cambridge university strategic plan 2020

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Strategy and Development Plans

Executive Summary

The Department of Engineering is the largest department at the University of Cambridge and one of the leading centres of engineering in the world. Renowned for both its teaching and research, the Department's aim is to address the world's most pressing challenges with science and technology. To achieve this aim, the Department collaborates with other disciplines, institutions, companies and entrepreneurs. The Department’s strength lies in its integrated approach to research and teaching; the unique way in which it applies its capability across all aspects of engineering and gathers partners to find solutions. To build even stronger integration, speed and agility, the Department’s philanthropic development campaign will create a new home for Engineering at West Cambridge. The new campus will set the course for 21 st century engineering around the world by seamlessly interweaving research, teaching and partnership with industry. The campaign will also open opportunities for the next generation of engineers with new academic posts, studentships and schools outreach.

Introduction

Since its foundation in 1875, the Department of Engineering has grown to become the largest department in the University and the largest integrated engineering department in the UK with nearly 200 academics and principal investigators, nearly 400 contract research staff and research fellows, 900 graduate students, and 1200 undergraduates.

Internationally, Cambridge is among the top three in the QS World University Rankings for Engineering and Technology (2022) and number one outside the USA.  In the REF2021 assessment of UK research, General Engineering at Cambridge achieved a perfect score for its research environment and a top score in terms of 99% of its work being judged as world-leading or internationally excellent.

The Department of Engineering seeks to benefit society by creating world-leading engineering knowledge that fosters sustainability, prosperity and resilience. We share this knowledge and transfer it to industry through publication, teaching, collaboration, licensing and entrepreneurship. By integrating engineering disciplines in one department, we can address major challenges and develop complete solutions, serving as an international hub for engineering excellence.

The Department values:

• intellectual rigour
• teaching, research and connections between the two
• collaborations across disciplines
• sharing and applying research

Structure and Staffing

The Department consists of six divisions, which represent core strengths. They build teams and facilities that can maintain and develop leading positions in engineering disciplines:

• Energy, fluid mechanics and turbomachinery - build on research in fluid mechanics and thermodynamics to develop a systems view of energy generation and utilisation, particularly in ground and air transport, to mitigate environmental impact.
• Electrical engineering - pursue fundamental electrical, electronic and photonic research at the material, device and system levels with a focus on creating integrated solutions in the fields of nanotechnology, sensing, energy generation, energy conversion, displays and communications.
• Mechanics, materials and design - extend fundamental and applied research in mechanics, materials, and design, exploiting cross-disciplinary partnerships across the University; and build on existing strengths to develop excellence in bioengineering and healthcare systems research.
• Civil engineering - advance the mechanics of civil and structural engineering systems within the broader context of the design, construction and operation of sustainable infrastructure and the stewardship of Earth's resources and environment.
• Manufacturing and management - develop new understanding of manufacturing technology, operations, strategy and policy, in close partnership with industry, in order to improve industrial performance.
• Information engineering - develop fundamental theory and applications relating to the generation, distribution, analysis and use of information in engineering and biological systems.

The quality of the staff and research students within these divisions are the key to the Department’s success. Their recruitment is driven by the aim to create “world-leading engineering knowledge,” so the Department seeks and attracts the best candidates in the world. Academics are sought who can both increase the strength of a research discipline within a division and also connect across the Department through strategic themes.

Recruitment is also used to maintain a healthy balance of new blood and experienced staff across the Department. In addition, there is a drive to increase the number of female academics ( Women in Engineering ). Students and postdoctoral researchers are an important output of the Department, but also provide excellent gearing for academics to build research capacity, so further growth in numbers and improved training is planned.

21 st century engineers is the top-level strategic mission for the Department of Engineering - inspiring future generations of engineers, equipping them with the best integrated engineering education, and engaging them at the leading-edge of engineering thinking, so that they can change the world.

Four research themes open opportunities for adventurous research and address major challenges:

• Energy, transport and urban infrastructure - creating sustainable integrated solutions for the provision of energy, transport, and infrastructure
• Manufacturing, design and materials - transforming our engineered world by understanding the whole process from the fundamentals of understanding materials, through design, to manufacturing, and including service and reuse
• Bioengineering - applying the engineering approach to understanding biological systems and supporting innovation in healthcare, creating new knowledge and solutions for biological and medical applications, and biologically-inspired solutions elsewhere in engineering
• Complex, resilient and intelligent systems - developing modelling, simulation and analytical methods for understanding large complex systems, ensuring their resilience through new approaches to optimisation, decision-making and control, which extend to creating intelligent systems

These four research themes are detailed with sets of sub-missions.

In addition to themes, the formal structure is cross-connected by subgroups, centres, partnerships, seminars and a host of less formal mechanisms, which bring together members from different groups to collaborate.

The undergraduate course has proved to be extremely popular and successful, attracting students from all around the world with an annual intake of over 300. It is four years in length with largely common courses for the first two years followed by a choice of options in later years. This distinctive structure gives plenty of opportunity for innovation and development. Modules are constantly being introduced and updated to reflect advances in engineering, including the Department's research themes. This often involves new ways of collaborating with other departments.

