Ten years have gone by in the blink of an eye. It has been such a privilege to have been the seventh Chancellor in the 124-year history of our University.
During my predecessor Sir Dominic Cadbury’s tenure, it was decided that we should limit the Chancellorship to a maximum of 10 years to the day. I was installed on 17 July 2014, and I retired on 16 July 2024. One of my predecessors, the Prime Minister Anthony Eden, the Earl of Avon was Chancellor for 28 years!
During my final Chancellor’s Dinner, my portrait was unveiled — a tradition we have that portraits are painted of each Chancellor, Pro-Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor. This was an opportunity to take stock of what we as a University have achieved in a decade and it is quite remarkable, to put it mildly.
In July, I presided over the graduation ceremonies at our Dubai campus, the campus was an idea that I proposed to the University soon after I became Chancellor. An idea that almost never happened, and today we have a state-of-the-art campus with almost 2,000 students from almost 100 countries, offering a wide range of subjects from AI to psychology and from business to public health. We have an impressive new Provost, Yusra Mouzughi and the campus is a dream come true, and hopefully we will have a flourishing research centre embedded within the campus soon.
I have had the privilege of working with so many impressive people, Sir David Eastwood as Vice-Chancellor for seven and a half years, one of the brightest people I’ve ever worked with, followed by Adam Tickell who was Provost when I started and returned as VC.
My relationship with the University of Birmingham goes back almost a century. My maternal grandfather, Squadron Leader JD Italia joined in the 1920s and graduated in 1931, reading Commerce. My mother graduated in English and History of Art in 1958. Her brother completed his PhD in Mechanical Engineering in the 1960s. I joined the Birmingham Business School Advisory Board in 2005 and for three years whilst I was Chancellor, was also Acting Chair of the Board.
Over the past ten years, our student numbers have risen from 34,000 to 40,000, and academic staff numbers from 3,500 to 4,200. Our research income has almost doubled from £112m to £214m (from 12th to 8th in the UK).
We have had two Nobel prizes awarded, the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2016 for former professors David Thouless and Michael Kosterlitz, and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2016 for Professor Sir Fraser Stoddart.
We won The Times and Sunday Times University of the Year for Graduate Employability in 2016.
We have been awarded two Queen’s Anniversary Prizes: in 2018 for our work in railways, and this year for our work with Rolls Royce which helps enhance the safety of jet engines in airplanes.
Our research has been recognised by two rounds of the Research Excellence Framework (REF). We were ranked 10th in the Russell Group and 13th overall in the last exercise, REF 21. The University of Birmingham School was opened in 2014/15 and has just been awarded Secondary School of the Year in the Midlands. Our new state of the art library was opened in 2015/16. I was proud to have invited Princess Anne who opened our impressive Sport and Fitness centre in 2017/18 which includes a 50-metre swimming pool.
In the 2022 Commonwealth Games, the University played a bigger part in the games, be it the Asian, Olympic or Commonwealth, than any other university in history. We designed the baton, which was presented by Her Majesty the Queen to the first baton relay holder (I was a baton relay holder when the baton passed through Dubai!) and it travelled around the world relaying air quality and air pollution data to our scientists at the University. We were one of the main sponsors of the games; the majority of the athletes’ village was at our campus; squash was held at our sports centre and hockey at the University as well.
During the games, The Exchange, our newly opened city centre building converted from an old bank was the centre of the Commonwealth Games conferences and many events. The Exchange has been a hugely successful multi-use building.
HM The Queen and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh opened our new state of the art dental school at the old BBC Pebble Mill site. We also opened a superb university hotel on our campus, which is thriving.
In the midst of my Chancellorship, I was also President of the CBI (Confederation of British Industry) for two years. The University is a member of the CBI and I was able to represent both institutions at the Dubai Expo as well as at COP26 in Glasgow and COP28 in Dubai. At COP26 I was proud to showcase Hydroflex, the world’s first retrofitted hydrogen powered train, created by our university in conjunction with industry and government support. HRH The Prince of Wales was on the train, as was the Prime Minister!
The University played a major role in the pandemic, including testing. Many people do not realise that, as a result of being approached by a friend, I was able to engage Professor Alan McNally, a world expert in testing, through whose endorsement of a carefully designed testing programme the government was persuaded to allow the Premier League football season to continue in May 2020. The matches took place without spectators, with the players and support staff being regularly tested. This method of testing was then used throughout the pandemic for a variety of sports.
We launched our India Institute at the University with the Indian High Commissioner HE Yash Sinha in 2017/18 and I was privileged to lead very productive delegations to India during my tenure. Through an approach by the Indian High Commissioner HE Gaitri Issar Kumar, I was able to engage our university with the IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) who had plans to go global. In 2023 we launched the first ever joint Masters degree in AI and Data Science between the University of Birmingham and IIT Madras, and in 2024 another joint degree in Sustainable Energy Systems.
I was also very proud to initiate a collaboration between the Royal Collection and the Barber Institute where year after year, our students would select, curate and exhibit items from the Royal Collection at the Barber, another first!
I have also been so proud to see and take part in our successful work with benefactors and alumni. We launched our Birmingham in Action fundraising programme in 2019, and in five years — in spite of the pandemic — we have raised almost £400m and achieved 1 million volunteering hours.
Of course, the highlight has been the interaction with our wonderful students and their families, as well as our faculty and staff at the Degree Ceremonies. I have made a point to attend and speak at the Guild Awards every year and have always come away inspired by the talent of our students and the way in which they go the extra mile, putting back into the community.
I have also had the advantage of being President of UKCISA (UK Council for International Student Affairs) and Co-Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on International Students. In these roles, alongside being an active independent Crossbench Peer in the House of Lords, I have been able to champion, stand up for, fight and represent our university, our university sector and international students, be it in legislation or challenging and influencing government policy, sadly often in a hostile environment. I am so proud of the numerous successes we have achieved in this area.
Chairing our University Annual Meetings, I was always very proud to showcase a university that has an almost £1 billion turnover, which is financially very secure and has invested over £1 billion in the past decade in world class infrastructure, and contributes billions of pounds in impact to our local community.
I often shout from the rooftops that UK universities are the best in the world alongside the Americans’, with 15 out of the top 100 universities in the world being British, including the University of Birmingham. Our aspiration is to establish Birmingham in the top 50 in the world.
I wish my successor, Dr Sandie Okoro, every success.
Of all the wonderful opportunities this great country has given me, what has made my 88-year-old mother Yasmin happier than anything else, has been my being Chancellor of her beloved university! As I say to our graduates at every graduation ceremony, you never leave the University of Birmingham as you are a member of the Birmingham family forever; therefore I am not saying goodbye, I am saying thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve our truly special and wonderful institution; I will be a lifelong ambassador of the University of Birmingham and will do everything I can to support the University in the years ahead.
Thank you very, very much for everything.