by saying that – despite what you may have read in The Times Higher Education – I am not leaving Sheffield. I was indeed approached to apply for the role of Vice- Chancellor in Oxford, but I have made it clear that I am committed to my work here with all of you. This is not to say of course that Oxford is not a wonderful institution. It is, and I spent my student years and two very fulfilling decades there teaching and eventually leading the Division of Maths and Physical Sciences. I know at first hand its great importance to the UK and to the world.
But I am also deeply proud of the work we are undertaking here at this remarkable University, and the great public benefit it brings to people from every background and to the city region which founded it. This is the University at which my own daughter was a student, and where I have grown to know truly exceptional colleagues who have a love and determination to make a difference through their work which matches anything I saw in Oxford.
This particularly struck me at an event last night in the University where we hosted the annual meeting of the Association of Physicians of Great Britain and Ireland. The dinner was in Firth Hall and I felt deeply honoured to speak to this august body by its President, our very own Professor Tony Weetman.
I had a speech prepared which talked about the importance of the medical school in the beginnings of our University. However, I saw to my delight that in the audience was Professor Paul Matthews from Imperial College.
Suddenly the subject of the evening took on a very personal turn. I had not seen Paul since the time he was my physician at Oxford during a very difficult period for me personally. Twelve years ago I had a serious condition which I eventually learned was a vestibular disorder, but which for a while was an unexplained and I feared, life-threatening illness. Through his skilled treatment and advice, Paul had truly saved my career and put me back onto my feet once more.
Also in the room was our Professor Dame Pam Shaw, who when the condition recurred just over a year ago – mercifully in a milder form – continued with this medical care. The two know each other and hold each other in the very highest esteem. I knew what their work meant, directly and personally.
Over a year on, I am grateful to be in excellent health, but I know from direct personal experience that the work that goes on in this University goes beyond abstract knowledge. We are a University founded on the principle of public benefit, and that benefit is real.
In that moment I knew what I should say. Gratitude welled up in me and on behalf of all whose lives have been touched by the people in the hall, I offered sincere thanks – not only for myself, but for all those who have benefitted personally or in our families from applied knowledge of our wonderful physicians.
In all the talk about impact, it is too easy to forget that our greatest impact is often made through people. Also in the hall was Professor Nigel Bax who first showed me the teaching facilities for our medical students and the dedication of those people who taught them, in Sheffield, Rotherham, Doncaster and Chesterfield. I said in my speech that I thought everyone in the UK should have to see those students, the work they do and the demands that are made of them in our NHS. Yet there is immense and sometimes impossible pressure on our clinicians to deliver services to more with less. It can be deeply discouraging, and the debate about costs can sometimes override wider concerns. This is a mistake, as will be confirmed by anyone who remembers this country before there was a national health service or who has lived in a country without medical care offered free at the point of access.
Our University was founded, as was the NHS, on a principle of public good. I reflected in my speech that we were drifting into a realm where private benefit and private investment formed the way we were thinking. We needed to come back to civic pride and purpose.
Firth Hall reminds us of our history, of those before us who built our University around the idea of public benefit. We follow in their footsteps, doing our part.
Now the University is once again changing. To our existing talents, I am delighted that we are adding new and gifted individuals and groups who will bring their own great strengths. We shall need them.
In my speech, I thanked Tony Weetman for leading our Medical Faculty at Sheffield and for bringing such a distinguished group to the University – recruitment for his replacement is underway. We have already welcomed a new University Librarian. This autumn we will install a new Chancellor, and we will gain a new Deputy Vice-Chancellor. In Senate, I thanked Professor Paul White who stood in for me during the weeks of my illness just over a year ago, and who will stand down from the role of Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the end of April. And we are well on the way to appointing a new Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Learning and Teaching, a University Secretary and Director of Accommodation and Campus Services.
What matters most though is the work that we do together as a University as we continue around a common thread of purpose, with our students and graduates as partners and supporters throughout. I thank each of them and you for your efforts, and wish you all a Happy Easter, to our Jewish colleagues Pesach Sameach, and to those who simply wish to make the most of the green spaces in and around our beautiful city this break, a well-earned rest.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett FRS
Vice-Chancellor
16 December 2014
The REF and the Northern Powerhouse
Later this week universities across the UK will brace themselves for the results of the Research Excellence Framework (REF), the process of expert review of research across higher education carried out by the four main funding agencies and overseen by HEFCE. UK scholarship which is rightly esteemed all over the world for its quality, rigour and diversity (not to mention its impact and value compared to levels of investment) has been scrutinised in ways which will impact on future funding settlements.
But as we receive and consider what the assessors have to say, we in Sheffield have a particular interest in this process. What it is, and what it isn't.
