I enjoy my job leading the University. I enjoy its place at the heart of a great city and its engagement with its region. I enjoy arriving at work early in the morning, locking my bike up and chatting to the security, domestic and catering teams on my way through our buildings. I enjoy the engagement I have every day with staff and students across the University. I enjoy the planning and the troubleshooting, the relationship building and the problem solving. I came to Sheffield to do this job having no real roots or connections in the city or the region, and the experience of leading the University to develop its impact on its place has been enormously fulfilling. Of course, there have been challenges, not least as resources have become more constrained in higher education – that’s life – but I enjoy shaping and moulding the University around a clear and consistent mission – and that is a job which, as the world changes, is never quite done.

I have decided that the time has come to leave. This has been an extremely difficult decision for me. I started to discuss the future with Lord Kerslake, the chair of the University Board in Spring last year: I wanted to make sure my plans aligned with other changes and developments across the University. My intention is to leave once a successor can take up the role, most probably in the Autumn of this year. I know already that leaving will be very difficult for me: there is always a temptation to go on for just a bit longer, to see through the next development. Universities are always engaging places and there is always something interesting to work on. But the timing is right for me and for the University.

I am so very proud of what has been achieved since I began work here in January 2016. I found a lively and diverse institution which welcomed me immediately, but my diagnosis was that Hallam needed more coherence and confidence, more ambition and a stronger identity. A range of changes and developments which build the University’s strength, resilience and influence are now in place.  The Howard Street development is funded and well underway. It will provide a new heart for city campus, creating a real university precinct, and, in the longer run, it will become the means by which the University consolidates in the heart of Sheffield. The London Campus at Brent Cross will extend the University’s profile and range. The Hallam Model gives us something very few other universities have: an enabling framework for curriculum design which embeds our mission in our teaching. The 2021 REF outcome saw a doubling of our research entry at the same time as improving quality and research power. The strong relationship with La Trobe University in Melbourne is a sector-leading international partnership. Our student outcomes in employability and life chances are amongst the best in the sector and we know we add value to our students’ lives and our community. We lead thinking nationally on the civic role of universities. Our Climate Action Plan is one of the few genuinely systemic net zero plans in the sector. I’m proud of the way the University has supported staff and students through the long demands of the pandemic and now into the cost-of-living crisis.  I’m delighted that the University’s innovations, including the Advanced Well-being Research Centre, SHU Law, our own law firm, the Refugee Clinic, the Early Years Research Centre in Shirecliffe, South Yorkshire Futures, and the Institute of Technology all represent different ways to take our work into the communities in which we work.

The awards we have won speak for themselves: shortlisted this year for the Times Higher Education (THE) University of the Year, in the last three years we have been university of the year in the UK Social Mobility Awards and the Educate North awards, the Good University Guide’s university of the year for teaching quality, as well as receiving THE’s awards for entrepreneurial university of the year and for the outstanding contribution to the local community. I am fortunate to have been associated with all of this work, but this success comes from the commitment, engagement, and hard work of all of you, right across the University. It has been an enormous privilege to work with such talented colleagues to make all this happen. I’ve been fortunate too in the Board of Governors, who bring diverse perspectives to the University but who have never been anything other than supportive .

But everyone needs to recognise when the time is right to change. I love my job, which is, of course, all-consuming. One of the things which you accept in a job like this is that you are never quite off duty. I am always an ambassador for the University, a role I enjoy a lot – whether that’s in civic occasions or with government ministers or in informal encounters, including for example, striking up conversation with the Hallam student who was working part-time on a supermarket checkout or discovering that the driver who knocked me off my bike was the grandparent of a Hallam student! I recognise that leadership involves taking responsibility for decisions which – understandably – don’t satisfy everyone. Nonetheless, I was lucky to find a job, and an institution, in which I have felt welcomed from the moment I arrived.  There is always more to do, but one of the tests for any leader is to recognise when it is time for others to lead.

I know I will miss so many things about this job, and most of all my day-to-day contact with my colleagues and with students who energise and enthuse me. It will take a while to appoint my successor, and there is a lot still to do as the University responds to the challenges of a rapidly changing world; I will remain committed to the leadership of the University. But it’s also time to begin to pass the task to a new leader.