A Sierra-Fuelled Dawn

The Shuttlebus, in R2D2 livery, awaits its first customers

Following the commendable example of the Universities of Bristol, Bath, Exeter and Cardiff in forming the GW4 collaboration, we are pleased to announce that Fundermental Towers University will be forming an alliance with its sister institutions in the wider Rochester area.

The research intensive universities of Fundermental Towers, Ebbsfleet White Horse (Unrampant), and Snodhurst, together with Deangate Ridge Golfing Academy, will form a strategic alliance to explore and identify opportunities where their combined research strength can more effectively address global challenges, as well as getting an impressive discount on stationery costs.

Professor Gymslip Plimsole, Vice-Chancellor of Fundermental Towers University and former contestant on ESRC's T Factor, welcomed the news. 'This is an exciting day for the wider Rochester area, and the impact will be felt right the way from The Esplanade in the West to Tinker's Alley in the East. Together the 'R2D2' collaboration of universities is more than the sum of its parts. With a total turnover in excess of £7.83(sterling), these four royal and ancient seats of learning will create an unstoppable critical mass of ground breaking research.'

'We have already commissioned a 'shuttle service' between the universities', continued Plimsole. 'I have had my son Kevin, our Transport Officer, source and purchase a 1983 Ford Sierra which is ideal for the job. We hope to paint it in the colours of all four institutions. When combined these come out as a rather fetching puce-brown. Fortunately most Sierras of that age came in that colour, so there may be no need for a repaint. See? This collaboration is already saving us money!'

'Whilst we are all excited about the bright new Sierra-fuelled dawn ahead of us,' concluded Plimsole, 'there are still a number of details to iron out. The most important of these is the biscuit selection for our intra-R2D2 meetings. I know Snodhurst have a penchant for jammie dodgers, but we at Fundermental Towers have more refined tastes. For us, it's custard creams or nothing.'

Build Yesterday Tomorrow: the Launch of the Latitude Prize

A press release from Fundermental Towers University. 

The Latitude Prize 2014

'The Vice Chancellor and Council of Fundermental Towers University are pleased to announce the launch of the Latitude Prize 2014. Whilst the Longitude Prize is seeking to solve one of the greatest issues of our time, the Latitude Prize is seeking to answer one of the most pointless and irrelevant.

Eaae Ie Oi Aae

Coming up with a good name for a university is a fraught activity. One needs to give the impression of being steeped in tradition whilst being modern, thrusting, and super-innovative.

As you can imagine, it took countless hours in committee to decide on 'Fundermental Towers University'. Members were clearly divided into two camps, those that wanted Fundermental Towers University, and those that wanted to pay homage to the site of our campus, and call ourselves Acacia Avenue University.

University Academy College Church Firestation 91

Street Fighter II: 'The big one'

A press release from Fundermental Towers University

In preparation for our fifth anniversary celebrations on 27 November 2017, Fundermental Towers University (FTU) is today announcing an exciting new venture.

FTU was founded in a glorious golden shower of publicity in anno domini 2012. Since then, we have completely transformed the higher education landscape in the greater Rochester area, from the strong and stable R2D2 strategic alliance, to the bold and brave rebranding exercise, to the exciting and enormous renaming the titles of all of our senior managers and faculty. And don't get me started on the Monopoly set and 'Latitude' Prize.

No, no one can accuse us of being laggards. However, our critics - like the splitters at Snodhurst University who have decided to leave the R2D2 Alliance citing 'musical differences' - are suggesting we've run out of steam.

Nothing could be further from the truth, as our new venture will today prove. I am delighted to announce the creation of the UK's very first 'University Academy College Church Firestation 91'.

'No Amount of Aromatic Spice Poppadoms Will Hold Us Back'

Phileas Fogg: FTU 'invested heavily'

Here at Fundermental Towers University we've always strived to be the very best small university. Throughout our great and glorious history, stretching back for more than a quarter of a decade, we've nurtured a forward thinking, imaginative ethos that has served our students well.

Not only have we linked with similar small-scale centres of excellence in the wider Rochester area to form the R2D2 Consortium, but we have also launched the prestigious Latitude Prize to seek answers to the most pointless and irrelevant questions of our time. We've even sought to rename both our office holders and the institution itself. I do not wish to appear self-aggrandising, but I would suggest that we are probably the finest small university in the world.

The Rochester By-Election: the View from FTU

A message from the Vice Chancellor of Fundermental Towers University (FTU)

As many of you know, FTU's main campus is located at 2 Acacia Avenue, at the very heart of the dreaming towers of Rochester. No surprise, then, that the world's media were keen to know what our response was to the recent election of the Ukip's second MP in our constituency. To be honest, I was seething. That upstart Reckless stole my victory.