The research assessment process was to a large degree shaped by Gareth Roberts, himself a Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield and someone determined that allocation of money should not pool uncritically around the traditional golden triangle of Oxbridge and London. As a scientist, he wanted to see an evidence base for decisions.
Some say that he created a monster. The REF is already subject to urging of greater redistribution and the arguments and robust defence are beginning even before publication. Even he saw the risks – as a scientist, he wrote of his concerns about what the process of measurement itself would mean for research, and also we have to be clear that the REF is not a process for assessing individuals but for evaluating the performance of the university as a whole, through its units of assessment.
But Gareth Roberts held that the UK needed more than its historic bastions of scholarship. He believed there was an Academic Powerhouse in the North.
Can Sheffield be part of a Northern Powerhouse?
Today we are once again hearing talk of devolution and the potential of unleashing the talents of the North. This time the focus is on new powers for cities which might complement the overwhelming concentration of economic strength in London. But universities are also at the heart of this debate.
Last week one of our past students, Andy Haldane, gave a lecture at the Royal Society to a group of high-profile London graduates, each successful in their field. Andy studied Accounting, Financial Management and Economics in Sheffield in the 80s and is now Chief Economist at the Bank of England. His subject was the crucial role of innovation in economic growth.
Amongst other things he used our very own Pro-Vice-Chancellor Research & Innovation Professor Richard Jones’ data to show how investment in innovation is now far too small to lift our economy. There is a critical failure of the market as company shares are bought and sold. These shares are now held for such a short period that they have to show a benefit over dramatically reduced timeframes. New initiatives that need modest start-up capital such as in IT are possible, but where large amounts of capital and keeping faith with investments is needed, ventures are often doomed from the start.
Andy Haldane's perspective was long-term and worthy of the excellent social scientist he is. Going back to the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, he tracked how innovation had triggered vast social change. And he also took a broad international view. In 1990 for example, China's GDP was almost the same as that of Italy. The difference was that China invested 20 per cent of that product in future growth, Italy almost nothing. Today China produces the economic equivalent of an Italy every 18 months.
The great manufacturing enterprises of the North were built with long-term investment and innovation at their heart. Indeed the industrial revolution began not in the City of London's money markets, but in the North with Arkwright's first factory, the textile mills which crossed the Pennines, Sheffield steel and the social revolution of Manchester's Free Trade Hall.
As the UK considers its future in the light of a fragile global economy, the question of growth is taking the nation back to first principles. Thinking about these issues is the task of Social Scientists and why we founded SPERI.
Investing in ideas which deliver change
Andy's lecture described three sorts of capital which are needed for growth – social, human and physical. Traditionally, we have thought that universities invested in the first of these – in people, education, confidence, networks of assurance and entrepreneurial endeavour.
But increasingly the physical capital required for growth cannot only be finite resources in an over-crowded planet, but ideas too. The revolution we now need will require expertise and policy, new ways of thinking. Just as a high-carbon Industrial Revolution took on a new model of production, the low-carbon revolution and sustainable future we need while funding social wellbeing will require ideas and innovation only found in institutions freed from the demands of quarterly shareholder profit statements.
There are limits on what can be achieved by the market alone. It is only institutions such as universities and Government who can take a longer view which will push for and invest in the ways we truly need to grow and thrive.
Let me tell you how we are addressing this on all fronts. First and foremost, we need to develop the people who can think about the future economies and be taught about the technologies of tomorrow. That is the first way in which we build and prepare the capabilities we shall need in growing a manufacturing base – the critical skills of our students. This is why we are building the Diamond, to which HEFCE will add another £5 million. And we don't just need engineering masters of the kind we will develop on our main campus, we also need the technical apprentices trained in our research facilities to power companies who will translate that research into products.
Second, we need ideas – ideas about things that can be made that were never made before. We are not manufacturers or banks. We bring the fundamental research and breakthrough ideas which need all the science and technology we can bring to bear. We have colleagues who have given their lives to making new materials that are stronger, more energy efficient, conduct electricity better, can withstand high temperatures and be more easily machined.
Third, we need a new way of working with industry. Which is why the name AMRC trips off the tongues of those involved in innovation policy. Over the last decade in Sheffield we have seen the beginnings of our own academic Industrial Revolution. Just as Arkwright built his demonstration factories which changed ideas of what was possible, the AMRC has been the 'skunk works' to UK academia's IBM, showing us how we might work in new ways. The fact that this has happened in Sheffield on the site of previous industrial decline should be a source of enormous pride. But it is now time for the whole University to embrace the possibility of what is inspiring government. We should grasp the potential of innovation which makes the Chief Economist at the Bank of England say, 'this is the future'.
