Skip to main contentCambridge University Reporter

No 6306

Thursday 9 May 2013

Vol cxliii No 29

pp. 505–515

Reports

First-stage Report of the Council on the construction of the Maxwell Centre on the West Cambridge site

The Council begs leave to report to the University as follows:

1. In this Report the Council is seeking approval in principle for the construction of the Maxwell Centre, for the Department of Physics, at the Cavendish Laboratory on the West Cambridge site.

2. The site for the proposed Maxwell Centre is located to the north end of the existing Physics of Medicine (PoM) building, adjacent to the William Gates Computer Sciences building. The proposed building will be approximately 4,900m2 of laboratory, office, collaboration, and ancillary space. Also proposed is a 400m2 refurbishment of the north end of the PoM building, converting the void space (previously envisaged for a nuclear magnetic resonance facility) into usable laboratory space. It is proposed to connect the PoM building and the Maxwell Centre via an internal link at ground- and first-floor level.

3. The construction of the Maxwell Centre will provide a centrepiece for industrial partnership with the physical sciences. The scale of industrial involvement is already substantial, but the target is to double this through a combination of activities in the new building, in the collaborating departments, and in the commercial space on the West Cambridge site.

4. In accordance with the Capital Projects Process, a Full Case is currently being prepared by the Department for approval by the Planning and Resources Committee. At this stage, the cost estimate for the project is £25.6m. An application for this amount has been made to the HEFCE UK Research Partnership Infrastructure Fund 2013–15. The outcome of the application will be announced in May 2013.

5. The project should be largely complete by the end of March 2015, as the project will be subject to the spend requirements dictated by HEFCE, although it is possible that the overall programme may extend by a month or two. The programme will be finalized in the coming months to achieve this target. The timescale dictates that urgent progress must be made in anticipation of a successful outcome of the funding application.

6. A planning application will be submitted to the Cambridge City Council in May 2013. Since the Maxwell Centre is approximately the same size as the previously proposed Physics of Medicine Phase 2 building (which already has planning permission and was due to be constructed at the south end of PoM) and it falls within existing plots of the approved West Cambridge Master Plan, it is the University’s intention to achieve planning consent through a Reserved Matters application. This will be finally determined during the planning Pre-Application process which will commence shortly.

7. Drawings of the proposals are displayed for the information of the University in the Schools Arcade; a location plan of the Maxwell Centre is shown below.

8. The Council recommends:

I. That approval in principle be given for the construction works outlined in this Report.

II. That the Director of Estate Management be authorized to apply for planning consent in due course.

6 May 2013

L. K. Borysiewicz, Vice-Chancellor

Andy Hopper

Rosalyn Old

N. Bampos

Fiona Karet

Rachael Padman

Charles Bell

F. P. Kelly

Shirley Pearce

Jeremy Caddick

Robert Lethbridge

John Shakeshaft

Stephen J. Cowley

Mark Lewisohn

I. H. White

I. M. Le M. Du Quesnay

Rebecca Lingwood

A. D. Yates

Nicholas Gay

Mavis McDonald

Location plan: proposed Maxwell Centre

First-stage Report of the Council on the construction of a new annexe building for the Department of Engineering at Scroope Terrace

The Council begs leave to report to the University as follows:

1. In this Report the Council is seeking approval in principle for the construction of an annexe for the Department of Engineering, to meet the Department’s needs, as set out below. The Department urgently needs additional space in large open-plan offices for post-doctoral researchers and students, with associated offices for academic staff to conduct research aligned with its, and the University’s, strategic research initiatives. The Royal Cambridge Hotel car park is the only undeveloped space that abuts the Engineering Department’s Trumpington Street site (see Fig. 1 below). It wants to construct a new building in this area that is adjacent to and physically joining onto the Department’s existing Baker Building on the Trumpington Street site. The expiry of the lease on the Royal Cambridge Hotel on 28 September 2013 provides an opportunity to obtain possession of the site that may not be available for several years if the hotel lease is renewed in its current form. The new annexe will not require the whole car park and the intention is to leave sufficient parking for the hotel to continue to operate on a fully commercial basis. The new building will join onto the staircase in the south-east corner of the Baker Building (see Fig. 2 below).

