Reporter 7/10/98: Congregation of the Regent House on 1 October 1998

ACTA

Congregation of the Regent House on 1 October 1998

A Congregation of the Regent House was held at 9.30 a.m. Professor Sir ALEC BROERS delivered the following address to the Regent House:

Last year I changed the style of this annual address from an attempt to give a comprehensive account of recent events to a personal exposition of themes which particularly concerned me. I intend to do the same today, as I believe that the University's published Annual Report, together with the Reports of the Council and General Board, are fully adequate in recounting the events of the past year. I was encouraged in this decision by some notes I inherited, when I became Vice-Chancellor, from a distinguished member of the Regent House. He wrote: 'We Regents do not pine for the liturgy of an annual report which would be better published separately. We want … a few well-chosen words: of lamentation for the departed, of thanks for our benefactors and gratitude to our servants, a sweet oration … followed by seed-cake and Madeira'.

What follows will indeed be my own well-chosen words and I will touch on three particular themes: our mission and the means to achieve it; our efforts to widen access; and our gratitude to those who have helped us in our aims. I cannot claim the skill of sweet oration, and I do not think that Madeira is appropriate in the middle of the morning, but I shall at least offer seed cake and coffee in the Combination Room after the coming Congregation.

I will start with our mission. There have been a number of matters of policy, even controversy, which have publicly beset us this year. I would like to mention just two of these; the debate over the College fee and the discussion of the way in which teaching quality is assessed. We like to think of ourselves as an autonomous community of scholars with an unqualified right to serve scholarship alone, and that matters such as these would be for us to decide alone, but I believe that we must recognize that service to community and society is a paramount part of our mission, and the key justification for the funds we seek and receive from public and private sources. The support we receive, involuntarily, from tax-payers, the huge majority of whom have no say in our affairs and no directly perceptible benefit from our work, forms part of our tacit contract with society. It is important that we explain our actions so that society understands and supports our aims.

In our understandable, and indeed successful, quest for primacy in the successive Research Assessment Exercises we have not forgotten the need for equal diligence in the search for high quality in teaching, and I am pleased to say that our record in the assessments of individual subject teaching has been excellent. We have, nevertheless, been discussing with the Higher Education Funding Council the need for the new assessment programme, which is to be introduced in a few years' time, to recognize the diversity of institutions and subjects and to be light in its touch. I shall continue to urge, in the valuable personal links which have grown up with government, the need for greater efficiency and flexibility in all forms of assessment.

The arguments that we made in support of the funding arrangements for Cambridge (and Oxford) Colleges rested in part on the belief that there was a provable and beneficial link between the inspiration and dynamism that comes from leading-edge research, and effectiveness in high-grade undergraduate teaching. The College supervision system brings dons and students together, giving the dons the opportunity to convey the excitement of their research to the students. It is upon our effectiveness in teaching that our claims for additional public support are largely judged, and we are hopeful that we have persuaded government of the value added by the Colleges. The College contribution to the University, of course, extends well beyond student supervisions. It is the whole student experience of personal interactions, starting with admissions and continuing with small group teaching and pastoral care. I would like here to take the opportunity to recognize the immensely important role played by George Reid in our discussions with the Funding Council and with government. He has gathered and ordered a vast volume of data and communicated this both inside and outside the University, ensuring that informed decisions have been made.

To further encourage high-quality teaching we have taken important steps to recognize outstanding contributions to teaching. The prizes instituted by the late Sir Alastair Pilkington were an important move towards restoring parity of esteem between teaching and research. The General Board's proposals for restructuring academical offices go further in the direction of recognizing and rewarding teaching excellence through the introduction of the Senior Lectureship. I have greatly valued my discussions with student representatives on teaching and related topics, and I look forward to renewed consideration of them in the year to come. I especially welcome the recent initiative shown by the Graduate Union in examining the special needs of research students.

In proposing changes to salaries and promotions procedures, the General Board and the Council have, of course, followed the standard procedures for introducing change in the University. The proposals were set out in a Report published in the Reporter, a Discussion was called in the Senate-House, and a ballot is to be held this term. Cambridge is not in any identifiable sense a 'top down' institution and it is important that proposals of this magnitude prompt serious consideration by all members of the Regent House. I very much hope that a larger proportion of the Regent House becomes seriously involved in the ballot than took part in the Senate-House Discussion.