Building a dream
Yet all this is not a Northern Powerhouse yet. So what comes next?
You can see what a real Northern Powerhouse looks like in the development plans, now being circulated amongst our Sheffield City Region colleagues, for an Innovation District to sit along the M1 corridor. The vision – endorsed and encouraged by the most senior colleagues in government and industry as well as our regional leaders – is to take the translation prowess of our catapult centres and couple them to a new private public partnership that actually makes all of the infrastructure elements we shall need as a country.
I have called this 'a new GE (General Electric) of Sheffield'. This is a term that another of our Alumni Jim O’Neill – the 'rock-star' economist who chaired the RSA City Growth Commission and essentially launched the Northern Powerhouse via devolution discussion – likes me to use, and he is urging us to move on what he sees is a global opportunity.
Under this approach, a university bonds with others to be part of a wider system where the whole organisation is able to take an idea fully to an order book. In some areas this already happens. In aerospace our premier UK engineering and manufacturing partner, Rolls Royce, has made the crucial move of building a new turbine factory on the Advanced Manufacturing Park and making world-beating single-crystal blades for the engines that power so many of the world's aircraft.
We now want to expand this success. We want to see this same type of partnership for civilian nuclear energy, high-speed trains and all aspects of the green economy. This means a new set of partners and it needs a new way for the Government to buy the things it needs for the country. If it does not acknowledge existing market failure and act in this way, it will pass up a golden opportunity to build a new manufacturing economy along with buying.
How could this be done? Can we really build a dream on this scale which will revolutionise our own opportunity for research, for wealth creation, for jobs for young people and apprentices, for the UK and for export?
In a panelled room in the Royal Society in London, the Chief Economist at the Bank of England told an invited audience that he saw the way forward in the approach of the AMRC in Sheffield and in the UK catapult system more generally. What must come next and what will truly generate growth is the manufacturing capability at scale that sits alongside the translator of the AMRC.
This kind of nationalised purpose delivered the 2012 Olympics. It is the approach used for large naval contracts. It enables a partnership of companies and organisations to build a complex entity to deliver an aim and to do so together.
How we might make this work will take our research and our University firmly out of the mythical Ivory Tower. The ideas which will transform our sustainable future will not only be found in Science and Engineering, they will need Medics and Social Scientists, Linguists and the reflective powers of our Historians, Politicians and yes – a new kind of Economist, able to think beyond the framework which led to the global financial crisis.
Seen like this, the REF is put into its proper context. Our University was founded by people who wanted to make a difference to the education, lives, economy and health of citizens. We have not forgotten that vision. In fact, we embrace it.
I hope you will now know, when you hear the term Northern Powerhouse, that you are already part of it and will be crucial in building it fully in the years ahead. And in REF terms, surely this is the mother of all impact statements.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett FRS
Vice-Chancellor
8 December 2014
A Crisis of Identity
If there is one issue which has dominated the media and politics this year, surely it must be that of borders – immigration, devolution, the EU, national and regional identity.
● Does our future prosperity lie in belonging or independence? ● Who is welcome and who should be excluded? ● What threatens our confidence that we will thrive in a complex world?
From these questions comes another – just what does it mean to be British?
The language used to express concern in the media tells its own story – migrants 'flood', 'swamp' or are 'bogus'. They are motivated by 'benefits tourism'. Statistics which tell of the net contribution of migrants to society are drowned out by fears. Addressing the needs of people in distress in a deeply unequal world seems to many to be an unrealistic ask at a time when our own resources are stretched. Concern to control leads to cries that we must pull up a drawbridge or we will not be in a position to care for our own.
But who qualifies to be in our inner circle?
Ivory tower or model global community?
My own view has been shaped by a lifetime working as a Scientist and within three of the UK's great universities – Oxford, Imperial College in London and now Sheffield – as well as in the US. And more recently, I have particularly focused on what it means to be an international community as I have worked closely with our wonderful Students' Union on our shared, and now award-winning, #weareinternational campaign.
For us, internationalism in education is far more than simply an admissions policy for a multi- million pound business increasingly reliant on overseas fees. We know that anything less impoverishes us all. In every way that matters, we are all international students, and the knowledge we seek and impart cannot be limited by national borders. I know that many of you share this conviction.
Of course, some may say ours is a luxury position of an out of touch economic and educational elite. We are after all the blessed who have felt the extraordinary privilege of living and working with our fellow international students and colleagues. It would surely be far harder to say this if we were competing for jobs, resources, housing or school places in a different part of our city.
Yet I still believe turning inwards is profoundly wrong for our country. If you have, as I have, worked with people from around the world on scientific problems you have a truly international family and you could no more separate them from yourself than you could from your children. Indeed, in the last few weeks I have received several family pictures, of newly born and growing children from former students in China, England and Germany.
