Message from the Vice Chancellor: Changes to Our Academic Structure

Message from the Vice Chancellor: Changes to Our Academic Structure

Dear colleagues

When we published the University’s 2022-27 Strategic Plan, Transforming Lives and Communities, last summer we set out the need to take actions that give us the best chance of achieving our ambitions.

Our strategy hinges on three core themes: We Collaborate. We Challenge. We Transform. Our ambition is to become a top 40 UK university and top 500 global university by 2027 as a step towards becoming a top 15 UK university by 2050.

A common theme throughout the conversations with colleagues across the University which shaped the strategic plan and its supporting strategies was that collaboration within and between different areas of the University is sometimes too difficult.

In recent months, the Senior Leadership Team has been considering how changes to our academic structures could create more opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaboration in our teaching, research and knowledge exchange.

We have agreed in principle that the University will move from the current four-college structure to a two-college structure prior to the start of the 2023/24 academic year.

Our existing academic schools will be retained in full and realigned in larger colleges. The working titles and configurations for these are:

This will be a significant change for the University and an important step in creating the conditions which will enable us to deliver our strategy.

Briefings have been held with colleagues whose roles and responsibilities are likely to change most significantly in the new structure. Any organisational change of this type will inevitably create uncertainty and apprehension and we hope to alleviate that through regular communication and involvement of colleagues in managing this change.

Over the coming weeks, colleagues will be encouraged to discuss the changes within their teams and feed back to SLT. Support is also available through People, Performance and Culture business partners, our trade unions, and the Employee Assistance Programme where required.

It is important to emphasise at the outset that this is not an exercise in down-sizing or cost-saving. The change in structure is not expected to reduce headcount and we expect it to create new opportunities. Nor is it the end of the changes we will need to make if we are to achieve our strategic ambitions. The world around us continues to change and there will be more to do. Successful universities do not stand still and I know collectively we can, and will, seize the opportunities ahead.

Colleagues already achieve remarkable successes through collaborative working between disciplines and across departmental areas – the essence of our One Community values. Structure is a means, not an end. The aim of this change is to enable colleagues to collaborate more easily, at scale, by lowering the walls between disciplines and helping talented people come together more readily.

This is necessary because we will need to transform our performance in most of the key metrics we are measured on by external agencies and stakeholders if we are to achieve our strategic ambitions. These range from continuing to attract excellent students from all backgrounds and enhancing their graduate prospects, to improving the volume and quality of research in order to grow our impact on the communities around us.

As I outlined in my Town Hall talks last year, there are a number of external factors which make now the time to change the way we organise ourselves, notably the challenges of the economic and political environment universities face today. Strengthening our national and international reputation and ranking should make us more resilient to these forces and provide more opportunities to focus on fulfilling our mission and vision: as a university of and for the 21^st Century, deeply connected and committed to our city, county and region.

Colleagues should rightly be proud of everything this university has achieved in the last three decades, but when the landscape around us changes, more of the same does not guarantee the same results. We have seen elsewhere in the UK higher education sector the impact of responding too late to cumulative external pressures.

The vast benefits universities can bring to their students, graduates, staff, research partners and collaborators, and the communities we ultimately serve, will increasingly be found at the boundaries of ‘traditional’ academic disciplines, whether it is delivering impactful research and innovation that improves people’s lives, providing the foundations for enterprising new businesses to flourish, or equipping our graduates for the non-linear career paths of the 21^st Century through outstanding teaching and support. To catalyse these benefits, we need greater scale, synergy and strategic focus in all our activities.

Many ideas and insights around how we accomplish this were proposed by colleagues who contributed to development of the strategic plan and the supporting strategies last year. We will draw many of these ideas together as we define next steps. Before the summer, I will host another Town Hall meeting to discuss in more depth the work done so far, the journey ahead of us, and how all colleagues can play a part.

Professor Neal Juster
Vice Chancellor

Colleagues can find information about the implementation of the University strategy, including FAQs and ways to share feedback, ideas, and questions, on the Strategy Implementation Hub intranet site at lncn.ac/strategyhub