1. FS&N School Staff Meeting
September, 2016

2. Agenda Apologies Minutes of Last Meeting Matters Arising
Terms of Reference
HoS’s Statement
Health & Safety (MH)
Items from Student Education Committee (PK)
8. Leeds for Life (LM)
9. Items from Research Committee (CO)
10. Items from Postgraduate Research Committee (RE)
11. Admissions and Widening Participation (CE)
12. Finance (CR)
13. HR Issues (CR)
14. Athena Swan (CO)
15. AOB
16. Date of Next Meeting – Wednesday, 7th Dec 2016

3. 5. HoS’s Statement

7. FMC (now FEC) World University Rankings
- The progress that the University had made seems to have stalled
- Ruth is going to work with each HoS in the Faculty to see how we can optimise relevant measurement categories
Library Strategic Plan
No agreement with Elsevier!

8. IPE - Actions
Faculty to model financial outcomes beyond the current plan
Faculty to maximise conversion of high quality students and take action to rebalance student population
Faculty digital/online learning support to be aligned with support provided by the central team
Faculty to pursue GCRF opportunities
School of FS&N to take a greater leadership role in the Food Theme (action: JC/MP/GW)
Faculty to pursue potential opportunities regarding the Diamond Light Source Beam (with Engineering)
Use of the top floor of the Chemistry Building to be resolved

9. University Student Recruitment
Leeds was 21/24 in the RG for UG A-level quality 4 years ago
Leeds is now 10/24 in the RG…..
Student numbers are planned to increase from 32k to 37k over the next 5 years
70% of our UG students are Home/EU – top of the RG!
Therefore we get less money to teach the same number of students…
Leeds offers more courses per student, therefore we do more teaching….

10. Student Recruitment – 1st Year
Home/EU Target
Home/EU Actual
Inter-national Target
Inter-national Actual
BSc 76 20
MSc 8
100 99

11. Guardian University League Table 2017 Agriculture, Forestry & Food
Ranking
Guardian Score
/100
Satisfied With Course
Satisfied With Teaching
Satisfied With Feedback
Student:Staff Ratio
Spend per Student/10
Average Entry Tariff
Value Added Score/10
Career After 6 Months
1 (3)
Leeds
100
94.6
90,1
84.8
17.3 6
444 8 83
2 (1)
Nottingham
93.9
88.7
87.5
67.3
10.3
385 71
3 (2)
Reading 87
86.0
87.0
66.0
13.1 -
380 66
4 (9)
Bangor
86.2
98.8
82.3
14.8 3
362 7
5 (6)
Newcastle
80.1
78.1
62.0
11.2 10
361 5 77
6 (7)
QUB
77.6
93.3
60.6
15.0
364 17
Chester
33.6
81.0
80.4
60.9
14.2
347 2 23

12. Times/Sunday Times 2017 Food Science
Ranking
Teaching Quality
Student Experience
Research Quality
Entry Points
Graduate Prospects
Total Score 1
Surrey
84.5%
84.4%
37.5%
434
94.4%
100 2
Leeds
88.0%
89.5%
36.8%
444
99.9 3
Kings College
77.7%
82.5%
46.8%
440
81.8%
97.7 4
Reading
78.4%
83.9%
50.7%
385
83.3%
96.2 5
QUB
69.5%
92.8%
56.3%
381
85.3% 6
Nottingham
85.5%
36.4%
377
87.8% 7
Newcastle
78.7%
90.4%
28.4%
407
86.1%
95.4 25
Sheffield Hallam
86.0%
89.2%
n/a
304
73.3%
85.6 40
Leeds Trinity
70.4%
67.1%
254
61.1%
75.1

14. Space – the Plans?
Sept, 2017 – move into lab/office space, 4th Floor Chemistry
2021 – Physics and Computing both move out of EC Stoner
We move into refurbished space in EC Stoner?

16. 6. Health & Safety (MH)

17. Health & Safety
Staff/student inductions one session complete covering first (~90%) and final year (~70%) BSc. Second session 05/10/2016 for MSc and non-attendees session 1
Online H&S - Physics Intern (Jamie Ridley) (Lisa Marshall)
VLE H&S link containing Induction slides, confirmation log, questionnaire, forms (COSHH, RA,…)
Electronic record
Environmental Waste management –audit 6th September 2016
Research lab – representatives and access to COSHH/RA highlighted – follow up with register of list of deputies, location of documents
Internal audit (PWC) are planning to audit Health and Safety mandatory training later in 2016
Gemma Whitworth
Health and Safety Manager (Faculty of Mathematics and Physical Sciences)

18. Health & Safety - Faculty
Projects
HAZMAP to improve legal compliance and reduce the risk held by the Faculty
Actions
Central system to track H&S actions
Action status will be reported and managed at the School Executive Groups and include; Incident investigation recommendations, inspection and audit findings, outstanding risk assessment control.
H&S E-Learning Training
77% of colleagues have completed the H&S E-learning courses.
Incidents
During the Faculty reported 162 incidents.
The pattern of reporting ratio major accidents – minor accidents - near misses required to reduce incident rates. Process of investigation to be implemented.
Accident 56
Near miss 55
Fire incident 45
Health Issue 6