But I also know that in wider society, migrants seeking safety or work bring with them talents and resources which also enrich our nation. This goes far beyond the demonstrable economic benefits.
Who is the helper?
We need to think twice before accepting the view that welcoming others will mean losing resources. We may be surprised at who helps who.
Here in Sheffield, we know our international students for example contribute 10% to the city's inward investment, even when the cost of public services, roads and healthcare are taken into account. But beyond the figures, we also see a deep empathy. International students are often the first to volunteer and respond to needs in our city. When we held our wonderful Festival of the Mind with over 300 events across the city centre, international students were 70% of the volunteers who made it possible. They work in hospitals, run homework clubs and support groups for the elderly or bereaved siblings. They have set up successful social enterprises making jewellery or jam which are giving homeless people or trafficked women the work experience which will allow those in deepest need to re-enter employment, society, rent a flat. These students are our own Good Samaritans.
Our international community also forges powerful necessary links between our region and other countries. Just this month, we launched a pilot programme with the Government Department, UK Trade and Investment (UKTI), to give Chinese students work experience in small and medium sized local companies. As well as offering an educational experience to students, the scheme is supporting local businesses in their own efforts to build the skills to trade with the fastest growing economy in the world. And this weekend I have been in China looking at ways to develop our existing educational partnerships in language and culture to engagement with business, industry and health.
Whether in advanced manufacturing or healthcare technologies, being international is creating the economic growth which will offer jobs and opportunity to the very communities the isolationists want to protect. And working together across national boundaries on issues such as sustainable energy, food security and water technologies does not damage the future of our nation and the world, it secures well-being and decreases conflict.
Who is my neighbour?
Others though say that opening our doors to immigration is a threat to the UK's Christian traditions and heritage. Yet one of the most famous New Testament stories must surely be the parable of the Good Samaritan – a tale of a man who responded to need beyond boundaries of identity.
'Who is my neighbour?' is surely also the question of our own age. The fear of being 'swamped' by those we do not want to be neighbours is now felt across the globe. And here in the UK, nearly every political party is proposing different ways to answer it.
What is our answer? What should a country which claims Christian values do?
In the autumn of 1934, a young pastor gave a sermon in Sydenham in London where he was temporarily working after having spent time with black churches and an emerging civil right movement in the US. Listening with alarm to increasing xenophobia and isolationism in his home country of Germany, the man told his congregation that to be a Christian was to reject boundaries of nationalism or race. The man was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In 1945 he was executed for his opposition to the Nazi regime's treatment of its people, most particularly of its Jews.
Our own time is mercifully not so brutal, but the lessons of history are that we must be wary of where we create borders, which then may need to be maintained at terrible cost. Headlines from around the world remind us of the perils of separation. More than this, those of us who have experienced the richness of strangers who become friends have a duty to say why that matters. When the time comes, universities are in no position to teach the next generation if we fail to speak up for our international academic families who have worked so hard to create that knowledge. We must do this. It is our moral duty to give the accounts that no others can give.
What is inspiring to me is that I do so in the company of our students, staff and of colleagues from across the UK who rightly believe our identity lies not in separation but building understanding. We shall shout our love of others around the world across the rooftops of Sheffield. We will continue to campaign with our students. We do not know if it can help our fellow UK citizens, but it is a sacred task and we must get on with it.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett
Vice-Chancellor
6 November 2014
A Call to Arms
I have been watching the film Gettysburg at home. As you will know, this was a pivotal conflict in the American civil war. It is the conflict I have read about most, and I even know the battlefield in Pennsylvania well.
I almost cried when I watched the part where Joshua Chamberlain, a Classics Professor from Bowdoin College Maine, talks to a group of soldiers and makes a deeply moving speech about the fight ahead. The issues he speaks of are our fundamental rights as humans.
It brought to my mind other occasions when academics have spoken out to rally young people to a cause. Here in Sheffield, our Vice-Chancellor Herbert Fisher worked with students, the War Office and City Council to hold public events to inspire our students to enlist in the First World War. The result was The Sheffield University and City Special Battalion, and a call to arms which was not ignored.
A great many of our students went to fight and died on Flanders field, and I find the thought of their sacrifice deeply moving. Some like William Barnsley Allen and Lydia Henry served as medics and received military honours. Others, like Alphaeus Casey who studied Physics, Pure Maths and Geography, became Privates in the Army.
