{"id":389,"date":"2019-12-16T08:00:01","date_gmt":"2019-12-16T08:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/?p=389"},"modified":"2019-12-17T13:11:55","modified_gmt":"2019-12-17T13:11:55","slug":"update-from-the-lay-member-of-council","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/2019\/12\/16\/update-from-the-lay-member-of-council\/","title":{"rendered":"Update from the Lay Member of Council"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christine Gibbons, BPharm (hons) 1978
\n<\/strong>Lay Member of University Council<\/strong><\/p>\n

With a new academic year underway, it\u2019s been fantastic to be back on campus. I sat a while in The Patch<\/a> eating a fantastic vegetarian bake and listening to students talking about their part-time jobs, admin for societies and coursework. It certainly feels different from the 1970s when I was on campus, especially with all of the new buildings that have sprung up.<\/p>\n

We now offer accommodation in Carpenter House<\/a> and student support at the Virgil Building<\/a>, both in central Bath, as well as the currently under-development Institute for Advanced Automotive Propulsion Systems<\/a> in Bristol.\u00a0 There is still a lot of building going on around campus, too, with new postgraduate accommodation now open and the School of Management under construction. However, Wessex and Norwood House are still there and looking the same \u2013 from the outside, anyway!<\/p>\n

The Council had a two-day event to start the year. We welcomed speaker Nick Hillman, Director of Higher Education Policy Institute, talking about the work of his independent thinktank on higher education, and met our two new Council members Maria Bond and Dot Griffiths. We now have three alumni on Council.<\/p>\n

The Vice-Chancellor recently launched the Our University, Our Future initiative<\/a> to gather feedback from staff, students, alumni and other stakeholders on the strategic focus and next steps for the University. We will be contacting our graduates for their views in early 2020, so keep an eye out.<\/p>\n

Our discussions on research focused on the new Research Excellence Framework (REF) submission and how its new format may affect us. We have some significant strength areas, but our research grant income is \u00a351,000 per full-time equivalent teaching and research staff member, compared to a median among similar institutions of \u00a379,000. We talked about the importance of developing research at a local and regional level with our partners in the area.<\/p>\n

We also discussed what our Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) scores might look like in 2020, following the Gold ranking we received in 2017. 70% of our annual income (\u00a3210 million) comes from students, and we have some brilliant outcomes:<\/p>\n