'Excellentiam per cognitio, innovatione et interdiu TV'

The Dreaming Spires of Rochester

We were delighted to learn that Fundermental Towers has been selected as one of a tranche of 'new' universities announced by the government today. Institutions no longer have to have 4,000 students to be classified as a university. Instead, institutions need only have three part-time students in order to join the likes of Oxford and Cambridge in the upper echelons of knowledge providers. I am very pleased to announce, then, that the ancient seat of learning formerly known as 2 Acacia Avenue, Rochester, will become Fundermental Towers University.

Break open the Asti!

Whilst we do not, strictly, meet the minimum criteria for student numbers at the moment, we believe we can make a start with what we have. Our children are broadly defined as 'students', albeit school age, and both the dog and the cat have demonstrated some interest in learning, even if it is just in finding out when feeding time is.

Yes, these are exciting times for Fundermentals University. Once I've completed the latest Cosmo questionnaire, I will make a start on filling in our REF submission. I will then move on to establishing an overseas campus at our Eurocamp tent on the Costa Brava. Finally, I intend to finance my retirement extend the opportunity for learning by offering mail order degrees a distance learning programme.

I would like to extend an invitation to all Fundermental subscribers to join us at our leafy North Kentish campus where all our undergraduates, including Rover and Tibbles, live by our motto: Excellentiam per cognitio, innovatione et interdiu TV, or 'Excellence through Research, Innovation and Daytime TV.'

Seeking an Extension

Donnez-moi la mort (Photo by Mathew MacQuarrie on Unsplash)

Emotions ride high as extensions to deadlines are sought, and nowhere more so than at Fundermentals Towers University. Now read on.

Coronavirus: a message from FTU

Pigeon: an option
(Photo by Viktor Forgacs on Unsplash)

Fundermental Towers University

2 Acacia Avenue

Rochester

Kent

WE-R GR8

Dear valued member of staff

Coronavirus

I am writing to let you know that, henceforth - or is it forthwith? I never can remember - all of our teaching will be delivered virtually to ensure that none of our valued students give us a scathing review on the NSS. 

Fundermentally Redesigned

So long, 2009.

In September this year it will be Fundermentals' fifth birthday. That's scary in itself: when I started writing this we were in the dog days of the Gordon Brown government, all the talk was of the next REF being entirely metrics-based, and Horizon 2020 was still being talked about as FP8.

Brenda Blethyn to Be New Chief of BBSRC

News has come through on the wires that the BBSRC has appointed a new Chief Executive. Imagine our surprise, at Fundermental Towers, that they decided on our old friend Brenda Blethyn. The national treasure will forever be in our hearts. However, we did question her knowledge of biotechnology and biological sciences.  The more paranoid amongst the Faculty are saying that her staring role in Secrets and Lies gave her insight into the development of funding policy. I, for one, couldn't possibly comment. Suffice to say that we were pleased that this Ramsgate girl has risen to the top in Death Star House, and wish her every success.

Blethyn

Hunter

A 'Cunning Plan' to Lead Million+

Word has just reached Fundermentals Towers that Million+ has taken the brave decision to put Baldrick in charge. Well, not Baldrick so much as the actor Tony Robinson who played the hapless character. What could possibly go wrong?

Any resemblance to Prof Dave Phoenix, VC of London South Bank University, is, of course, entirely coincidental.

Phoenix

Robinson

AHRC Appoints Lyne-ker as New Associate Director

Hot on the heels of the AHRC's appointment of Mark Llewellyn as Director of Research, it has announced that Dr Ian Lyne is to be its Associate Director of Programmes. As you will remember, Mark Llewellyn is something of a babe in arms, having been a jobbing postdoc until five years ago. By comparison Ian Lyne is positively decrepit, having been a BA-funded postdoc at Warwick from 1995-98. That was last century!

Unlike Llewellyn, Lyne's postdoctoral career has been more administrative than academic. By the sounds of it, he felt battered and bruised by the expectations of academia: 'an academic research career is...very competitive and I was beginning to fear that I was not going to enjoy the constant pressure to keep publishing new work. There was also a growing feeling that it would be nice to have a job where one could feel one could see more concrete results, and get involved in more concrete activities.'

Thus, he fled to Durham, where he became an Administrative Officer, before moving to Exeter to be Assistant Registrar (Graduate School). He then got swallowed up in Death Star House as Head of Careers and Skills at the BBSRC, before becoming Head of Policy at RCUK.

An interesting trajectory, then, and not one that would necessarily instil confidence in the hearts of Humanities academics, I think. He will, after all be 'work[ing] alongside Emma Wakelin and Gary Grubb in developing the AHRC’s new range of research programmes.' He it is who will have his finger on the button of the AHRC's Random Word Generator, used in the creation of all their programmes. If his most recent experience at the cutting edge of Humanities research is as a postdoc 14 years ago, there may be rumblings of discontent in the sector.