Alphaeus kept a diary, which is in the care of the University Library and is also published online. The entry begins when, the day after winning a mixed doubles tournament with the Tennis Club, he enlists in the University and City Battalion on the 10th of September 1914, with 90 others from varsity. On the 1st January 1915 he writes, "all hope there will be no war next new year." Two days later, he attends a Chapel concert raising funds for the Belgians – for two months the University had made two of its houses available as a hostel for Belgian refugees – and listens to a talk on the Parable of the Talents:
"Men are given powers and placed among certain environments in which they should use them, and that account should be rendered. He emphasised that men think of their talents wrongly. They are held in trust.
"I wonder what my talents are?"
Within weeks, Alphaeus' diary entries turn to accounts of military training, huts, trenches and life at war. On the 1st of July 1916 he was killed in action. There was no known grave.
His name is however in our own University Book of Remembrance. When I laid the wreath of poppies on our memorial to the fallen in Firth Court this year in a very small but poignant ceremony with our students, I felt a shudder of loss mixed with pride.
On the 10th November, we dedicated one of our halls of residence in honour of Major William Barnsley Allen, VC, DSO, MC and Bar – one of the most decorated medical officers of the Great War. He was wounded seven times and gassed, but always returned to the Western Front to serve as a doctor. The idea to name the hall Allen Court came from our students. We were honoured that his grandson, Nigel Allen, was able to unveil a plaque in his memory.
But watching the film about Gettysburg also made me feel a wave of sadness – sadness that young men and women feel the need to go to war for what they truly believe in. Surely what is almost unbearable is the thought that the people they fight with can be inspired by what to them seems just as noble a view. And this never seems to stop, we never seem to learn how to make peace? Can we ever change this?
I'd like of course to think that this is a purely historical reflection, but we know it is not. A student officer has lost personal friends this summer in the conflict in Gaza. And then this week we heard the awful news that one of our graduates who once studied Glass Engineering, Rabbi Goldberg, was killed while praying in a synagogue in Jerusalem.
This was the land in which the words 'Blessed are the peacemakers' were first spoken to a crowd. But history makes clear that, while human beings are skilled at making extraordinary inventions – aeroplanes, computers and, medical devices and life-saving drugs – making peace seems the most elusive challenge of all.
We have just received a substantial legacy of £400,000 for Peace Studies at the University. This was given by someone who decided we really could make a difference, and left us this handsome amount to be spent on Peace History, International Development and projects within Politics and Law. What a wonderful expression of faith in the power of learning.
Can universities prevent wars? Not directly. But we can and do help build the conditions which allow human societies to have the chance to live together with greater justice, understanding and sustainability. And this is a task for us all. Studies in food security, migration, sustainable energy, water management, politics and languages are also vital tools for peace-builders. And the building of bridges – both actual and between people of many nations – is modelled in our work.
In this sense, universities have a vital role in avoiding the conditions which feed hostility. And we really do need it at the moment.
Last week I joined the first meeting of the South Yorkshire Islamic Network, and felt the frustration of the older generation there – many of whom have worked tirelessly to create opportunities for their own children. But we can't ignore the pressures of our world. Just think of the fact that some young Muslims are leaving to fight in Syria. Can we ever understand it?
Surely as scholars our reaction must always be to first try to understand and then, when good and ready, teach what we have learned.
We know we have a great deal to understand if we are ever to help heal the multitude of wounds that divide us from our brothers and sisters in other cultures and lands, or in our own communities. We need our scholars in Peace Studies more than ever.
This is not work which can be left to any single discipline, to someone else. The responsibility of peace-making belongs to us all. I am proud that it is found in this University.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett
Vice-Chancellor
17 November 2014
Building a truly global University
All this week our Students' Union will be focusing the attention of our whole community of students and staff on what it means to be a truly international University. Under the banner of 'World Week' they will celebrate the contribution of students and scholars from around the world, and challenge borders in migration policy that threaten to restrict access to Higher Education and risk undermining values which drew many of us to academia in the first place.
Over recent years, The University of Sheffield's commitment to international students has become an area of sharp focus. I am proud that we have worked closely with our students to say what needs to be said, and that our student-inspired #weareinternational campaign has gathered support from over 100 institutions, as well as the British Council and government departments, Universities UK, National Union of Studies and the CBI.
But, I ask myself, is our motivation simply a defense of what we are or are we really thinking what we should be? I think the sharpest insights on this topic are found when we view our own work from a completely different perspective.
I have recently returned from a University visit to the cities of Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing where our University has been holding local graduations, meeting alumni and talking to colleagues from partner universities and organisations such as the Confucius Institute, which works with educational institutions around the world to aide the understanding of Chinese language and culture.
Each time I visit, I wish I had more chance to speak and acquire real fluency, but I speak enough Chinese learned from recordings over the years to be able to talk with relative ease to academic colleagues and taxi drivers, to our graduates and their devoted families. With language comes the chance to listen in new ways.
