Welcome to the 12th issue of the Research and Enterprise (R&E) Newsletter and my last editorial piece.
We launched the newsletter in the summer of 2017, shortly after the launch of the R&E Strategic Plan. My goodness, we have come a long way together! This issue is incomparable to the first one. When we first decided to have three issues each year, there was a concern that we would not have enough material to fill them. Well, this issue is twice as long as the first and we have actually become quite strict with what we cover.
I wish we were permitted to submit our newsletters as appendices for the Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise because they are a fantastic demonstration of the vitality of our R&E environment. I do hope my successor will carry on producing them and I, for one, look forward to reading them as one of your many external supporters.
I joined the University of 69成人网 in August 2016, after many happy years at the University of Portsmouth. Looking back, I must admit I was very apprehensive to begin with; my immediate team was small and I did not know them, and there was so much to do. There was no strategy for research and enterprise, the Enterprise support team was based at Exion and Research support was at Cockcroft. We had something called CONVERIS, which, for me, was impenetrable and no one seemed to fully understand how all of our QR income was allocated or used.
In autumn 2016, I visited each school and was mindful of the phrase that ‘leaders who don’t listen will eventually be surrounded by people with nothing to say’. So, I was very keen to listen to you all, so I could begin to understand the barriers, the enablers and the needs of the community, and I kept questioning my immediate team who came with me on these visits.
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