2. The Department undertakes both teaching and research to meet the needs of society by creating world-leading engineering knowledge. It shares this knowledge and transfers it to industry through publication, teaching, collaboration, licensing, and entrepreneurship. Undergraduate student numbers have risen from an intake of 300 in 2007 to 347 in 2011. There are currently 1,168 engineering undergraduates. Similarly postgraduate student numbers have risen from 600 to nearly 830 in just four years. Research expenditure on research grants rose from £13.5m in 2001–02 (RAE 2008 submission) to £28.6m in 2010–11, placing severe demands on existing facilities. The Department currently has a research grant portfolio of £121.6m of which £65.4m is EPSRC funding. Projections are that research income will continue to rise, albeit at a reduced rate. The Department’s new strategic research initiatives of Energy, Transport, and Urban Infrastructure; Uncertainty, Risk, and Resilience; Engineering for the Life Sciences and Healthcare; and Inspiring Research through Industrial Collaboration are being received with enthusiasm by funding bodies and industry.

3. The proposed building will provide state-of-the-art facilities for research. Considerable efficiency benefits are expected in terms of both space utilization and in the operational energy performance that is targeted at 100kWh/m2. The key aims of the project are:

to encourage greater interaction and interdisciplinary working;

to provide flexible space that can be adapted, in the future, as requirements change;

to create a building that will facilitate teaching, learning, and research in a pleasant environment.

Groups that are expected to be located within the new building include:

the newly appointed Regius Professor of Engineering, Professor David MacKay, and research in energy and resource efficiency including the EPSRC-funded projects WholeSEM on whole systems energy modelling, the Energy Efficient Cities initiative, and the UK Indemand Centre for reducing industrial energy and material use;

an expansion of Bioengineering, an area in which three recent academic appointments have been made;

the Laing O’Rourke Centre for Construction Engineering and the Master’s course in Construction;

the Innovation Knowledge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction, funded by the EPSRC and the Technology Strategy Board and a consortium of 30 companies;

a new collaboration with Dyson Ltd, in which the company is supporting a Professorship in Experimental Fluid Mechanics and new research projects;

an expansion of materials research through new collaborations with the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology and with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

These Groups are all well funded and have substantial interdisciplinary and external links.

4. The total cost of the project has been estimated at around £13.2m. Funding of £572,000 has already been confirmed from the University’s Capital Fund and the Department of Engineering; a further £5.5m from the Capital Fund has been earmarked for the project. Additional funding will need to be secured by the Department of Engineering.

5. A design team has been appointed and is currently completing a RIBA Stage C Report to confirm the building size and user requirements. Further details relating to the design, maintenance, and recurrent costs, with proposals for funding, will be brought to a future meeting of the Planning and Resources Committee, and a second-stage Report will be published later this year.

6. The Council recommends:

I. That approval in principle be given for the construction of a new annexe building for the Department of Engineering on the University’s Scroope Terrace site.

II. That the Director of Estate Management be authorized to apply for detailed Planning Approval in due course.

6 May 2013

L. K. Borysiewicz, Vice-Chancellor

Andy Hopper

Rosalyn Old

N. Bampos

Fiona Karet

Rachael Padman

Charles Bell

F. P. Kelly

Shirley Pearce

Jeremy Caddick

Robert Lethbridge

John Shakeshaft

Stephen J. Cowley

Mark Lewisohn

I. H. White

I. M. Le M. Du Quesnay

Rebecca Lingwood

A. D. Yates

Nicholas Gay

Mavis McDonald

Figure 1: Trumpington Street site

Figure 2: Connection to existing Baker Building

Report of the General Board on the establishment of a Professorship of International Education

The General Board beg leave to report to the University as follows:

1. International Education as a field of academic study has emerged from comparative education, an area of scholarly work that stretches back at least to the 1950s, and development education, which has flourished as a result of the United Nations’ Millennium Development goal to achieve universal primary education. Global developments which have shaped the field of International Education include the impact on education policy of such transnational bodies as the UN and its agencies and programmes; the emergence of international schooling and the International Baccalaureate; the impact on schooling systems and student profiles of diasporic global movements, migration flows, and refugee movements; and the adoption of trans-national agreements in schooling and higher education such as the Bologna Process. The field is represented in a number of refereed journals which make the connection between research and policy. The Department for International Development has recently announced significant research funding opportunities relating to work focused on the Millennium Development goals.

2. The Faculty of Education is one of the largest and most successful concentrations of educational research and teacher educators in the UK. Its current student community is drawn from over 40 countries, a number of whom are from countries with which the Faculty has formal research links, in the Indian sub-continent, Africa, the Caribbean, and Central Asia. The depth of the Faculty’s international engagement is evident in the work of the Centre for Commonwealth Education and the Centre for Education and International Development. The outcomes of the latter’s Research Consortium on Educational Outcomes and Poverty (RECOUP) project, funded by the Department for International Development, are now embedded in the Faculty’s teaching programmes. A further significant part of the Faculty’s international profile is its partnership with Cambridge International Examinations, which operates in a series of systemic and institutional capability-building projects in Central and East Asia.

