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With around 400 University of Manchester graduates thought to be in Jersey, the university’s president and vice-chancellor, Professor Duncan Ivison, tells Emily Moore why the institution is keen to engage with the local alumni association and how former students can support the university’s goals
ALAN Turing, the splitting of the atom, graphene – and the Nobel-prize-winning scientists Sirs Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov who discovered it – plastic hip sockets and suffragette Christabel Pankhurst.
While all have a significant place in history, they seem, at first glance, to be totally disparate. However, there is one thread – a place – which connects them all.
And that place, the University of Manchester, has also played a significant role in history, tracing its roots to the Industrial Revolution.
Indeed, as its president and vice-chancellor, Professor Duncan Ivison, explains, the university, which celebrated its 200th anniversary last year, originally opened not as a higher-education establishment accessible only to the elite but as the Manchester Mechanics’ Institution, which was formed as part of a national movement for the education of working men.
“The University of Manchester was the first modern civic university of its kind, and it all started with philanthropy, when a group of future-orientated benefactors, who believed that the city needed such an institution, set out to create one,” he said. “While its beginnings were very modest, it is now one of the largest universities in the UK, and is incredibly important not just to Manchester but, through its research and teaching, to the world.”
Acknowledging the institution’s “revolutionary and philanthropic” beginnings, Professor Ivison added that these values remained at the heart of the organisation – and would be critical to bringing to life its vision for the future.
“Our origins are deep in our DNA,” he said. “The university has always been a hub of both research and teaching, and the institution has always seen its role as being to educate not just the future leaders of Manchester and the north-west but of the world. This comes not just through our education but, just as critically, through our fundamental and applied research programmes, which have led to significant breakthroughs such as the discovery of graphene and the splitting of the atom.”
But while reflecting with pride on the University of Manchester’s “200 years of incredible development”, the professor is quick to stress that attention now has to turn to the next 200 years and, most pressingly, the decade ahead.
“We are at an extraordinary time in history in so many ways, and the fundamental question now is: What does the world need from us, in terms of our research, the students we educate and the partnerships we have? And what impact do we want to have on the communities we serve?”
Helping to direct the university’s thoughts on these topics, the professor and his team – which includes former Jersey College for Girls student and vice-president of research Professor Colette Fagan – is the university’s new strategy, which aims to determine what the University of Manchester will look like in 2035.
“It is one thing to want to be something, but it is more important to understand what we need to be to support and enable our students, staff and communities to be the best they can be,” said the Canadian-born president, who took up the “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to lead the university in August.
And drawing on the themes of community and philanthropy, there is, adds Professor Ivison, one key group of people who can help not only inform that strategy but also support its implementation.
“Our alumni are tremendously important to us – just as the University of Manchester remains important to them,” he said. “They, together with our students, colleagues and community partners, are among the 8,000 or so people who have already taken part in our discussion about what we need to do to be a truly great 21st-century university and also which transformative leaps we could take.”
One such “exciting” leap, the professor adds, is around innovation.
“How do we contribute to enhancing the innovation of our city, our region and our country?” he mused. “And as we strive to become more innovative, how do we get more of our work – whether that is research, the students we teach or our partnerships – into the world faster, so that it can make a bigger impact for good on the communities we serve?”
Indeed, it is the “acceleration of the point between discovery and impact” which Professor Ivison believes will define the “great universities of the 21st century”.
“This is critical because the problems the world faces are urgent and need to be addressed,” he said. “Staff and students are also motivated by the challenge of getting our work out faster, so, as a university, we have a responsibility to generate more opportunities to create spin-out companies and partnerships between government and industry so that we can facilitate that progress.”
It is an ambitious goal. But it is only one of three “big themes” which are emerging from the strategic discussions.
How do we contribute to enhancing the
Professor Duncan Ivison
innovation of our city, our region and our
country? And as we strive to become more
innovative, how do we get more of our work
– whether that is research, the students we
teach or our partnerships – into the world
faster, so that it can make a bigger impact for
good on the communities we serve?
“The second big theme is around student experience,” Professor Ivison explained. “Students face a very uncertain and challenging world, and while we are here to give them deep training and education in their chosen discipline, something which is crucial, we also want to give them more opportunities to put that learning into practice before coming back into the classroom to reflect on what they have learnt.
“Imagine if every student, as part of their degree, had the opportunity – whether through an internship, placement, field school or global exchange – to work as part of a multi-disciplinary team to address a particular problem. That chance to enhance their campus-based learning with some real-world experience would not only encourage deeper thinking but would also enhance their employability prospects and build interesting links with the community, something which our network of alumni can help to promote and facilitate.”