However, I think this does him a disservice. His diverse career should be seen as a strength rather than a weakness: he has seen academia from both sides: as academic and administrator, as recipient and giver. He should be well placed to empathise with all sides, and make the judgements of Solomon necessary in concocting new programmes. We here in Fundermental Towers wish him all the best in the challenging times ahead.

Finally, whilst I know the photo's blurry, is there the hint of Gary Lineker in Lyne's greying locks? No? Just wait until he picks up a packet of crisps; the resemblance is uncanny.

O Tell Me the Truth about Concordats

It’s a little known fact that, shortly after graduating, WH Auden worked in Oxford University’s Research Office. Whilst he was there he had to deal with various strategic policies, concordats and memoranda of understanding. He became increasingly frustrated with these, and vented this irritation in an early draft of one of his most famous poems, ‘O Tell Me the Truth about Love’. In the week in which Universities UK announced its ‘Concordat to Support Research Integrity’, and LERU issued a paper on gender in universities, it’s worth reprinting this forgotten masterpiece.

O Tell Me the Truth about Concordats

Some say concordats show the way

They move the question on.

But others scoff and turn away

And say that they’re all wrong.

And when I asked the bureaucrat 
Who looked as if he knew, 
His boss got very cross indeed, 
And said it wouldn't do.

What are these words, these shiny words,

That trumpet and aspire?

That build imagined pleasure domes

With proselyte desire?

And when you try to pin them down

They flit like darkling bats

And float like smoke above the town

O tell me the truth about concordats.

At meetings they’re referred to

And duly noted down

But all around the table

There’s academic frowns.

They struggle with their purpose,

They struggle with their sense.

They try to take some action

For fear of seeming dense.

Do they shout like manifestos?

Or rattle like shopping lists?

Could one give a first-rate imitation

If one’s somewhat Brahms and Liszt?

Do they whisper in your ear,

Or demand: ‘do this, do that!’

Do they need your full attention?

O tell me the truth about concordats.

I tried to find the meaning

I searched the halls and quads.

And some who saw me whispered:

‘He’s a miserable sod’.

But still I found no answer

The emptiness remained.

These words so drained of meaning

A vacant picture frame.

Do they make a real difference?

Do they change the way we think?

Or are we better at the races,

Or fiddling with string?

Like shadow boxers sparring

Or like Schrodinger’s cat

They’re blithe and insubstantial

O tell me the truth about concordats.

As I’m sleeping in my bedsit

A nightmare tiptoes in:

A giant, laughing concordat

That affirms and agrees and spins.

It towers high above me -

But disappears, just like that -

Leaving no one any wiser

O tell me the truth about concordats.

Phil Willis: Concentrate Research

The former Chair of the Commons Science and Technology Committee, Phil Willis, has been sounding off in the Times Higher about the future of research in the UK, suggesting that the country needs a "real gloves-off rationalisation of university research".

Echoing the implied (or, in some cases, explicit) call for concentration in the Research Council's Delivery Plans, he suggested that research should be focused in 'no more than 30' universities. The rest should retire gracefully from research, and become US-style liberal teaching only community colleges.

Whilst Willis does not weild as much power and influence as he did as an MP, these are still worrying thoughts. The RAE2008 made positive strides in identifying and rewarding excellent research, wherever it was found. Why penalise pockets of excellence in (let's be frank) non-Russell Group institutions? In some areas of hard science, there may be a case to be made for economies of scale and the sharing of large - and expensive - equipment and infrastructure. But in the social sciences and humanities? Hmm.

Moreover, the concensus is that excellent research informs and drives excellent teaching. Separating the two creates a two tier system, consigning the majority of students to second class teaching, removed from the cutting edge of research, and the elite minority to the ivory towers of excellence.

Separating the two is, I think, a retrograde step. For students at institutions like Kent, on the cusp of that 'no more than 30', as well as all those further down the league tables, there are uncertain times ahead.

A Two Tone Decision on Ska

There was exciting news in the world of astronomy last week. After 9 years of deliberation, a decision had finally been made on where to site the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), the world's most powerful radio telescope.

As you may know, it was a toss up between South Africa and Australia. And the winner is...both! Yes,the SKA has come down squarely on the fence in a decision that some may see as a classic Brussels-style fudge. But not us.

We agree with  John 'Bob Hoskins' Womersley, STFC Chief and Chairman of the SKA Board. At a conference in the duty free area of Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport on Friday Bob said that they had decided on a 'dual site approach'. 'The decision was science-motivated,' said Bob, as he stocked up on cut price cigarettes. 'It strengthens the project in the long run. Everyone is in favour of it. SA, Australia, and the SKA Organisation.'