So why would I, as a Physicist, have learned Chinese? Is it because one in ten of our students in Sheffield is from China? Or because I have family in Guangzhou? Or because as a Vice- Chancellor I recognize the enormous importance of partnership between UK Higher Education and China?
No. I first started to learn before a visit to Beijing when I was representing Science and Engineering at Oxford. We were with the VC, Sir Colin Lucas, and accompanying us was Dame Jessica Rawson, an expert on China's artistic treasures securing materials on loan from the Forbidden City for an exhibition to be held in London.
Yet I was simply captivated by China and the Chinese people I saw and met. My own experience demolished so many of the simplistic notions I had of China. I had a sense that, without an understanding of this astonishing country and its language, my understanding of the world was incomplete.
As I learned some Chinese I saw, as is true of all language students, that learning another person's language was also seen as an act of respect. The affection returned to me over the years because of my use of Chinese whenever possible has been enormous. The fact that I was a Scientist made no difference.
Our students rightly say, we need to challenge more than geographical borders – it is the ones around our own thinking which can sometimes bar our way to new understanding and new worlds. We may also learn what we have in common.
There is no more powerful affirmation of this than seeing a Chinese family gather around their children at graduation. Anyone who has only ever seen formal images of China would surely be moved, as I was, by the privilege of witnessing the faces of a generation who have often made significant sacrifices for their children's futures. Parents and grandparents put protocol to one side as they left their seats to photograph the presentation of degrees or gather around a precious only child. It is a magic experience to be bathed in so much love and pride, to be the wearer of robes that represent our University in treasured photographs. These sights can and should change us, but what to?
International students are far more than a demographic, and internationalisation needs to be more than a buzzword associated with Higher Education. When The Minister for Universities, Greg Clarke, visited India this week, it was important that he not only made announcements about Indian students coming to the UK, but that 5,000 UK students each year will travel to India to work as interns in schools and companies, or as students who also have so much to gain from exposure to a new culture and way of seeing the world.
When I visit other countries as Vice-Chancellor, I am often met with questions about the core values of education. What is it that we are passing on to the world's future leaders? And what are the values that frame our notions of success? Despite the presence of the student occupy movement in Hong Kong and the fact that vast numbers are still living on a little more than a dollar a day, in China as so much of the West, the persistent image of aspiration is the Apple store and of brands such as Louis Vuitton, Dior and Hugo Boss. Will our most powerful cultural legacy be more than iPhone images and commercialisation, the opiate of people everywhere?
We should not pretend to have easy answers. In an address I gave to graduating students and families in Shanghai, I included a Chinese proverb with something to teach us all – "He who has all the answers has not heard all the questions."
If we are to really be a global university worthy of that name, we need the ability to learn from the world, as well as to teach across it. We may need to challenge our borders, and not only those around our nation states.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett
Vice-Chancellor
8 August 2014
Possibilities of connection – a view from Brazil
One of the great privileges of being a Vice-Chancellor is to occasionally travel to distant parts of the world which are also home to our students and graduates, and where we have important partnerships. I am never sure exactly what I will discover on these visits, or what we may have to give, but I have learned that if we are open to connections, then they come in ways which surprise us and make sense of our work as a truly international university.
Last week I had the great pleasure of making a first visit to the country which hosted the World Cup and will be home to the next Olympic Games – Brazil. My first visit was promoted by an invitation to attend a conference of University Presidents from 46 countries organised by Santander who sponsor a number of scholarships in our own university for student and staff mobility.
But there was more. Beyond images of football and carnival, favelas and a vast youthful nation, a powerful new economic image of Brazil is captivating the West. Our own recent honorary graduate, former Chief Economist of Goldman Sachs and adviser to the UK government Jim O'Neill, identified Brazil as one of the ones-to-watch BRIC nations. Brazil, Russia, India and China, he said, were the emerging super economies which would transform the world.
So I also found myself in Brazil with a very specific remit, invited to share our experiences at the direct invitation of the Brazilian Development Bank. This important body have seen the work we are undertaking in Sheffield to translate research into economic impact and societal benefits, and they see in us something of relevance to their own rapidly-developing nation. They are keen that we help their own elite universities and companies embrace innovation and bridge the gap between knowledge and a productive economy.
Yet is our experience really translatable? Where and how should we start? What is it like to live and work in Brazil? What are the opportunities for the people of this great nation, and what challenges must it overcome to make a good life for its people?
Fortunately, as a university we do not only visit countries as tourists or even corporate partners, we have extended family members 'on the ground'.
