Dear colleagues
Firstly, may I thank the many hundreds of you, as well as the students and external stakeholders, who engaged with the online survey, had meetings, attended drop-ins and sent emails to provide us with a rich picture of the experience and attributes that we should be looking for in our next Vice-Chancellor. We consolidated all of these contributions into a report that was presented to the Selection Committee for their approval in mid-November. You will find a copy of this report here.
This feedback has formed the basis of the new Vice-Chancellor’s role and person specification that has now been incorporated into the Recruitment Pack that we published on Monday. This Pack, as well as the timeline for recruiting the next Vice-Chancellor, are openly accessible on this externally facing web page.
Our search partners – Odgers Berndtson – will be using their networks in conjunction with some global, digital advertising to develop a long list of candidates over the coming weeks. We will continue to keep you updated as we go through the process of recruitment and anticipate that we will be able to announce the successful candidate in April.
Several people have asked me about interim arrangements. Sir Christopher will be retiring on 8 March 2019 and a new Vice-Chancellor may not start until the autumn. We have very clear ordinances that state, “One of the Vice-Presidents shall act for the Vice-Chancellor during his or her absence or during a vacancy in that office.”
Once the Chair of Council has a clearer view of the candidates and likely period for which we will require an interim, we will be able to let you know the detailed arrangements. This is likely to be in February 2019.
In the meantime, if you would like to ask any questions or share your thoughts please email [email protected]. We will consolidate your questions and generate FAQs and other resources and publish them on a dedicated SharePoint site in the next week.
Kind regards
Mandy
Professor Mandy Fader
Academic Lead and PVC Internal Partnerships
