Wherever you go on campus, you can’t fail to notice the amount of building work going on.

Those of you who come to work through the West entrance will have seen Sport Park growing very quickly. As well as being an exciting development on one of our prime sites, the facility – which is also funded by emda, Sport England Lottery Fund, Leicestershire County Council and Charnwood Borough Council – is important because it will host many of the sporting governing bodies we work with, as well as other sporting organisations who are so important to our continuing success as the UK’s number one university for sport.

Inside many buildings there have also been significant improvements and a great example of an important internal refurbishment is the Sir Robert Martin theatre, used by English and Drama, which we opened in February.

In the coming months, we will give you further insights into other developments across campus.

This is our Centenary year and I hope that all staff have had the opportunity to look at the Centenary website to see the large range of events which have already been organised.

We have an excellent programme of Centenary lectures, in addition to the Inaugural lectures of our own professional staff. We have an open day in June which will be great fun and a fantastic opportunity for the local community to see some of the work undertaken on campus.

I really hope that everyone will be able to get involved in the Centenary in some way, because it represents our commitment to higher education on this site for a very significant length of time.

We are committed to improving access to the STEM subjects – Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths – and I’m delighted we are supporting National Science and Engineering Week as part of our Centenary celebrations, which involves a series of lectures in a Festival of Science at Loughborough Town Hall.

A key part of our strategic plan is recognising that as a University, we are leading in fields of research which are important for the sustainability of the UK (and the World!)

We are very proud of the way we work with industry and I was delighted that we were able to welcome Nissan recently to campus to fill their Fuel Cell Vehicle from our hydrogen refuelling station (pictured right).

We also recognise that we need to do more on campus to deliver a sustainable campus and to practise some of the lessons we have learned from our research.

I’m proud of the initiatives we have launched so far – both for University staff and in the Students’ Union. I’m sure you will have all seen the ‘It’s Better Off’ campaign and I hope everyone is playing their own unique part in this. There are certainly more initiatives to come.

We’re all really proud of the awards that the University has won over the last few years, the epitome of which was becoming Sunday Times University of the Year for 2008-09.

I am really keen to spread the word about our achievements and we now have a uniform email footer for all employees to access, which can be found on the Marketing and Communications website.

It would be great if everyone used this so that every email we send, sends a message about our success. Everyone has contributed to this success and I hope everyone can play their part in telling the world about it.

I am very aware that communication is a two-way process so as well as telling you about some of the key things on my agenda, I would be pleased if you would tell me about some of the key things on yours! If there are issues you would like me to address, please email vcemail@lboro.ac.uk