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Creating the right conditions for UCL’s continued success
20 November 2024
Watch our recent Staff Town Hall recording on priorities for the year and find out how we’re delivering our Strategic Plan 2022-27
Our Annual Strategic Progress Review and the Autumn Term Staff Town Hall explored our strategic priorities for the year ahead. A summary of both including a link to the full Progress report and a recording of the full Town Hall can be found below. We are working to provide answers for the topics raised by Town Hall questions that we did not have time to cover and will be sharing these shortly too.
Annual Strategic Progress Review
The Provost’s 2024 Annual Strategic Progress Review and In-year Priorities has been published for our community, after the report went to UCL Council in early November.
In his foreword to the report, UCL President and Provost Dr Michael Spence pays tribute to the achievements of the UCL community in over the previous year.
The report looks back at 2023-24, a year in which we started to see real movement on the objectives we set ourselves in the Strategic Plan 2022-27. Highlights included our £110m investment in a pay and reward package and our progress towards financial sustainability.
The report also looks ahead to our 2024-25 priority projects, several of which are multi-year initiatives. As well as beginning to implement our REF2029 strategy, we will undertake a conversation about our long-term academic ambitions, aimed at identifying future opportunities for growth and development ahead. Our pay and reward package will include a review of sabbatical entitlement, enhanced parental leave contributions, and increases in the allowances for heads of academic department. Later in the year, our heads of department working group will recommend ways to tackle some of the drivers of workload pressures for academic staff.
We can expect to see major progress on services simplification and systems enhancements, building on 2023-24, which saw the launch of our new recruitment and appraisal systems as well as MyCampus, which manages all estates-related service requests. We will bring our recruitment and admissions teams together to improve the recruitment experience for all our applicants and to promote our education opportunities in new markets. We will agree an Estates Vision for our campus for the coming decades that will guide our immediate investment decisions.
We will renew our focus on improving the experience of our students in the short and long-term, identifying where we best to invest time, effort and resources. A commitment to a Students’ Union building and improved sports facilities is one part of the equation, and success in the NSS in part relies on us making progress on issues of staff workload, timetabling, pastoral support, facilities refresh and the wider campus.
Autumn Term Staff Town Hall
Our Staff Town Hall earlier this month explored many similar themes, providing updates on key areas of progress for our strategic priorities.
Watch recording
Discussion on strategic priorities
During the Town Hall, our leadership team discussed some of the priorities coming up this year in each of UCL’s strategic outcome areas. Watch the recording above for a more comprehensive picture of what was discussed, and you can find details about some of the points outlined below.
- Academic excellence and impact
One of this year’s priority projects, Academic Ambition, is a conversation that seeks to maintain and build our academic excellence beyond the next 10-20 years.
We want to identify the academic opportunities with the greatest potential, so that we can prioritise the investment of our limited resources.
So far, we have been talking to a sub-set of our academic leadership, to begin to identify themes for further exploration, such as such as health, quantum, AI and its applications. As the term continues, we are widening the conversation to other groups, including heads of department.
You can find out more on the Academic Ambition Sharepoint site.
We are now looking ahead to our next Research Excellence Framework in 2029 and putting in place of programme of work to help us prepare more strategically. You'll also be hearing more this year about work developing a new Health Strategy which will set out areas of excellence, recommend areas for long-term institutional development and investment, and further our engagement with external health partners.
We are also building on momentum generated through last year's academic delegation visits to key areas in Europe and India, and will be looking to further our cross-institutional engagement with partners in communities this year in China, India, Africa, North America and Europe.
In today’s competitive landscape, how we differentiate ourselves over and above other institutions and communicate what makes us unique, exciting and attractive is a pressing issue. There are teams working hard to consider how we are positioning the work that we do including how we develop our brand and sense of identity, looking ahead to our bicentennial year in 2026 and how we can engage key audiences through our campaigns and celebrations including our donor and alumni community through Advancement.
- Education and student experience
In 2023/24, we saw improvements in student satisfaction. We’ve also successfully launched the ELO pilot in 2023/24 and year 2 in 2024/25, a review of Personal Tutoring as a first step in our improved academic support framework; and a change to SPCs focusing on partnership to create change with students.