In both Rio and Sao Paulo we met and talked to graduates keen to pass on their honest advice. These wonderful former students are themselves already changing the nation – as civil engineers and scientists, professors and advisers to the Brazilian government on social inclusion, gender and disability. They love their country and they long for its success, for all of its people.
Our graduates' number one message was always of great gratitude and affection. A degree from Sheffield changed their opportunities and lives in a powerful way. But they also talked openly about the issues for Brazil. Brazil is a vast country with extraordinary natural resources and talents. The people are as vibrant and diverse a group that you could wish to see. But there are many problems in a society that has grown so quickly and brought so many people from poverty into a better life.
With such growth, the demand on infrastructure is significant to say the least, and developing it appropriately is a real challenge. And there are wider questions about education and government. How can Brazilians make choices about progress without putting under threat the warmth of their society which is such an asset? Can education transform the lives of the many - might its benefits be finally felt by the young people in favelas? Might stronger and more innovative companies change the lives of workers and their families?
With these questions playing in our minds, we travelled from Rio into the high hill country of Araxa where the mining company CBMM is based, producers of 85 per cent of the world's niobium – a material used in alloys and super-conductors in everything from civil nuclear reactors to the MRI scanners found in hospitals around the world.
Araxa is a dedicated mining town, and we might have imagined an industrial hub in which people live at the service of a tough process of mineral extraction. What we found was the opposite. CBMM is the centre and developing force behind what I can only think of as a utopian experiment in environmental and worker benefits. Family-owned and working with its union, the company's open cast mine and major processing plant and labs are set in a wooded landscape in which the company grows and plants indigenous species of trees and plants, and expresses its commitment to biodiversity by breeding rare local animals such as Brazilian wolves, tapirs and parrots.
CBMM also helps its workers build and own their own homes, supports family education and health benefits and even sponsors free-to-all cultural events in the town such as concerts and ballet. All around there is a feeling of mutual social benefit, of wealth creation translated into social good. We realised we had arrived in a Brazilian version of Saltaire or Port Sunlight.
Yet there is an even more important reason that we in Sheffield can feel deeply inspired by this remarkable place. It is at least partly there because of the work of our University.
CBMM's beautiful small museum tells the story of its origins, and treasured in its glass cases are the theses of three Sheffield Professors. Our Engineering research started a revolution in the use of niobium in transforming the properties of steel. Sheffield metallurgists like the late Professor Mike Sellars – a man whose memory is held in the greatest affection at CBMM – made crucial discoveries that made new applications possible.
On the plane back to Sao Paulo, we made plans with our Brazilian hosts to broaden Sheffield's involvement in an ongoing revolution in the use of Niobium to make stronger and lighter products. These include electric vehicles, wind power and combustion products. The CEO and the chief technology officer of CBMM are no strangers to Sheffield, but they see much more in future research and we plan to develop this in the years ahead. The sense is that our expertise, willingness to innovate and our values make us natural partners, and it is my firm belief that our university will continue to play a powerful role in the life of this extraordinary company and community across the world in Brazil.
What else will we do in Brazil? Time will tell.
We visited companies and spent time with both the Consul General in Sao Paulo and Consul in Rio. We talked to academics at the Aeronautics Technological Institute and made further plans to consult our own graduates who understand this place from the inside. Sheffield academics already work in Brazil in medicine and dentistry to help support emerging healthcare, and exchanges thrive between our countries.
But we must also stay ready to be surprised, and to respond accordingly. As we sat around a table with Sheffield alumni of all ages, a graduate Professor of Information Studies shared her wise advice. A powerful woman who had overcome significant economic and personal challenges to gain education and professional success said her own message to young Brazilian students was simple:
'You have a purpose. Stay open to the possibilities and change life will surely bring. Action.'
In a world in which openness and shared purpose are so often the casualties of narrow thinking, we all need to heed this teaching from one of our own.
We are an international community and our scholarship and ability to relate to one another must have no borders. If we even remotely live up to this radical vision, our power to use education and scholarship do good in the world is a force with consequences which can change the trajectory of the lives of individuals, towns and even nations. It is needed not only in Brazil, but in every community and land on earth.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett
Vice-Chancellor
27 June 2014
The Flag
Today outside the University's Firth Court building, a rainbow flag is flying. It shows the support of this University for Sheffield Pride which takes place this weekend, and is a powerful symbol of inclusion and welcome to many, not only LGBT staff and students.
But flags too often stand for anything but diversity. On news bulletins from around our world, flags are waved by insurgents from tanks or draped across the casualties of conflict. What is the pride of one nation and can move us to tears with patriotic fervour is all too often to another a symbol of oppression which triggers memories of lost homelands and injustices which taint the present.
