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on ne sletter
The College and the Principalship Professor Arthur Lucas, Vice Principal has accepted the invitation of Council to continue as Acting Principal until a new appointment is agreed He has written this letter to explain the situation to the College. Dear Colleagues It is unlikely that a new Principal will be cho en for recommendation to the Prime Minister for subsequent nomination to and appointment by the Crown in time to take up office much earlier than the beginning of the 1993/94 session. It may therefore be helpful if I make some comments on the management and development of the College in the interim period, which will probably last at least until Easter 1993.
It is important that the College neither stagnate nor vacillate while it seeks a new Principal, and I believe that it is strong enough and committed enough to carry on its planned redevelopment and growth without interruption during the next session. We have an agreed Strategic Plan; we are in the process of beginning the first stage of the building works to provide Library study space for the additional students expected on the Strand by the end of the planning period; we have agreed that an interim set of departmental moves will take place by Christmas to ensure that the second phase can take place and be completed by September 1993; we have agreed with UMDS that we will proceed with negotiations toward merger, which will give us a very substantial concentration of research and teaching in the biomedical and life sciences; and we are making an appointment to the Chair of Performance Studies jointly with the Royal Academy of Music. The change in
staffing structure is under way with a number of new appointments being made and many early retirement packages agreed. Progess is clearly being made. Having looked at a number of the submissions being made to the UFC Research Assessment Exercise, I am confident that there has been a marked improvement in the objective 'performance indicators' of many of them, although it remains to be seen whether our improvements are as great as those in other institutions. When the results are announced we will be in much better position to assess the implications of what I hope will be the enhanced repute of the College. There are issues of governance that are being examined, that will give a greater role to Academic Board in initiating and commenting on policy issues at an early stage; the relationship between the Planning and Resources Committee and the rest of the formal governance structure is being defined, and the management role of the heads of schools meeting in an enlarged and redefined replacement for the Academic Policy Group is being considered. The granting of 'direct access' to the Funding Council will mean that we need to develop our relationship as part of the Federal University, a relationship that will remain important for the future, but which will not be the same one that we have now. There is no lack of College Management tasks in front of us; I am confident that we can achieve the ends we have set ourselves if we all pull together, working as a Collegiate as well as School tearns, recognising that all of us will at times experience upheaval as physical changes take place, and that we will
have to adapt to new external regimes. In conclusion, please accept my thanks for the support that I have received in the sudden transition I have had to make, and my apologies for any mistake I have made. I have cancelled my attendance at a research Continued on page 2
Rifkind address The Rt Hon Malcolm Rifkind, QC, MP, the new Secretary of State for Defence, gave his first public address since taking up office to the Centre for Defence Studies based at King's on Thursday 14 May. The address, entitled A decade ofchange in European security, received good press coverage on Newsnight (BBC2), The World Tonight (Radio 4) and was reponed in the Independent, Daily Telegraph, Herald Tribune and the Financial Times.