Our priorities for 2024/25 include simplifying our portfolio of programmes to make them more attractive and easier to understand for students. A key part of this project also aims to make programmes easier to administer, and improve our approach to academic support, including personal tutoring and feedback mechanisms.
The co-and extra-curricular experiences outside of the classroom are also key to student experience, and Student Life Strategy represents our largest ever expansion of co- and extra-curricular experiences at UCL, through collaboration between UCL and SU and in areas such as sport, the arts and volunteering.
Our Student Life Strategy will create thousands more opportunities for students to try new activities, develop their skills, feel a stronger sense of belonging, and immerse themselves in exceptional experiences tailored to their needs.
MediaCentral Widget Placeholderhttps://mediacentral.ucl.ac.uk/Player/8B83f230 - Positive enabling environments
The progress we’ve been making in tackling our infrastructure through new platforms and systems impacts all of us.
Over the past year, we have introduced MyCampus an easier way for reporting issues and raising and tracking maintenance requests. Through our five-year programme of ‘Inclusive Environments’, we have already seen progress towards making our estate more accessible – an area we know is a priority for us all.
We have also invested in the user-led Inside UCL which makes everyday tasks less time-consuming, and in new systems like MyServices for raising and tracking service requests.
Through the coming year there will be a particular focus on how we simplify our services across the university and working closely with each Faculty to understand their needs.
We’ve also been consulting with our community on the UCL Estates 2050 Vision, a long-term plan setting out better use of our extensive estate for the next 25 years to inspire and enable our staff and students, with sustainability, inclusivity and welfare at its heart.
Phase One of the UCL Estates 2050 Vision will be ready to release in Term 2 of the 2024/25 academic year, summarising our findings from the consultation and initial priorities and recommendations. We will also set out a strategic approach to our buildings, identifying key areas for development.
In the coming months, we will see new work begin to make major improvements in the Quad, with a new layout that will improve accessibility and create new areas for socialising and other activities.
‘Phase 2’ will commence early next year.
Key takeaways from this that we are hearing so far include:
- There is a clearly identified need across the board for improved collaboration, teaching and learning spaces, including ‘neighbourhoods’ for related disciplines.
- Flexible/multi-use spaces and more communal spaces are also high on the list of priorities.
- New ways of carrying out research should be developed, to more effectively use shared processes and resources.
- Accessibility is key – this is currently a limiting factor across much of our estate. New ways of carrying out research should be developed, to more effectively use shared processes and resources.
- Living our values
It is important we recognise as an institution we are not yet where we want to be in having a culture that fully embodies and lives our values. In the coming year, we will build on our commitment to inclusion, belonging and equity with steps including improving our processes and support to manage the times when behaviours fall short of our shared values and expectations, and developing an EDI plan to strengthen and amplify our existing commitments.
A core focus for this year is working very closely with Heads of Departments across the university as crucial roles in the delivery of our strategic objectives, including around academic workload.
Our staff survey is now open – your responses will help us to further identify areas for improvement and enable us to make positive change, both cross-institutionally and in areas of local concern.
- Financial sustainability and compliance
Through Faculties and Offices’ collective efforts, UCL’s financial position remains stable. As a result of careful financial management we have been able to reallocate resources into the priority areas identified by our community. These include our academic mission, student experience and estates and digital infrastructure.
Having competitive reward and recognition systems will continue to be a priority for the years ahead. A world-leading university needs world-leading staff, and our remuneration needs to reflect that.
We are also focusing over the coming year in bringing our recruitment and admission teams working together in closer alignment, and improving our diversification of international markets for prospective students to help reduce risks. This includes enhancing recruitment efforts in key regions and reviewing our admissions criteria.
UCL’s Council have asked us that a strategy is developed to build UCL’s cash reserves. The aim is to improve our financial resilience and protect our community and academic ambitions in the event of a sudden drop in income or increase in costs. We’ll need to work with Academic Board on this before returning to Council.
Looking ahead and planning for our future will require our continued and careful financial management.
Celebrating our staff
Three change-builder videos were also shown, with a range of staff voices shared in a video highlighting favourite moments over the last year.
Answering staff questions
The Town Hall was also a chance for staff to ask UCL leadership questions on these priorities. Over 90 questions were received via the online Sli.do tool, and we are working to provide answers for all the topics raised which we will be able to share with all staff soon.
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