19. 7. Items from the SEC (PK)

20. NSS and Programme Surveys

30. FS&N

34. 9. Items from R&IC (CO)

35. The Stern Review
An independent review of the REF was commissioned by the Minister of Universities and Science to examine the purpose and benefits of REF, identify any problems and set out a vision for the future of REF.
REF 2014 was a costly exercise (£246 million)
Rules are distorted by some participants.
For example:
1. Some institutions decide not to include all their faculty members in the REF submission, which improves the average score of submitters and lowers the number of necessary impact case studies.
2. Some schools hire people on a fractional contract basis from abroad (on a sabbatical, retirement, or otherwise temporarily available) before the REF for a year, then parting ways after including them in the REF submission as if they were a legitimate member of the department.

36. Stern Recommendations
All research-active staff should submit to the next REF; this will provide a more accurate picture of an institution’s research
Outputs should be submitted at disciplinary-based Unit of Assessment level, with a set average number per full time employee, with flexibility for some colleagues to submit more or less than others
Outputs should be submitted by the institution at which they were generated, ie, if an academic moves institution, his or her output is not transferable to the new institution
Institutions should be given great flexibility to showcase their multi- and inter-disciplinary and collaborative impacts by submitting ‘institutional’ level impact case studies
Impact case studies should be broader and deeper, to include impact on areas such as government policy, public engagement and understanding, cultural life, academic impacts outside the field, and teaching
A new, institutional-level Environment assessment should include details of an institution’s future research environment strategy, outlining its support for high quality research and related activities, interdisciplinary and inter-institutional initiatives, and impact
To reduce the cost of gathering information for submission, where possible REF data and metrics should be open, standardised and combinable with other research funders’ data collection.

37. An end to REF ‘gaming’……?

38. 10. Items from the PG Research Committee (RE)

39. 11. Admissions and Widening Participation (CE)

40. 12. Finance (CR) End of financial year – 31st July 2016
Temporary Budgets
Planned refurbishment
Academic Visitors

41. IPE After 3% Savings

43. IPE After 3% Savings

45. 13. HR (CR)

46. New Staff who have arrived in the School since the last Meeting
Dr Nataricha Phisarnchananan, Food Physico-Chemical Research Technician, started 25th July 2016
Mr Fraser Chadwick , Biological and Human Study Research Technician, started 29th July 2016
Professor Alan Mackie, Chair in Colloid Chemistry, started 1st September 2016
Dr James Smith, Lecturer in Obesity, started 1st September 2016
Dr Elena Simone, Lecturer in Remote Sensing, started 1st September 2016
Dr Arwen Tyler, UAF, started 1st September 2016
Miss Maxine Sharps, Post-Doctoral Research Assistant, started 12th September 2016
Mr Neil Rigby, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, started 19th September 2016
Dr Hannah EnSaff, Temporary Lecturer in Nutrition started 19th September 2016.

47. New Staff recruited joining later this year (School-funded)
Mrs Sameera Rafiq, Research Admin Support Officer, start date to be agreed in October 2016
Professor Francisco Goycoolea, Chair in Biopolymers, starts on 1st November 2016
Dr Michael Zulyniak, Lecturer in Obesity starts on 1st January 2017

48. Currently Recruiting……
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow to work with Professor Alan Mackie
2 Post-Doctoral Researchers to work with Professor Gary Williamson

49. Leavers/Career Breaks
Miss Helen Brown left the School in August 2016 to return to post-gradate study.
Miss Jemma Levantiz left the School on the 25th August 2016 to start undergraduate studies at Leeds
Dr Victoria Burley has taken a Career Break for 12 months from 1st October 2016

50. HR New Promotions Process Revised Job descriptions
Revised Contribution Pay Exercise

51. HR
Technical Staff Restructure (Miles)
School Administrative Staff Restructure (Catherine)
Annual Leave – Self-Service (Matt)

52. Technical Team Organisational Chart
Technical Manager
Miles Ratcliffe
Research Technicians
Research Technician 1:
HPLC
Sara Viney
Research Technician 2: Colloids
Nataricha Phisarnchananan
Research Technician 3:
Biological and Human Study
Fraser Chadwick
Laboratory Manager (FAL and FTL)
Joanne Burke
Teaching Technicians
Laboratory Teaching Technician:
Ian Hardy
Laboratory Technician
(FAL and FTL)
New Post
Laboratory Assistant
(Vacancy)

53. School Administrative Support
HR Administration
Finance Administration
Research Administration/REF Support
Buildings/Space/IT/telephones
Offices and Facilities
Project Management
Committee facilitation
Conference administration
Web-site administration… and the list goes on………

54. 14. Athena Swan (CO)

55. 15. AOB 16. Date of next meeting: 7/12/16