Dear colleagues,
Let me begin by thanking everyone who was involved in welcoming our new and returning students to Imperial. It has been another busy start to the autumn term and an enormous amount of activity goes on across the organisation to make it a success.
My thanks also to those who contributed to Commemoration Day, which saw thousands celebrate their graduation from Imperial. Congratulations to colleagues who were recognised with Imperial College Medals and President’s Medals.
I was unable to attend last week as I was part of the British Prime Minister’s trade delegation to India, which helped highlight our pioneering work around the Imperial Global India hub. As part of the trip, we announced a new partnership with Science Gallery Bengaluru, which includes a new joint fellowship programme. Not only will our global hubs boost our profile and reputation internationally, they promise to open up novel areas of research and innovation.
Our role as Imperial’s leadership is to plan for the immediate, short, medium and long-term future of the university.
At Wednesday’s In Conversation session I was joined by our new Provost and Deputy President Professor Peter Haynes, who discussed his priorities. Looking at how we deliver on the promise of our Science for Humanity strategy, Professor Martyn Boutelle, Associate Provost (Estates Planning), presented the proposed plans for a new interdisciplinary academic building at White City. Watch this short video for an overview of our plans. Please do take the opportunity to have your say during the public consultation period which is open until Sunday 26 October.
As well as investing in infrastructure for the future, we are also committed to ensuring our staff are appropriately recognised and rewarded for the vital role that you play; and we regularly benchmark to ensure we meet our pay principles.
At Wednesday’s event, I addressed concerns around some of the academic pay benchmarking data provided by the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA). As soon as these were raised we immediately contacted UCEA, and following an investigation they have now admitted making a coding error in the benchmarking affecting academic grades except for full professor. They have apologised and our fee for this work will be refunded. The latest academic benchmarks have now been corrected and are published on our website. These show Imperial continues to meet its commitment to pay median to upper-quartile salaries across all job families, as set out in our pay principles.
Thank you to Consul Professor Wisia Wedzicha for moderating the Q&A. Questions that we were not able to cover will be addressed on the website.
Our next In Conversation event will take place on Tuesday 18 November.
Best wishes,
Hugh
Professor Hugh Brady, President