果冻传媒

Hear from Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stuart Croft, as he welcomes our 果冻传媒 community to the new academic year.

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Transcript:

Hello everyone, and welcome to the new academic year and to our new term. I know many of you have been working in the university right through the pandemic in a whole variety of different places. Many of you I know have been working on kitchen tables, in bedrooms, spare bedrooms, sometimes with kids running around, home-schooling and all the rest of it. And let's hope we have got all that firmly behind us now, because for those of you who have not been on campus much recently, you will find it quite extraordinarily exciting when you are when you meet people that you haven't actually seen in person for 18 months and have all that catch up conversation. As I've been doing over the course of the last couple of weeks, it slows down the amount of work, but it feels really good for the soul.

Learning in the new term

The term is going to operate, I hope, really effectively if we all focus as a community on what it is that we need to do. We are doing blended learning. So that means that where we have education, a lecture, for example, that is not interactive, we are going to put that online, but the majority of our education is going to be face to face.

Covid safety

We all need to work together for this. We all need to encourage people to wear face masks, to socially distance, to focus on the hygiene. That's the way that we as a community are going to operate openly and actively and safely through this winter that is coming towards us. And also, vaccinations and tests, do encourage people, do have conversations around testing. Everybody, please, lateral flow tests twice a week. It's really easy. You'll know it. You're already doing it, I'm sure. And vaccinations, we have done a really important survey with our students, which tells us that of the survey, 88 percent have already been double-vaccinated. And with one vaccination, that number goes up to 95 percent. The students who have not yet vaccinated but want to be that takes it to ninety seven percent. We won't get to 100 percent. There are people who, for clinical reasons, should not be vaccinated. That's one of the reasons it's so important for the rest of us to make sure that we are vaccinated. We鈥檙e going to do a staff survey as well. Really important for us to understand the overall community and how strong our vaccination rates are, but also because our vaccination centre will be offering booster's and we need to make sure that we get enough vaccines in, not too many. We mustn't waste the vaccines, precious vaccines, so much in need around the world. The vaccination centre on campus is free and easy. People can just walk up and then somebody will look after you and give you a vaccination there and then. So, there's no reason why we can't achieve, by around November, a sense that we are a fully vaccinated campus. Stick to the rules, encourage people to stick to the rules. That's the best way forward.

Sustainability Goals

Now, one of the other fantastic things about being back on campus is you see just the fabulous developments on here in the IBRB building, which is absolutely spectacular. Shamefully, it's the first time I've been inside, I've been outside of it lots, but first time inside. And it is quite spectacular. And vitally importantly, the build for this has had sustainability centrally in mind. This is an extraordinarily energy efficient building. And it's one of the ways, one of the many ways that we as a community, as a university are going to meet our sustainability goals. It is two years since we declared a climate emergency. And soon our way to sustainability roadmap will come out.

And in this period of time, as you'll know, we've had announcements around the Eco park, lots of other projects, whole community coming together around this really important, really important commitment that we've got. And we've been invited as a university to COP26 to talk about some of the work going on here and some of the collaborative work ongoing across our region as well.

Arts and Events

One of the other great things at the moment is how close we are to the opening of the Faculty of Arts Building and the Arts Centre refurbishment, which is really spectacular. So, City of Culture will reach its climax in the spring with lots of fantastic and exciting activities, events ongoing, including here at the university. And then we go from there into the Commonwealth Games. So, it's a really exciting year of activities around Coventry and around the West Midlands.

Graduation Ceremonies

But, don't forget right here, because not only will we have our regular degree ceremonies both in January and in summer, but we're going to have a big series of catch up events like Graduation Village to invite back those of our wonderful students who have not been able to have a ceremony the last couple of years. So, welcome to the start of the new academic year and a new term.

Thank you!

And finally. Thank you, thank you, thank you, to every one of you. You know, I'd have to say it to this wonderful set of awards that we've got from The Times and The Sunday Times of Runner-up of University of the Year, winner of the University of the Year for Teaching quality. Which is something which has been produced, of course, by our wonderful educators and the team supporting them. But actually, teaching quality, student experience, is something that everybody has contributed to. Whether it be our cleaners with our security staff, residential life, whether it be people in finance, whether it be people in human resources, our wonderful student experience ambassadors from CCSG in particular. Everyone has come together, and achieved this wonderful, wonderful, wonderful result. So, as we head into the new term. Thank you for everything you've done. Very best wishes. And I look forward to speaking with you all, face to face, in the not too distant future.

Thank you and best of luck for term 1.

Professor Stuart Croft
Vice-Chancellor
4 October 2021