Industry and Entrepreneurship

Annual research income is GBP40M. One third of this income comes from collaboration with industry; generating knowledge for companies that can be translated into new and improved products and services. Research income strategy is driven by the intent to address systems-level research challenges with integrated, collaborative approaches. Larger grants of longer duration are needed, which matches the trend seen in sponsors’ calls. Industrial support through long-term strategic partnerships is seen as essential for maintaining diversity in the portfolio and keeping the research relevant. Resources are prioritised to support major bids, industrial relationships and, in addition, opportunities for early career researchers, such as fellowships. Staff and students are also encouraged and supported in entrepreneurship and have formed over 50 spin-out and start-up companies.

The Department moved to Trumpington Street in 1920 thanks to a generous donation from an alumnus, Sir Dorabji Tata. This central city site is currently the prime location for teaching and approximately half of the Department's research. The Department also has a significant footprint on the West Cambridge Site, primarily for research laboratories.

Over the next ten years, the Department will create a new campus for engineering at West Cambridge, which will draw all of its assets together in one seamlessly, open, integrated whole. This 100,000m2 facility will set the agenda for 21 st century engineering internationally. Academics, students and industrial partners will mingle and often work together throughout the site with flexible facilities to enable speed, agility and creativity in building understanding and solving problems. The Institute for Manufacturing, the Civil Engineering Building, the Electrical Engineering Building, the Schofield Centre and the Whittle Lab are already thriving on the West Cambridge Site.

Ahead of this move west, existing facilities at Trumpington Street must be not only be maintained, but improved, so that our world-leading staff and students are not held back. The Dyson Centre for Engineering Design was created to provide a modern workspace where engineering students can come together outside of the classroom to think, experiment, design, build and exchange ideas. The James Dyson Building for Engineering provides a new space for multidisciplinary teams aligned with strategic themes.

Workshops and research laboratories are supported by teams of technicians, electrical engineers and mechanical designers who work together to design and manufacture major test rigs for use across the Department. In addition, a team of computer officers and technicians support activity at both a Departmental and Divisional level. A central server room, set up as a Small Research Facility, has intensive research computing capability which is available across the Department and the network infrastructure, core file server, web servers and various other essential infrastructure services are maintained centrally by the Department. The Department also makes extensive use of the University's High Performance Computing Service.

More Information

Please contact Philip Guildford , Chief Operating Officer, if you wish to find out more.

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The mission of the University of Cambridge is to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

Core values

The University's core values are as follows:

• freedom of thought and expression
• freedom from discrimination
• the encouragement of a questioning spirit
• an extensive range of academic subjects in all major subject groups
• quality and depth of provision across all subjects
• the close inter-relationship between teaching, scholarship, and research
• strong support for individual researchers as well as research groups
• residence in Cambridge as central to most courses
• education which enhances the ability of students to learn throughout life

The University's relationship with society

• the widest possible student access to the University
• the contribution which the University can make to society through the pursuit, dissemination, and application of knowledge
• the place of the University within the broader academic and local community
• opportunities for innovative partnerships with business, charitable foundations, and healthcare
• concern for sustainability and the relationship with the environment

The Collegiate University

• the relationship between the University and the Colleges as fundamental to the nature of Cambridge
• the interdisciplinary nature of the Colleges as a major stimulus to teaching and learning
• the enhanced quality of experience for students and staff through College membership

University staff

• recognition and reward of the University's staff as its greatest asset
• the encouragement of career development for all staff

Other activities

• the opportunities for broadening the experience of students and staff through participation in sport, music, drama, the visual arts, and other cultural activities

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Introduction

• Considerations
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• Awarding Gaps overview
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• 1. How do you know? overview
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• Limitations of data
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• Sources of useful data
• 2. What are the reasons? overview
• What does the sector say?
• What do Cambridge students say?
• Assessment and awarding gaps
• The deficit approach
• The hidden curriculum
• 3. What works? overview
• What is needed?
• What are we doing?
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• 1. Curriculum design
• 2. Assessment & feedback
• 3. Teaching practices
• 4. Learning environments
• 5. Staff & student engagement
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• Cycle 1 (2019-20) overview
• A | Advisory Hub
• A | Anti-Racist Glossary
• A | Mentoring
• A | STEMM Subjects
• B | Content Notes
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• B | Diversifying Assessment
• B | Double Time
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• Cycle 2 (2020-21) overview
• A | Curricular Representation
• A | First-Year Transition
• A | Supervisions
• B | Assessment Guidance
• B | Peer Learning
• B | Supervisions
• Cycle 3 (2021-22) overview
• A | Decolonisation
• A | Race and Mental Health
• B | Formative Feedback
• B | Self-Advocacy
• Cycle 4 (2022-23)
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Skills Strategy 2020-25: premises and priorities

• Awarding Gaps
• Assessment at Cambridge
• Inclusive Collegiate Education
• Peer Learning
• Support and Initiatives

The collegiate University committed in the Access & Participation Plan (2020-25) to ensure that "our students achieve their potential, through the full and active participation in their education", to make "the Cambridge experience richer and more diverse for everyone through our curricular, teaching, learning and assessment practices" and to address identified awarding gaps  among Black British undergraduates and students with mental health conditions.

