date: Fri Apr 24 17:09:15 2009
from: Phil Jones
subject: Some issues in confidence
to: wigley@ucar.edu
Tom,
There are some odd things going on at UEA.
[1]http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2009/apr/homepagenews/tyndallfunding
This link was put up on the UEA website a few hours ago. Janice knows that
UEA has a ~£1M additional money from NERC for Tyndall for another year. Then
it is supposed to compete with all others for grants in the normal way.
She has no idea where the additional £3.5M is from! She is trying to find out.
The only place I can think of is UEA itself. There was a big initiative called ELSA
with the John Innes Institute that seems to have foundered, so it may be that money.
A week today there will a meeting in ENV to discuss climate change research.
I hope to be there, but only get back from Geneva 2 hrs earlier and there is a
tight connection in Schipol.
There are a number of issues about branding being mentioned. I'm firmly of the belief
that CRU is a much more well known name than Tyndall or ENV. Depending
how things go I will say this. Keith, Tim and Clare are also going, so with the numbers
going (~30) I doubt much will be decided.
Returning to the first point, ENV lost out in the last RAE. Despite coming top in
Earth Sciences we lost about £1M of Hefce money (~20%). All Depts that had top ratings in
all previous RAEs lost out in a similar way - affecting Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, IC.
Anyway ENV has to make cuts - not just in staff, but in space as well, as we have
a space charge. I've only heard this second hand, but one idea being mooted is
moving CRU somewhere else and trying to get another dept/group to take on our
building!
To rename the building the HHL building UEA had to approach Wolfson, so my
belief is they wouldn't be able to do this. Climate Research is so high on the agenda,
Wolfson would wonder why UEA (ENV) would want to shoe-horn us in somewhere
else.
I doubt much will come of any of this, but it might be not just Jim needing a bit of help
soon.
I'm in Geneva next week. No-one else in CRU knows about this building issue.
Cheers
Phil
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk
NR4 7TJ
UK
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