The third “big idea” is one which, although very modern in its implementation, harks back to the university’s inclusive roots.
“At the University of Manchester, we are rightly proud of the campus experience we offer students,” he said. “However, we recognise that many people have not been able to benefit from the incredible rise in higher education, and we want more people to have access to what we offer. To do this, we need to think about our digital campus, improving and deepening our digital openings to create opportunities for people to study and engage with us.”
This, he says, would not only give more people access to the university but would also support the need to “learn new skills throughout our lives”.
“The days of doing a degree at 18 and being set for life are over,” he reflected. “By opening up the University of Manchester’s teaching and resources to more people, you could have someone in Jersey doing a degree, short course or gaining micro credentials with us. While we would never underestimate the importance of embodied learning and access to archives, laboratories and other campus facilities, there is still great potential from expanding our campus online.”
Drawing these three “big themes” together, says Professor Ivison, is research.
“We are very excited about, and committed to, discovery-led research, something which is precious, yet increasingly challenging to support because funding doesn’t come easily in this space,” he said. “However, it is vital that researchers can pursue the answers to questions because that is how great discoveries and innovation happen.
“We also want to think about how we can bring disciplines together to address the big challenges both our city and the world are facing. We therefore need to organise ourselves around those problems, bringing expertise from different disciplines together, to tackle multi-dimensional problems such as climate change, structural social disadvantage and cancer. As a university which is a global leader in many research areas, how do we bring those disciplines together in new ways?
“That is a really exciting prospect and the big theme emerging is a need to create some big mission-orientated research initiatives to pursue. But whatever else we do, we know that we need to keep producing graduates who are highly skilled, creative and who have the ability to keep learning, asking good questions and applying their training and knowledge to hard problems.”
Key to achieving that, he says, will be the “extraordinary global community of people who have spent time at the university and gone into the world as its ambassadors”.
“We have close to 600,000 alumni around the world, including around 400 in Jersey, all of whom, having studied with us, remain connected to the University of Manchester,” he said. “They manifest our values and are our greatest ambassadors and advocates. They are also our biggest supporters, both financially and in terms of the time they offer to meet our students and spend time in their local communities.”
Given the power of these alumni, the president and his team are keen to connect with as many former students as possible, as the university embarks on its “first-ever major philanthropic campaign”.
“We won’t be able to achieve all the things we want to without becoming a great philanthropic institution, an institution to which people feel committed and are passionate about supporting,” he said. “The university was founded as a result of extraordinary gifts, and we want to reconnect with that legacy, connecting with alumni to see what they are passionate about and how the university might be able to help them in those areas.
“That could relate to providing more support for disadvantaged students, supporting research in climate change, innovation, health or advanced materials. It could be about helping young researchers to start their career, or it could be about investing in our infrastructure. There are so many ways in which our alumni can get involved to help support our growth.
“We know that the University of Manchester is special and we have an ambitious agenda for Manchester 2035, which we will not be able to fulfil without support. Our alumni are critical in supporting that long-term vision, and enabling our staff, students and partners to continue doing extraordinary things.”
Helping to spread the word about Manchester 2035, members of the university’s team, including Professor Fagan – who received a scholarship, funded by a Jersey philanthropist, to attend sixth form at the United World College, Atlantic College in Wales – will be in the Island in July to host a panel event on creative industries and createch.
“This will be an exciting event, open both to alumni and non-alumni, giving them the opportunity to hear about some of our initiatives, while networking and hearing why Manchester 2035 and our philanthropic campaign are so important for our future,” said Professor Ivison.
“This isn’t the first event that we have held in Jersey, and we are incredibly keen to grow the community of University of Manchester alumni in the Island.
Through a programme of regular events, we are hoping to connect with as many alumni as possible, bringing them into our community in a focused and direct way, and showing how, through our shared passions and commitments, we can have an impact and help other people to succeed in life.”
How can you get involved?
nThe panel event on 3 July, open to alumni and non-alumni, is hosted by Professor Colette Fagan and is on the topic of Creative Manchester. It takes place at The Royal Yacht Hotel and starts at 5.30pm.
Professor Colette Fagan is a member of the university’s executive team. She grew up in Jersey and maintains close connections here. She received a philanthropic scholarship to attend sixth form at Atlantic College, having previously been a student at Jersey College for Girls.
Anyone interested in finding about the Jersey alumni association and/ or in attending the event on 3 July is invited to contact its head, Ed Shorrock, managing director of Kroll Jersey office, or Laurenne Chapman, philanthropy manager Europe for University of Manchester, by emailing Ed.Shorrock@kroll.com or laurenne.chapman@manchester.ac.uk respectively.