As is only too clear from the recent use made of its historic statutory machinery, Cambridge's governance is more open to active intervention by its staff at every level than probably any other comparable institution in the world. In the Reporter we have a weekly journal, not only of record but also one which sets out in painstaking detail the agenda for policy and business ahead. As a proportion of the full Regent House the number of individuals needed to force reconsideration of decisions and proposals is minute (0.3 per cent). Those proposals themselves are formulated not by a remote and unaccountable bureaucracy, let alone by administrative officers with an agenda of their own, but by the elected delegates of the Faculties and Schools themselves. And yet it is clear to me from talking with members of the Regent House that many think that the decision-making processes are remote. I urge you all to participate more in the process of decision making. I would like to ensure that the decisions that we make are those of the majority of the Regent House.

Five hundred years ago, Cambridge played a leading part in one of the most revolutionary and liberating of human inventions, the development of moveable-type printing. Is it not now time for us to consider our machinery of governance in terms which reflect a far larger constituency than can ever have been dreamed of then? It is now a constituency, moreover, which no longer meets at the weekly University Sermon or in King's Parade, as was true even half a century ago, and which has far less in the way of common terms of reference and assumptions. I have myself sought in a small way to widen the range of internal communications, in which I believe we fall very far short of the standards that are now commonplace in some organizations. For instance, aware of my own lack of experience in the field, I have established an Arts and Humanities Consultative Group drawing from members of the Faculties concerned. I have just, for the third time, arranged a series of dinner/discussions with Heads of Department and Chairs of Faculty Boards in every discipline in the University. The General Board provides for new Heads of Department, and comparable officers, background material far more comprehensive - and comprehensible - than that which was available when I returned to Cambridge fifteen years ago. But I believe that we must seriously address the manifest shortcomings in the means by which we communicate and consult. There may be a sentimental allure behind the assumption that gowned figures, solemnly meeting in conclave in the Senate-House can realistically govern a great, complex, and widely dispersed institution, having read and inwardly digested the convoluted prose of successive Reports. But it is an idealistic fantasy, and should be progressively replaced by the desire to harness the modern methods of communication with their much wider reach and more rapid response. We must communicate our aims not only internally but to the region, the nation, and the world.

I will now turn to the issue of access. The new government has, as we all know, placed strong emphasis on enhanced access to higher education through a resumption of growth and wider participation from under-represented groups. Half a million extra students are promised by the year 2002, although a relatively small proportion of those will be within the higher education sector. Our own contribution to that growth will necessarily be small, but there is a strong incentive for us to attract entrants from groups without a traditional or instinctive interest in Cambridge. To this end we have, with Oxford, commissioned an independent survey in schools by the National Foundation for Educational Research, to try to get behind what is predominantly anecdotal evidence of why able pupils in the maintained - the State - sector simply do not even consider applying to Oxbridge. This initiative has been accompanied by a major publicity campaign involving specially commissioned literature, launched in the summer with the enthusiastic support of the Secretary of State. We are much in the debt of Mr Martin Sorrell for his practical and inspired support for this move, ably supported by the University's Press and Publications Office, and the Cambridge University Press who generously printed the posters.

The anecdotes to which I refer are of a curiously contradictory kind, echoed in my postbag which is a valuable if unscientific index to the matters which inspire alumni and members of the general public to write. Incidentally, members of the Regent House may be reassured to know that I continue to follow my predecessor's custom of seeing all the several hundred letters which come into the office each week, not least as a means of maintaining my awareness of what most concerns the public as well as members of the University. A common theme from independent schools and alumni concerned with their pupils is that Colleges discriminate against them, for example by placing higher academic hurdles in the way of entrants or by overt hostility to particular candidates. From maintained schools the complaint is the converse, that Colleges and the University at large adopt so formidable an image of social and academic exclusiveness that their students are repelled and do not apply.

Whilst naturally decisions in individual cases are for the Colleges concerned, and I am resolute in explaining that position to correspondents, it is, I think, important to recognize that admission based on academic achievement will naturally reflect the high national proportion of pupils in sixth forms or their equivalent in the independent sector, together with the still higher proportion who gain three As at A level. It is an academic, not a social, elite which the admission statistics reflect. However the argument that Colleges are admitting weak maintained sector pupils for 'politically correct' motives is equally unsustainable. Tripos performances of students from the two sectors are remarkably similar, in the case of the second class they are almost identical, in the firsts just a percentage point apart. If our efforts bear the fruit that I hope and expect, we shall have more applicants of high ability from the maintained schools, and the overall competition for Cambridge places from whatever source will become still more severe. I am sure that Colleges will continue to seek the brightest talent and potential, irrespective of school background. All of us in the Senate-House today know that the most stimulating aspect of undergraduate teaching is to have bright pupils. The clear message from Cambridge is: send us those students.

I will now turn to the pleasant task of recognizing our benefactors. It seems likely that the value of University benefactions received in the course of 1997-98 will be greater in real terms than ever before in our history. This is a tribute to the attraction and vitality of the University, and is a solemn responsibility for us all to live up to. We must also recognize the tireless and professional contribution of the Development Office and its Director Mike Smithson.

