Wednesday 1st May saw the first meeting of University Senate of Summer term. On the agenda was the Senate Effectiveness Review and the University’s Strategic Plan.
The latter is being conducted and reviewed by a more recent addition to the University’s top table, Deputy Vice Chancellor Andrew Atherton. The Strategic Plan looks at Lancaster University’s place in the league tables and how it is held there. The aim is to be 1-10-100, which would mean that the University ranked first in the North West, ranked in the top 10 institutions in the county, and ranked within the top 100 in the world. As a University we are currently sitting just out side of the top in the country at number 11, according to The Complete University Guide 2014. To reach the goal of the Plan we need to become a much more research-intense university.
Many of Lancaster University’s subjects sit nicely inside the top 10: Marketing, for example, is ranked first in the country, Art comes in second in the county and Theatre Studies and Business and Marketing are each seventh in their respective subject league tables.
Also on the agenda: Senate’s Effectiveness Review. Before Wednesday, 97 senior members of the University sat on Senate. This number was felt by some members to be too large and it was proposed that only 65 people should sit on Senate including the Students’ Union President and Vice President (Academic) as well as four elected students. This is a process that has taken up at lot of discussion time at Senate but a verdict has finally been reached. It was felt by LUSU President Ste Smith, who openly shared his views in Senate that maybe the body would be more effective if it spent more time discussing University issues rather than the amount of people sitting on it.
