Issue 56
Monday February 13 2012
The Newspaper of Queen Mary Students’ Union
Students oppose staff cuts
Students in the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences have attended several meetings recently to protest vociforously against proposed cuts to the school’s teaching staff.
Kaamil Ahmed The risk of losing their jobs has become very real for staff of the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences (SBCS) due to new plans being implemented by the College. In a meeting with students last week, academics expressed their fears that up to a third of staff in the School could face losing their jobs. Dr Rob Knell opened the meeting by explaining that the plans were designed to improve the research rankings of the school, describing the current status as “middling”. However, Dr Knell, a specialist in ecology and behavioural biology, does not believe the changes will be effective. “Is it actually going to improve our research output? My absolute, genuine opinion having looked at what they’re proposing and really having done my absolute best to think through it objectively and carefully is no, it will not.” The teachers expressed their con-
cerns over plans which would mean teaching and research would be carried out separately. They pointed to the likelihood that teachers being hired may not be as qualified as some of the current staff, who would no longer be permanently based at QM and so would be unable to easily offer support to students. Professor Matthew Evans, the Head of SBCS, said that the plans were designed to maintain teaching standards: “SBCS has had a strong teaching focus and has had good results in this area. The proposal about restructuring the School seeks to maintain and enhance the strength in teaching in SBCS and drive research to a similar high standard. The proposed restructure is recognised to have the potential to result in some redundancies, however we are working with staff and the unions following due process to minimise this risk.” However, many of the staff suggested that there was a significant gap between them and the head of the department and
that whatever consultation had taken place and been limited. Staff at the meeting expressed views that suggested the plans would not be successful because they would create more chaos and not deal with the issues they believed limited the school’s ability to become a top-class research institution. Dr Fanis Missirlis complained that the new performance criteria, which staff would be judged against, would not help the school’s research rankings. There have been suggestions that performance assessment could happen as often as quarterly, though such regular meetings would be unlikely because of the administration involved. “All of the top institutions don’t do this type of crap,” said Dr Missirlis. He explained that after his position came up for review, those who were responsible for evaluating his research output had not read his scientific publications - something he felt wouldn’t happen at a top university. The new performance criteria is being applied retrospectively to the
2008-2011 period and will assess staff performance in both research quality and quantity, research income and PhD completions. Depending on their seniority within the department, a member of staff will be assessed on whether they have produced between five and thirteen published items between January 2008 and December 2011. Staff at the meeting complained that this does not take into account the issue of many lecturers not having much time to produce articles due to teaching commitments. The staff repeatedly expressed their concern over a lack of investment in infrastructure that would allow them to produce higher quality research. They also complained that while student numbers had increased in recent years, the number of teaching staff had not which has resulted in a high student to staff ratio. Dr Missirlis claimed that the department operated on a profit of £1m a year, which could be used to improve infrastructure. A leaflet distributed to students
Image by Lele Gelibter by the UCU branded the plans aggressive and poorly thought out. The leaflet said: “Whoever is left will supposedly get more time to research, but management have proposed no improvements in resources or infrastructure that would actually improve research outputs.” It also pointed out that many of the research staff will be recruited in the field of Bioinformatics, an area in which there is a large amount of funding but limited interest from students. The proposals suggest that 14 new staff will be recruited as part of the informatics initiative. Professor Evans defended the proposals by saying that they would benefit the University: “Queen Mary is working to be in the top 10 per cent of universities across the UK in terms of our research, and it is important that SBCS can contribute to fulfill that vision by increasing staff numbers and improving our staff to student teaching ratio. Improved research will also provide new opportunities to develop our research-led teaching.”