Plans for the new building for the Faculty of Divinity were finally approved by the University, after more than £7m had been achieved in four years by internal and external planning committees chaired respectively by Robert Runcie and David Ford. A small short-fall in funding remains to be met, and then the way will be clear - most appropriately - for one of the University's oldest faculties to move to its new home in the summer of the millennial year 2000. It is particularly pleasant that this good news came just as Morna Hooker retired, after twenty-two years, from the University's oldest Professorship, the Lady Margaret's Professorship of Divinity: it was a wonderful crown to a wonderful career.

At the end of April, two of the world's leading companies, British Petroleum and Unilever, announced major funding initiatives for science, including two new Professorships. Each high-profile company is planning to establish a significant research and teaching presence in Cambridge, marking a further step in its achievement as a world-class institution. Unilever is to invest £13m in a Centre for Molecular Science Informatics and BP is to give around £21m to fund the BP Institute, an interdisciplinary institute to create a focus for research on multiphase fluid flow. Earth Sciences, together with DAMTP, Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, and Engineering, will benefit from this outstanding initiative.

We are especially grateful to the Garfield Weston Foundation for a donation of £2.5m, and to the Wolfson Foundation for a donation of £1m both towards the new Centre for Mathematical Sciences in Clarkson Road. These gifts, together with the foundation gifts of Nick Corfield and the Märit and Hans Rausing Foundation, enabled us to go ahead with the first phase of this project. For those of you interested in monitoring its progress, the massive excavations for the central lecture theatres are under the continuous scrutiny of a video camera directly connected to the Internet. We were also very pleased to announce a benefaction of £1.75m from N.M. Rothschild & Sons Ltd to endow the N.M. Rothschild Professorship of Mathematical Sciences which is to be held by the Director of the Isaac Newton Institute. Later in the year we most gratefully received from the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences a donation of £1.5m which is to fund over a period of ten years a Professorship and two Research Fellowships.

In the Judge Institute of Management, a gift of £2m from Dennis and Joan Gillings has enabled the endowment of a Dennis Gillings Professorship of Health Management, and a donation of £2m from the Margaret Thatcher Foundation enabled the endowment of a Margaret Thatcher Professorship of Enterprise Studies. These important gifts will enable the Institute to enhance its work in two of its key areas of specialization.

There are also three major gifts that are central to the University's development. The planned donation by the Cambridge Development Office of the USA, following a generous pledge from the William H. Gates Foundation of £12m, will be used for building a new Computer Laboratory on the West Cambridge Site. Bill Gates himself flew in to mark the launching of his initiative and gave a standing-room-only talk in St John's College on the future of information technology.

We received news of the second munificent donation in the summer. It is from Gordon Moore and his wife Betty. Gordon is one of the two founders of Intel, the company that makes the Pentium chips that drive the world's personal computers. The Moores have given $8.6m, of a $12.5m pledge, to the Cambridge University Development Office of the USA, which will allow the funding of a new Physical Sciences and Technology Library at Clarkson Road. This is to be a modern library in all senses of the word, and will be designed especially to accommodate electronic media as well as journals and books. The library will also house Stephen Hawking's archives. Gordon Moore first met Stephen Hawking when he presided over a lecture Stephen gave in California. Gordon subsequently ensured that one of Intel's latest chips was installed inside Stephen's communication and speech synthesis computer.

The magnificent gifts from Gordon Moore and Bill Gates, which are amongst the largest in our history, owe much to the firm personal links built up by our office in New York and by the Development Office in Cambridge. I would like to recognize Peter Little, who in the New York office played a key role in both of these donations.

The third major gift is from Hutchison Whampoa. They have given £5m to fund the Hutchison/MRC Research Centre which is to comprise a Hutchison Cancer Research Unit and an MRC Unit specializing in cellular and molecular biology. This gift was the result of discussions initiated by Keith Peters with Lord Derwent and Li Ka-Shing, Chairman of Hutchison Whampoa.

Finally, I would like to pay an especial tribute to the generosity of two of our own, Roger Needham and Karen Sparck Jones, who have given magnificently towards the funding of the new Computer Laboratory.

Before I turn to the official business of the day, which is the election by the Regent House of their officers for the coming year, there are some personal thanks which I would like to express. I would first like to acknowledge the patience and support I have received from the Regent House's officers, the Proctors, in the past year: I look forward to working with those who have been nominated for the coming year.

