Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
PROFESSOR ALASDAIR
SMITH, DR
GERRY LAWLESS
AND MR
STEVE EGAN
27 MARCH 2006
Q20 Dr Turner: You do not seriously
think that you could have carried out this process without attracting
public attention?
Professor Smith: There are other
areas, other than chemistry and the sciences, where there are
significant changes in student demand. Foreign languages are one.
We, like many other institutions, have had significant changes
in our foreign language provision. At the last RAE, we submitted
four separate foreign language departments. These departments
do not exist any more. We have been through a process of reshaping
provision in modern languages at Sussex to deal with a very sad
decline in demand, another national problem just like the decline
in demand for some of the sciences. We were able to have that
discussion in a civilised fashion within the institution, looking
at all the options, not having the glare of publicity. I think
it is a better decision making process and the Royal Society of
Chemistry should reflect on that.
Q21 Chairman: It is their fault?
Professor Smith: No.
Q22 Chairman: I find it unbelievable
that you could blame the Royal Society of Chemistry for a set
of proposals when you did not even have the courtesy to speak
to your head of chemistry.
Professor Smith: I was not blaming
them for the proposals. I was saying that they create a climate
of publicity which puts constraints on institutions that are trying
to plan for the future.
Q23 Dr Turner: You put the proposals
to the Senate meeting on the 17th, one week after that, and the
Senate deferred. What were the key concerns that the Senate had
in coming to that judgment?
Professor Smith: The key concern
was that our proposal to reshape chemistry was to focus chemistry
on the area of chemical biology, the biological end of chemistry.
The concern which was expressed, particularly by the Dean of Life
Sciences, was that it may not be easy to focus the activity of
the chemistry department on one area like that. Chemical biology
is a set of applications of chemistry and to do chemical biology
you need support from other areas, not just organic chemistry.
Q24 Dr Turner: It is not viable on
its own?
Professor Smith: That is right.
The Dean advised that the initial proposal that we were working
with required further discussion and required us to look at other
options for focusing the chemistry department. We happily as an
institution are now proceeding to look at a wider range of options.
I think that is a perfectly healthy way to proceed. Having started
down one road, the discussion having opened up among the institution
and the full range of life scientists having got involved in it,
their advice was we need to look at this further and we are doing
that.
Q25 Dr Turner: Why did the Dean of
Life Sciences retract his initial proposal? Was it because of
the reaction? Had he had second thoughts of his own? Did the wave
of shock and horror that went through the British scientific community,
when it was suggested that the chemistry at Sussex of all places
should close, concentrate his mind and your mind?
Professor Smith: It was the response
from the chemistry department and others that said, from an academic
perspective, this proposal may not be a sensible way to refocus
chemistry. We need to give that further consideration. Most of
the external response from the scientific community and elsewhere
was to a perceived closure decision, but we were not proposing
closure. A lot of the external view was based on a misapprehension
of what we were trying to do. What influenced the Dean and influenced
me in believing that we needed a further period of consideration
was that the initial proposal for a refocusing of chemistry needed
further study.
Dr Turner: Gerry, what is your take?
Chairman: What will this entail? What
is going to happen?
Q26 Dr Turner: I am coming to that.
Dr Lawless: We did seek a lot
of external reports on the proposed refocusing, not simply the
closure of chemistry. Without exception, they all thought this
was a crazy idea, absolute madness to propose that you could have
a department of chemical biology in the absence of a chemistry
programme.
Q27 Dr Turner: Can we look at the
options that are being studied? Can you set them out for us, please,
Alasdair?
Professor Smith: The options that
are now being looked at fall under three broad headings. One would
be to maintain a broad based chemistry department. Given that
university policy is one of achieving excellence in research and
teaching, that would have to be a broad based chemistry department
that had the prospect of developing back to the absolutely first
rate chemistry department. The second option would be closure.
By "closure" I mean closure. That is, accepting that
the chemical biology department would not work. The third option
is to look at some intermediate option where chemistry at Sussex
is refocused, concentrates on the relationship between chemistry
and the other biomedical, biological sciences and where a smaller
scale of operation can operate with excellence in teaching and
research and recruit an adequate number of students to make it
viable. In broad terms, those are the three options.
Q28 Dr Turner: Why did you only consider
those options at this stage rather than from the very beginning?
Professor Smith: We did consider
all three options from the very beginning. My belief, in making
the initial proposals that we made, was and is that the level
of investment required to sustain a broad based chemistry department
in Sussex, to restore chemistry at Sussex to excellence in a broad
based department covering all the major branches of chemistry,
given the scale of the faculty losses that we had suffered in
recent years, would be a very large investment indeed with no
assurance that it would pay off in research assessment terms in
two years' time. That would be a very risky option and one that
would denude the rest of the university of much needed investment.
The other option, if I can go to the other extreme, the closure
option, I did not put forward because I am very strongly committed
to the future of science at Sussex and Sussex remaining a strong
science based university. I am very impressed, as everyone is,
by the quite extraordinary quality of the work that has been done
in chemistry at Sussex in the past. I was therefore and remain
desperately keen to find a way of retaining chemistry at Sussex
and not going for closure.