3. To provide senior academic leadership in this area following a number of recent resignations and retirements, the Faculty Board of Education have recommended the establishment of a Professorship of International Education for a single tenure. The Professor will be expected to continue and develop further the current synergies between graduate teaching and research, and to foster links with Faculties and Departments including Archaeology and Anthropology, Architecture, Economics, Geography, History, History and Philosophy of Science, Politics and International Studies, Psychology, and Sociology. The Professor may assume the role of Director of International Initiatives within the Faculty, and may also contribute to the development of international strategy at School and University levels. The costs of the Professorship will be met for at least ten years from non-Chest reserves available to the Faculty and will be funded thereafter if necessary by recurrent savings in Chest expenditure.

4. The General Board have accepted the Faculty Board’s case, which is supported by the Council of the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences. The Board are satisfied that an appointment at this level will be likely to attract a strong field of applicants. They are assured that suitable accommodation is available in the Faculty of Education for the Professor and the Faculty Board have undertaken to provide the necessary support and facilities. The Board have agreed to concur in the view of the Faculty Board of Education that election to the Professorship should be made by an ad hoc Board of Electors and that candidature should be open to all persons whose work falls within the title of the Professorship.

5. The General Board recommend:

I. That a Professorship of International Education be established in the University for one tenure from 1 October 2013, placed in Schedule B of the Statutes, and assigned to the Faculty of Education.

1 May 2013

L. K. Borysiewicz, Vice-Chancellor

Martin Daunton

Robert Kennicutt

Philip Allmendinger

Simon Franklin

Patrick Maxwell

N. Bampos

C. A. Gilligan

Rachael Padman

H. A. Chase

David Good

John Rallison

Sarah Coakley

Sadie Jarrett

Report of the General Board on the establishment of a John Harvard Professorship in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

The General Board beg leave to report to the University as follows:

1. Harvard University is the oldest institution of higher education in the United States, established in 1636. It was named after its first benefactor, the Cambridge graduate John Harvard, who upon his death in 1638 left his library and half his estate to the institution. For many generations links between the University of Cambridge and Harvard University have been strong and significant. Today, Cambridge’s links with Harvard include a number of Cambridge-Harvard Scholarships affiliated to Cambridge Colleges, the Research Fellowships and Studentships generously endowed by the late Dr Herchel Smith (Statutes and Ordinances, p. 943), and an LL.M. exchange programme between the Faculty of Law and the Harvard Law School.

2. In recognition of this relationship, the University has received an offer from the Board of Cambridge in America following a donation from Mr Robert C. ‘Peter’ Milton, a Lionel de Jersey Harvard scholar at Emmanuel College, 1956–57, and long-standing supporter of Cambridge in America, to support a John Harvard Professorship in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. The Professorship would be held for a fixed term by a member of the University currently holding a Professorship assigned to an institution in the School of Arts and Humanities or the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences, and would recognize research excellence within those Schools. The scheme will provide substitutional funding for a proportion of the Professor’s salary costs and an annual research fund – which may be used to support a graduate studentship or the appointment of an early career researcher – to enable the development of the Professor’s research and its public dissemination, with an emphasis on topics relevant to the present day. At the end of her or his tenure, the Professor would be required to communicate her or his research to a broad audience at a public lecture or seminar, for example at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas.

3. £0.5m has been raised towards the scheme, principally by Mr Milton. The Executive Committee of Cambridge in America has allocated a further sum of £0.5m from an unrestricted bequest to Cambridge in America by Dr Timothy Joyce, of Clare College. A further £0.5m has been earmarked by the School of Arts and Humanities and the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences from the donation to the 800th Anniversary Campaign by Trinity College and allocated to support posts in those Schools (Reporter, 6044, 2005–06, p. 834). These amounts, together with any further donations, would form a Fund, the income of which would support the scheme in the ways outlined in paragraph 2.

4. Elections to the Professorship will be made by the General Board on the recommendation of an Advisory Committee including representatives from both Schools. The title will be held concurrently with an existing Professorship for a period of up to five years and will alternate between the two Schools, beginning with the School of Arts and Humanities. The Professorship will be assigned to the same Faculty or Department as the person elected to the Professorship, and so the assignment will have to be made after the election has taken place.

5. The General Board recommend:

I. That a John Harvard Professorship in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences be established in the University from 1 October 2013, placed in Schedule B of the Statutes, and assigned to a Faculty or Department on the occasion of each election.

II. That regulations for the John Harvard Professorship in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, as set out in the Schedule to this Report, be approved.