For part of the past year, I have had the great benefit of the detached and objective views of Tom Everhart, as Pro-Vice-Chancellor. Tom, who joined us after gaining distinction as President of Caltech and Chancellor of the University of Illinois in Urbana, was able to bring to us a life-time's experience of academic and administrative leadership in great universities. He has reported personally to me on how he found Cambridge by comparison; his views were positive and encouraging, and will be a valuable basis for our future development. I am especially grateful, too, to Roger Needham, who has carried a heavy burden of representation and negotiation in the field of research; and to David Harrison whose unrivalled experience of College and University affairs, enhanced by close involvement with two other universities, has helped us to steer clear of the majority of shoals in College/University relations and in our interaction with government and regional interests. He will continue in that role in the coming year as Chairman of the Colleges' Committee.

I am very glad to welcome Anne Lonsdale as Pro-Vice-Chancellor and as a Deputy Vice-Chancellor. She will have particular responsibilities in the areas of policy in external and public relations.

Amongst those who are departing today I would like to pay a special tribute to Juliet Campbell. Her inspiring leadership in the various events which surrounded our commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the granting of full degrees to women was a fitting culmination to a career which signally marked the advancement of women, and was a reminder of the historic mission of Girton College. I would also like to mention Margaret Stevens who retires today after eleven years as Chief Secretary to three Vice-Chancellors. They, and many hundreds of others throughout the University and beyond, will, I know, testify to her unfailing humour and courtesy in what was often a very hot seat indeed. I am glad to say that she will be continuing on a part-time basis to help my wife in managing the Vice-Chancellor's Lodge and our programme of entertainment, and in hosting many of the University's important visitors. She will be succeeded by Julie Durrant, who has herself been another mainstay of the office for six years.

We were all delighted by the news in the Honours Lists of knighthoods for Michael Berridge and Nick Shackleton, the DBE for Gillian Beer, and the CBE for Archie Howie.

During the year we also said farewell to two other long-serving members of the Old Schools secretarial staff, to Sheila Overhill and Diane Everett, each of whom was ministering, respectively, to Treasurers and Secretaries-General long before some of us had even left school. They will be much missed.

In my ceaseless peregrination around the University, I am ever mindful of the vital contribution made by members of the Assistant Staff to the University's achievements, and I thank them for their vital contributions across the whole spectrum of the University's activities.

In the Old Schools, I remain deeply impressed by the patient dedication which the administrative staff devote to carrying forward the business of the University. Theirs, members of the Regent House, is an often unrewarded task, and deserves our support and understanding. I am especially mindful of the heavy duties of the Registrary. Tim Mead took on these heavy responsibilities with remarkable rapidity and skill, despite more pressure and controversy than perhaps bore down on any of his peace-time predecessors. To David Livesey and Joanna Womack and their staffs I am equally grateful, as the Regent House should be. These three Principal Administrative Officers are dedicated to providing professional and efficient administrative support to the University, and they are doing an outstanding job. In my own office I wish to thank Geoffrey Skelsey and his team who valiantly beat back the tidal wave of paper, and finally I want to record my immense gratitude to my wife, who is as busy as I am in the cause of the University.

In the year ahead, as always, we have many challenges facing us. The establishment of a new mechanism for the College fee and the completion of our review of promotions and stipends are amongst these. It is my sincere wish that as many members of the University as possible take part in the discussion of these topics. At the same time we can look back on a year with a number of successes. We were top in several independent rankings of universities, thereby recognizing the excellence of all Departments and Faculties in the University, and we made significant progress in our interactions with industry and government. The Secretary of State for Education and Employment has said on a number of occasions that he appreciated the excellence of our university and would ensure that this excellence was not endangered. It is through our continued willingness to change that we will sustain the confidence of the society of which we are a part.

MICHAEL ANTHONY MESSAGE, of St Catharine's College, and ELLEN JANE CLARK-KING, of Sidney Sussex College, retired from the office of Proctor, and delivered the insignia of their office to the Vice-Chancellor.

BRIAN LESLIE HEBBLETHWAITE, of Queens' College, and ARNOLD SAMUEL BROWNE, of Trinity College, were elected to the office of Proctor for the year 1998-99, and were admitted to that office by the Vice-Chancellor.

CAROLINE ANN TUKE MALONE, of New Hall, and SIMON ANTHONY REDFERN, of Jesus College, were admitted to the office of Pro-Proctor for the year 1998-99.

MICHAEL ANTHONY MESSAGE, of St Catharine's College, and ELLEN JANE CLARK-KING, of Sidney Sussex College, were elected to the office of Deputy Proctor for the year 1998-99, and made their public declaration in accordance with Statute D, VI, 5.

T. J. MEAD, Registrary

END OF THE OFFICIAL PART OF THE 'REPORTER'

Table of Contents