And yet a University is an international community, full of multiple allegiances and deep connections to many nations. So if I was to say one thing about a University that convinces me that it is important, it is that it can build the ability to know, to share and then to understand those different from us. Or more to the point, to see that the differences we conjure often from thin air are in the end paltry things. But they can drive deep anger and resentment in our society. Is it possible to avoid this pit?
Look at what is happening with international students. The vitriol in the latest problems on student visas is driven from many misperceptions. It could, to our dismay, end with us denying young people the opportunity to study with us and making us a viable and vibrant international academic community. I dread to think how many students from the Indian subcontinent will be put off by the latest announcements about suspended licenses for a small number of education providers, and the way these will inevitably be reported alongside tales of xenophobia.
But how can we from our position of privilege confront the fears that of many of our fellow citizens who do worry about the pressure on resources which they feel they must protect. We must not patronise or belittle them. Their concerns are genuine and heartfelt.
We must understand their fears and concerns, but how we do this matters. Universities have a reputation for sometimes being better at speaking than listening. But if this is the case, our capacity to help and to have something truly meaningful to say is limited. This is why what we sometimes call 'engagement' is so vital - it not only reminds us of the insights, experiences and needs of our fellow human beings. It drives us back to our own questions and challenges us to think about a subject more deeply, to ask if we are seeing only in part.
This respect for others, a humility which does not turn away from need is a quality which can transform our scholarship into a power for great good. We have to make sure we have heard enough to respond not with what we have but with what is right for them.
The proverb says, "When someone asks for bread, don't give them a stone." My primary response to the current anxiety about migration is that it comes in the most part from genuine fear for children's futures which awakens the old worries about others. The challenge for us is not to bury the question, the desire for financial security and work we also crave. We can't. If people are worried about getting a job, don't blame the immigrant seeking a job. Help your neighbour find a job, so that they stop worrying.
But how do we do this in practice? How do we mix our intelligence with care, show the kind of deep respect which is in the spirit of loving our neighbour as ourselves, because we are not standing over them but standing by them?
Our University is answering this in many ways, but the motivation which inspires those actions has a common core.
I saw it profoundly in action when our Enactus Team (formerly Students Into Free Enterprise) showed me the pitch that won them the national competition. It is something I would like our entire university to see - how our students began by mentoring victims of human trafficking and homeless people in our own city, and then moved from there to building confidence to enterprise.
But they took a step further, they listened. And as they did they saw a need which challenged them. The crucial barrier for those who had for desperate reasons dropped out of full society was to break back into employment but, in a vicious cycle, they needed elusive work experience to do that. Our students took the modest resources they had created and built this into enterprise which directly offered employment. Fellow human beings who had despaired found hope. The students drew on business skills to link to companies and seek mass orders for products, wealth grew and with it the ability to offer more employment. And individuals broke out of joblessness and either moved onto paid employment or began their own enterprises. Alongside the optimistic voices of our wonderful students who come from all over the world, I heard the voice of a woman who had been trafficked but is rebuilding her life for herself and her child. I saw a formerly homeless man beaming at a new chance. The commitment and determination to pay close attention and act was humbling. The team will take their pitch to Beijing for the Enactus World Cup. But whatever happens, their message needs to be heard and seen.
I see the same instinct in our Apprentice Training Centre where young people and companies' needs are listened to with enough respect to create a new approach to higher vocational education. Where this week Vince Cable MP said that he was seeing the future of advanced technical education. Where the Director of Global Manufacturing at Rolls-Royce Hamid Mughal said, if he were 16 again and considering 100 options for his future, this would be the one he would choose.
I see this care in the work to secure funding for Postgraduate Taught students and the desire to help our world in a poem on material that cleans the air that we breathe. I see my colleague Richard Jones who is determined to clarify how truly bad our economy has got in term of innovation and growth, and to explain how genuinely important our research and innovation is to our region and our nation. I know this is driven by his resolve to work with the city to make the economy our young people need. This scholarship unites our intellect with purpose and action.
We will not address problems by not believing we can help. We must not listen to those who say that things are not in our control or that market forces and public opinion will inevitably scupper our actions. They are human inventions and they can be challenged, and must be.
Our University is made up of people from many nations. We are a community which is both diverse and purposeful, a proud rainbow state if ever there was one. But it must not be a gated community, a walled city. It needs to reach over those walls, and the flag we fly must not be for ourselves alone.
A flag does not have to be exclusive. It can also be a symbol of hope. Our task as a University is to ensure that we are not deaf to our wider world, but that we both listen and act. This is not only how we will thrive materially. It will give us the courage to remake who we are and to be sure our future is one which others will welcome.
Professor Sir Keith Burnett
Vice-Chancellor