1 May 2013

L. K. Borysiewicz, Vice-Chancellor

Martin Daunton

Robert Kennicutt

Philip Allmendinger

Simon Franklin

Patrick Maxwell

N. Bampos

C. A. Gilligan

Rachael Padman

H. A. Chase

David Good

John Rallison

Sarah Coakley

Sadie Jarrett

SCHEDULE

John Harvard Professorship in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

1. The sums received from the Board of Cambridge in America, representing donations from Mr Robert C. ‘Peter’ Milton and others, including a bequest from Dr Timothy Joyce, and Trinity College, to support a John Harvard Professorship in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, shall form a fund called the John Harvard Professorship Fund. The Fund may include other sums received from other bodies or persons for the same purpose.

2. The John Harvard Professorship in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences shall be tenable concurrently with a Professorship in an institution in either the School of Arts and Humanities or the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences.

3. Each John Harvard Professor shall be elected for a tenure of up to five years under the authority of Statute D, XV, 1(c) (iii) by the General Board, on the recommendation of an Advisory Committee including representatives of each of the Schools of Arts and Humanities and the Humanities and Social Sciences.

4. When a John Harvard Professor is to be elected, the Vice-Chancellor shall publish a Notice inviting applications from any Professor whose Professorship is established in an institution in the School of Arts and Humanities or the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences alternately.

5. In addition to her or his statutory duties under Statute D, II and D, XIV, it shall be the duty of the Professor to undertake and promote research in the arts, humanities, or social sciences relevant to the present day.

6. The Managers of the John Harvard Professorship Fund shall be the Heads of the Schools of Arts and Humanities and the Humanities and Social Sciences.

7. The income of the Fund shall be applied for the following purposes:

(a) such contributions towards the stipend, national insurance, pension contributions, and associated indirect costs of the Professor payable by the University, during her or his period of tenure, as may be approved by the Managers;

(b) such payments in support of the research of the Professor as may be approved by the Managers.

8. Any unexpended income in any financial year may, at the discretion of the Managers, be accumulated and added to the capital of the Fund or be held as an income reserve and expended in any one or more subsequent years in accordance with Regulation 7 above.

Report of the General Board on the Travelling Expenses Fund

The General Board beg leave to report to the University as follows:

1. The Travelling Expenses Fund (Statutes and Ordinances, p. 1038) is a centrally administered fund, to which an annual Chest allocation is made to contribute to costs incurred by University officers in attending learned conferences or in travel for study or research connected with their University duties. The value of a grant is determined at officer level according to a formula which provides for a contribution to travel and subsistence costs, provided the application is endorsed by the Head of institution. There is no process for the comparison or prioritization of applications or assessment of need. The annual allocation is £100,000.

2. In common with all Chest allocations, the allocation made to the Travelling Expenses Fund is subject to the annual planning guidance agreed by the Planning and Resources Committee, which currently aims to limit increases in allocations to no more than 1% per annum. Notwithstanding the financial restraint, the Fund has operated in deficit for several years, and at the end of financial year 2011–12 the Resource Management Committee agreed to write off a significant accumulated deficit. While the General Board recognize the importance of travel in connection with the research of University Officers they consider that the retention of a central fund is no longer appropriate, given the general arrangements for the devolution of recurrent funding allocations to School level. They consider that the Councils of the Schools, with Heads of institutions, are better placed both to determine the priority of this area of expenditure (a number of Schools have substantial annual budgets to support research) and to determine the relative priority of requests taking account, where appropriate, of the strength of the case and the availability of other funds to the applicant.

3. At its meeting on 20 March 2013, the Resource Management Committee recommended that the central Travelling Expenses Fund be wound up and the allocation be transferred to Schools and relevant non-School institutions with effect from 1 August 2013. The General Board have accepted the Committee’s recommendation. The Foreign Travel Fund (Statutes and Ordinances, p. 814) shall continue to assist resident members of the Senate who have attained the age of fifty years to travel abroad with a view to extending their knowledge in any branch of learning with which their teaching or research is concerned.

4. The General Board accordingly recommend:

I. That the regulations for the Travelling Expenses Fund be rescinded with effect from 1 August 2013.

II. That Regulation 4 for the Foreign Travel Fund be rescinded with effect from 1 August 2013.1

Footnotes

  • 1The regulation states that the Council, in considering applications for grants from the Foreign Travel Fund, shall give preference to applicants who are not eligible to receive grants from the Travelling Expenses Fund.


1 May 2013

L. K. Borysiewicz, Vice-Chancellor

Martin Daunton

Robert Kennicutt

Philip Allmendinger

Simon Franklin

Patrick Maxwell

N. Bampos

C. A. Gilligan

Rachael Padman

H. A. Chase

David Good

John Rallison

Sarah Coakley

Sadie Jarrett