Q29 Dr Turner: That is very encouraging.
Gerry, can you give us your take on the options and their achievability?
Dr Lawless: I was presented with
five options on Friday. Things change quickly in the world of
academia. It is possible to almost immediately generate five posts
in chemistry without any additional expense on behalf of the university.
We are also seeking in the next six weeks some imaginative solutions
to having entrepreneurial investment in posts in chemistry. If
we had been allowed during the last six months to make some of
these proposals, we could have come up with a very financially
viable plan to save chemistry at Sussex, but we were not given
the opportunity. I also think it is very possible to use the media
to turn this around and, by making some very senior appointments
in chemistry at no expense to the university, to confirm that
chemistry is alive and well and has a future in Sussex, simply
because we have had so much media attention.
Q30 Dr Turner: You think it is possible,
even in the context in which the department has been seriously
damaged by the process?
Dr Lawless: Absolutely, provided
we make a strong commitment to chemistry in the future.
Q31 Dr Turner: Can we take it that
chemical biology, as such, is off the agenda now?
Professor Smith: As such it is
off the agenda. There is no difference between Gerry and me as
far as three to five options. I was, with apologies, over-simplifying
somewhat by running together various middle options. The original
chemical biology proposal is off the agenda because it clearly
did not command the support of the faculty of life sciences, but
a more general option of looking for a future of chemistry where
it focuses on the relationship between chemistry and the biological
sciences is very much still on the agenda.
Q32 Dr Turner: Can you tell me whether
the concerns surrounding chemistry which will have sent shock
waves through other scientific disciplines as well make the future
of physics doubtful at Sussex as well? What implications does
it have for the whole structure of science at Sussex, because
after all chemistry is integral to the teaching of medicine, biochemistry
and biology. Need I go on? What are the wider implications, even
on the campus, and for the future viability of science at Sussex?
Professor Smith: I have emphasised
all along that this proposal to restructure and rescale chemistry
is part of a wider university plan which involves making positive
investment in other areas of science. We are not proposing to
reduce the number of students taking the sciences at Sussex. We
are proposing to make substantial investments in the research
capacity in other science areas. I am doing my best to get that
message across. As it happens, at lunch time today, I was meeting
a visiting panel from PPARC who were looking at the renewal of
a major rolling grant in physics and naturally they wanted to
talk to me about the proposals that we were making about chemistry.
I was able to reassure them that it is not part of a plan to run
down the overall science effort at Sussex and I think the PPARC
panel went away reassured about the broad policy of Sussex towards
science.
Q33 Dr Turner: Physics is safe?
Professor Smith: I am afraid nothing
is safe.
Q34 Chairman: Nothing is safe in
Sussex?
Professor Smith: Nothing is safe
anywhere. Universities have to look at the provision for student
demand. I am very happy with the progress that physics has made
in recruiting students and with the strength of physics at Sussex,
but it would be a mistake for any vice-chancellor to say of any
subject that it is safe. One has very strong commitments to the
maintenance of a broad academic base. I have always made it clear
that my vision of Sussex is that it is a university which remains
strong in the sciences as well as arts. I have put a huge amount
of effort in the eight years of being vice-chancellor to doing
the very best a university can for physics, chemistry and other
subjects that face difficult student recruitment decisions.
Q35 Dr Harris: You said that no department
can be described as safe. Is the corollary of that that all departments
are potentially vulnerable, in a sense?
Professor Smith: Yes, but please
do not read anything into that.
Q36 Dr Harris: Are you saying that
in any university it is fair to say that, at least in science
because of the issues there, a whole load of departments might
be considered not safe in that sense?
Professor Smith: Yes, but please
do not read anything into that other than a most banal observation.
Sussex is extraordinarily strong in English, another five rated,
big department that currently recruits 300 well qualified students
a year. Is the future of English at Sussex safe? Of course it
is safe as long as it remains a five rated department recruiting
300 students a year, but if students wishing to study English
decide that Sussex is no longer the place for them the future
of English at Sussex will no longer be safe.
Q37 Chairman: Would you not concede
that, to be taken seriously as a university that is serious about
science, the idea that you can do that without a major chemistry
department is laughable?
Professor Smith: No.
Q38 Chairman: You think the two things
are compatible? You can talk about a major science facility at
a British university without chemistry?
Professor Smith: Yes. I would
prefer Sussex to have a chemistry department but I do not accept
the position that a serious science university must have a chemistry
department.
Q39 Chairman: Do you, Dr Lawless?
Dr Lawless: I completely reject
that. If we consider the other sciences, physics is probably not
as directly involved with chemistry but consider biochemistry,
for example. People who are applying to study a degree in biochemistry
want a first class degree delivered to them. That must involve
some chemistry. If we consider the premed programme, a very lucrative
programme at Sussex, 40% of that programme is delivered by chemistry.
We also have a programme that we deliver with the TTA, a teacher
enhancement programme. We train almost 20 chemistry teachers a
year. We could not deliver that without chemistry.
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