Investing in our people and creating a positive work environment has been a key priority for me.  As I visited Schools and Directorates in my first few weeks in post, a frequent topic that was raised by staff was our appraisal system, along with academic standards and profiles.  You told me that the system did not work well, was not tailored to individual roles, and was not supporting the development of our staff as much as we would have hoped.  So we made this a priority with our Staff Forum and this was considered at their very first meeting in October 2018.

Now we are renewing the whole appraisal system, with a simpler more developmental approach which will be used in the next round of appraisal in 2019-20.  This new approach, along with the roll-out of our new People and Culture Strategy, emphasises our commitment to staff – to listen to your concerns and act on them.

Queen’s drives much of the Northern Ireland economy.  A London Economics Report published in 2018, showed that each year, the University’s economic impact is of the order of £1.9 billion, and for every £1 million of research spend at Queen’s, £3.9 million of economic impact is generated. This is exceptional, as is our record in Knowledge Transfer Partnerships where we are the leading university in the UK, despite our modest size compared to the other leading Institutions. We currently have over 50 live KTP projects, our highest ever number and the first UK university to achieve this.

At an institutional level, a major achievement in relation to research impact and the economy is the Belfast Region City Deal.  This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for our City Region, providing substantial investment for infrastructure and innovation to drive the economy.

Growing our excellent reputation is a key factor for our development. So it was particularly pleasing to see some outstanding events such as the Symposia that we held with the University of Chicago and Yale, both of which delivered enormous impact. The conferment of an Honorary Degree on Secretary Clinton was also impactful, as well as hosting the Prime Minister as she discussed Brexit issues with key groups of people from Northern Ireland. These events are complemented by many other initiatives across the Globe from our engineering and pharmacy initiatives in China, through partnerships in Dubai and Jordan, to collaborations in the USA.  Queen’s has a strong and growing international reputation only made possible by international reach and impact of your work. 

We are also developing collaborations across Ireland – earlier this month, I invited the Irish Universities Association and Universities Ireland to Queen’s for one of their regular meetings. At that meeting, all the universities confirmed their commitment to collaborating, on an all-island basis, across a broad range of research and education initiatives. 

Queen’s, and indeed the whole university sector in the UK, is subject to challenges from the external environment for higher education, with significant pressures on funding. In Northern Ireland there are particular challenges with capped student numbers and less funding per head of undergraduate population than our peer universities in England. Despite this, I believe that Queen’s is well positioned to respond to the opportunities around us.  We are a successful Russell Group University - critical to that success is our teaching and learning, and research quality. Our quality drives substantial external impact both locally in Northern Ireland and globally.  Our teaching and research reputation is strong and building that excellence by investing in our people will be key.

While our existing strategy and Corporate Plan remains relevant, their context has been changed by developments such as the Belfast Region City Deal and, of course, the possible consequences of Brexit.  So it is important to update our current plan to reflect these changing factors, new opportunities, and challenges.  In the course of the next few months we will be reviewing and updating our Corporate Plan and in the new academic year, we will set about developing our new strategic plan, which I would like all staff to be able to contribute to.

Meantime, we will continue to focus on research excellence with impact, delivering high-quality teaching and learning, growing our international student numbers and reputation, and ensuring that our social impact and specifically WP is the best possible. All of this is only possible by investing in our people so you, our staff and students, remain my number one priority.

In summary, the past few months have been a busy time for the University and it has been my privilege to lead Queen’s.  We can be proud of the quality of our student experience and research expertise, and also the absolute professionalism in how we approach everything we do.