But how will this work? In a statement SKA spelled it out. 'The majority of SKA dishes in Phase 1 will be built in South Africa, combined with MeerKAT. Further SKA dishes will be added to the ASKAP array in Australia. All the dishes and the mid frequency aperture arrays for Phase II of the SKA will be built in Southern Africa while the low frequency aperture array antennas for Phase I and II will be built in Australia /New Zealand.'

All clear? Dishes from South Africa (heading a consortium of eight other countries), antennas from Australia and New Zealand, and six time zones separating them. What could possibly go wrong? Yes, we at Fundermentals Towers fully agree that science is best done at a distance. And preferably on different continents.

FTU Bids for Regional Study

The VC and PVCs of FTU, getting into the Dickensian spirit

It may surprise readers to learn that the announcement of an AHRC/Design Council funding call focussed on Bristol/Bath was greeted with fevered excitement at Fundermental Towers University. You might reasonably have thought that, whilst FTU had expanded its sphere of influence to the very edges of the Kentish peninsular through its strategic 'R2D2' collaboration with Ebbsfleet White Horse (Unrampant), Snodhurst and Deangate Ridge Golfing Academy, this call was too geographically remote to be of interest to FTU. Not so.

Knownaginta: Probably the Best Mission Group in the World

I read with interest in this week's Times Higher that the 94 Group was considering a name change. As you can imagine, this unleashed enormous excitement at Fundermentals Towers, as it combines two of our favourite things: mission groups and branding exercises.

Yes, this is a great opportunity for a self-selecting coterie to come up with a fresh-faced new image and some broad, aspirational tag lines. In fact, rather than farming this out to an expensive branding agency, we at Fundermentals would like to offer our services for free.

We'll offer them a range of options. We have to think carefully about the name. We could either have:

• A name with some basis in reality, like a translated word. For example, we could have '94' in Latin: 'Nonaginta Quattuor'. Which has a learned ring to it, and is sure to please all the fresh faced students brought up on a diet of Harry Potter, as it sounds a bit like a spell. Maybe we could get the collective VCs to dress up as Dumbledore et al? No harm in appealing to the masses when we've got to part them with £27k. 
• Or a name that is based around a neologism with no baggage. You know, like Aviva, or Carillion. Or Consignia. I don't think anyone's using that at the moment. 
• Better still, how about a combination of the two. Combine 'Nonaginta' with 'Knowledge' and what do we get? 'Knownaginta'! Bingo!

Yes, I can see it now. The Knownaginta Group. I tell you, I'm wasted in university administration.

Next we need to think about a new tag line. Their current one, 'To Promote Excellence through Research and Teaching', is just a bit...meh. I mean, which university or mission group doesn't do that? No, I think they need to either go for honesty ('Protecting our Interests - Together'), or something Blairite, bold - and ultimately meaningless. How about: 'Building our World on the Foundations of Knowledge'?

Hmm. I'll have to develop a new Priorities Generator to help me out with this one.

Alternatively, they could just steal the tag line that already exists.

• 'Knownaginta: Because You're Worth It'. 
• 'Knownaginta: Think Different'. 
• 'Knownaginta: It's Good to Talk.' 
• 'Knownaginta: Probably the Best Mission Group in the World'.

Right, this is getting silly now. I think the Fundermentals' readership should have a go. I'm willing to offer a spangly prize - which may or may not be a pen stolen from the ARMA Conference -  to the best combination of new name and tag line for the 94 Group. Over to you, Twitter...

Faster, Higher, Stronger

It was reported this week that the House of Lords regarded the Government's proposal to categorise universities as gold, silver and bronze as 'extremely damaging'.

Here at Fundermental Towers University (FTU) we wish to distance ourselves from the peers' narrow and antiquated disgust with a viable and popular rating system. Those aged lords and bishops just need to get over themselves and get with the times. Don't they realise that everything is rated these days, and there is no finer system than one based on Olympian metals?

In fact, we would encourage the Government to go further in aligning with the Olympic ideals. Not only should the TEF use these labels, but universities should be expected to demonstrate the Olympic ideals of Citius, Altius, Fortius, or Faster, Higher, Stronger. 

Changes to EPSRC Funding Schemes

News is coming through from Polaris Towers about changes in the pipeline for EPSRC funding schemes:

• The leadership, career acceleration and postdoc fellowships are to be stopped. They will be replaced by a single fellowship scheme - where you can apply anytime, at any stage of your career.
• Increased number of calls in strategic areas (although responsive-mode grants will continue to get the vast majority of their funding)
• Increased support for key UK-based academics - individual, long term support.
• Possible changes to the way first grants will be assessed (i.e. not just against first grants). However, detail of this was not forthcoming.
• No plans for a UK equipment register; it will be up to academics to find shared equipment.

Full details of these will be announced next week (around 20 July). Thanks to my colleague Carolyn Barker for this. Incidentally Carolyn's planning to start up her own, science-focused funding blog, so watch this space...