One key step towards realising this ambition was identified in the APP as the development of a new strategy for academic, employability and life skills, to be approved by the General Board's Education Committee (GBEC) and the Senior Tutors' Committee (STC). The APP committed the Cambridge Centre for Teaching & Learning to developing support for and encouraging the integration of skills development into teaching & assessment practices, curricula and review processes.

We have also established a Cambridge Skills Educators Network to link up practitioners across the collegiate University.

If you have any questions about the Skills Strategy, please get in touch with  Dr Mary Beth Benbenek .

Development of the Strategy

The premises and priorities of the Skills Strategy were developed in consultation with an Advisory Group including students and staff, with feedback from the Senior Tutors' Education Committee and the Graduate Tutors' Committee in June 2020, and with feedback from the STC and GBEC. The Skills Strategy was endorsed by the STC and GBEC in Michaelmas Term 2020.

The STC and GBEC agreed that the Strategy should support a move away from a 'deficit model' understanding of skills and that there should be a strong focus on developing a shared discourse around 'skills'. For the purposes of the Skills Strategy, the term 'skills' variously encompasses 'academic', 'employability' and 'life' skills.

• That skills and knowledge are interrelated with each other
• That the collegiate University aims at achieving ever greater clarity, both for and with students and educators, on what we are educating students to be and to do
• That all educators (including supervisors, lecturers, College tutors, librarians) are supported to understand and to carry out their roles in helping students develop skills
• That students understand the importance and centrality of their own actions in shaping their education
• That the collegiate University commits to fostering among students an inclusive culture of constructive engagement toward their own educational and personal aims
• That the collegiate University acknowledges the existence of pedagogical and social obstacles to student achievement and continues to work to dismantle these obstacles through engaging in reflective, critical self-assessment of whether and how some students have more opportunities to develop their knowledge and skills than others
• That the collegiate University recognises the many different student learning journeys and aims to support those different journeys in order to disrupt social inequalities
• That a central way to disrupt inequality is to ensure access to disciplinary knowledge; thus curriculum will be a primary focus of the Skills Strategy
• That students are able to make sense of how to take forward their Cambridge education in their future lives
• That the collegiate University commits to regular review, reflection and renewal of a Skills Strategy
• Develop a shared discourse around what we mean by 'skills'
• Link up the many existing efforts to support skills development in terms of transitioning into, through and out of Cambridge
• Embed skills development clearly into the curriculum
• Communicate to students clearly the knowledge and skills they are expected to develop  
• Commit to making teaching and learning practices as well as curricula more inclusive
• Ensure targeted staff support and development, including teaching roles, College roles, academic-support roles and their respective responsibilities in the development of student skills
• Ensure student engagement and support, including undertaking qualitative research with students to investigate the perspectives of students and to recognise students' agency  
• Implement targeted interventions to understand the factors or structural issues that affect student learning or student experiences and that lead to the progressions gap
• Analyse data on the progressions gap to employment or to further studies
• Widen access to information and services supporting progression after completion of course of study  
• Formatively review the Skills Strategy action plan and recommendations on an annual basis

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Carbon Management Plan targets

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• Policy & progress

The University adopted its Carbon Management Plan (CMP) in 2010, which commits us to achieving a 34% reduction in our energy-related carbon emissions by 2020 against a 2005-06 baseline.

In pursuit of this target, the Plan identifies five major areas of work:

• Emission reduction schemes: Implementing and capturing learning from pilot carbon reduction measures. This is largely achieved through the work of the Energy and Carbon Reduction Project .
• Policy development and management: This mainly involves the integration of carbon issues within the financial planning and policy development processes of the University, to ensure carbon is a key consideration of everything we do.
• Data gathering and reporting: Improving our energy monitoring processes so that we can identify and prioritise opportunities for carbon savings more effectively.
• Low carbon energy generation: Identifying opportunities to generate our own energy through low carbon technologies .
• New developments: Promoting low carbon building options and techniques .

Further information

  Download the University of Cambridge Carbon Management Plan 2010-2020

Find out about the different sources of Cambridge's carbon emissions ('scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions')

Find out about carbon management : the governance of energy and carbon reduction at Cambridge (the ECRP)

• 20 Jun Sustainability Showcase 2024

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Cambridge connected - strategic plan 2020 launch - this event has already occurred.

Wednesday, February 26, 2020 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm

Idea Exchange, Old Post Office, 12 Water St., Cambridge, ON View on Google Maps

Event Category:

Festivals and Events

Event Details:

Join us at the Idea Exchange - Old Post Office, to learn more about the process for developing the City's strategic plan for the next four years. 

Keynote speaker: Sylvia Cheuy, Tamarack Institute for Community Engagement - "The role of collaboration in creating positive community change"

The event is free but please register in advance .