Message from the Vice-Chancellor

Dear colleague

This is the last email I will be sending you before finishing on 31 August. We could all have wished for a more propitious start to the new academic year to welcome my successor Professor Larner, and in particular that the dispute with UCU had been resolved. However, we have made huge progress on that matter since my last email, and the numbers participating in the marking and assessment boycott have reduced very significantly. This means that we will be able to assure many of our students that they will be receiving a complete set of marks by the end of September. I hope very much that the dispute can be resolved and all students receive a complete set of marks before too long, but as you know this is a UK-wide matter which is being handled by UCEA’s and UCU’s national negotiators, each of which have their mandates from their respective members.

Undergraduate admissions have proceeded in a reasonably satisfactory way, but as ever international postgraduate recruitment is key to the University’s future and there is a long way to go on that. There are many external factors affecting this area, not least visa policy and processing at UK government level, but I know that colleagues across the University will be putting significant effort into conversion so that we are able to reach our targets as far as possible.

August is usually a quiet month and for most of my time as Vice-Chancellor here I have not sent out an August email for that reason. Covid didn’t permit any quiet months of course, and this year is different because I’m leaving, but the fact remains that there is relatively little to report.

In recent emails I have reflected on how things have gone during my tenure, but I feel that now is a time to be looking forward. A new start is always reason for optimism, and there are many other reasons to be cheerful about the future. I feel that we have made huge progress on building our Welsh identity, both in language terms and being very clear about our position as Wales’s only Russell Group university. I am pleased and proud of the fact that the use of Welsh across our campuses has become an everyday matter, and that there is strong and widespread agreement that Cymraeg, Cymru and our Cymreig identity are of great importance to our future and that of this country. Our strong performance in so many areas, and the investments we have made (with doubtless more to come), mean that we really matter to the future of Wales. I know that Welsh government is acutely aware of this even at a time of budgetary constraints that affect so many areas of public life, and I am sure the new Commission for Tertiary Education and Research will be equally conscious of the role Cardiff University plays.

It only now remains for me to thank you for your support and challenge over the years and to wish all of you, and particularly the new Vice-Chancellor Professor Wendy Larner and Chair of Council Pat Younge, every success in the future. Cardiff University will always be important to me and I will follow events with great (but firmly detached) interest from afar. Pob lwc pawb!

With best wishes

Colin Riordan

Vice-Chancellor