Stuart: Hello, everyone. It's Christmas. And at the end of the year, I always just sit and think, what's happened? What are the main themes? And I just wanted to share three of those with you, if I could. The first one is achievement. I mean, what an amazing year we've had as a University. Again, so many fantastic things. I was amazed by all the energy that came forward across campus as we launched our new Venice home.
Wonderful occasion to recommit after 50 years to our collaborations with the university there and with the city. Our graduations this year were just even more energized than normal. We did them slightly differently. We had the opportunity to put a big screen up for every single person in that hall could see their loved one go across, see their face.
We opened up the cinema. So 10,000 more people were able to come and participate in our graduations than we'd ever had before. We had the most wonderful Welcome Week as well, where so many new students displayed so much energy with so much commitment from our staff. It was just amazing.
We've also launched a national centre on Research Culture, and Research Culture is incredibly important internationally, and it's wonderful to see colleagues here at 海角社区 taking a really important lead in this, also holding a big international conference on research culture, which is, I think, really set a new standard in how we think and measure these sets of issues. And of course, I'm not going to forget, TEF that wonderful achievement that we had to achieve TEF across the piece.
The second theme actually is pride. I've been so struck at various things that we've done how much pride you have of your colleagues, of the work, of the partnership of the institution really struck always at our long service dinners. When people talk about the 20 years, the 30 years, the 40 years that they've been working at 海角社区, the pride they have in working with colleagues, the pride they have in their departments, and also as I go out with the Wows and Wonders the stories that come back in those meetings, the pride that people have and what they achieve with their students, with colleagues, with our community is just fantastic. Now on Wows and Wonders. Please don't forget that in December we're having a public vote as to who should be the winner. So please do log on. Please look at all of those submissions and please do make your choices.
Third thing, I just wanted to talk a little bit about reflect on is, is growth.
You know, we've really grown a lot as an institution. We see it everywhere. We have grown in staff numbers, we've grown in student numbers and in space. We've grown, of course, our campus significantly over the course of the last few years. And and I think that growth means that there's some things for 2024 that we really need to reflect on.
One is we need to grow sustainably. Those green choices that we need to make next year are going to be a really big and important theme. I think we need to reflect on our impact, how we can impact in research, in other things that we do more effectively, more significantly, given our scale and of course, there are tremendous opportunities that we have in this space as well,
Hope you get a great break. Do take some time. I know there'll be people working across the Christmas period itself, but hopefully you are also going to take some time out across the Christmas holidays. Relax, recharge, have a great Christmas and here's to 2024.
