Welcome to March’s Alumni Newsletter
I hope you, your family and friends are well.
With the pandemic still impacting our lives, I would like to take this opportunity to recognise those members of the City community who have lost their lives to Covid-19. It is with sadness, that I share with you the news of the recent passing of Dr Stan Mutsatsa, Senior Lecturer in the School of Health Sciences. Our thoughts are with his family, friends and colleagues. Anyone who would like to pay tribute to Dr Mutsatsa is welcome to visit his memorial page.
At City, the recently announced Government roadmap for easing lockdown measures in England and the speed of the vaccine rollout has given us cause for some optimism. We continue to follow Government guidance for universities, with only a small number of students on campus for teaching on practice-based modules, to use specialist equipment or to access study spaces. The Government will review the position in mid-April to see whether students on other courses might be able to return for particular activities.
For the second time during the pandemic, City’s graduation celebrations have taken place virtually. Around 2,000 students from our postgraduate and research courses logged on to celebrate across four days of online ceremonies at the end of January. The students donned their virtual mortarboards and filled online Zoom rooms – unmuting to cheer and congratulate each other. I’d like to extend a very warm welcome to City’s global alumni network to our new graduates. A special thank you to those alumni who contributed their video and social media messages during the online ceremonies helping us to ensure that graduation continues to be a special celebration.
The process for renaming the Business School continues. In recent months, Business School alumni, students and staff contributed to the search for the new name. 155 unique name suggestions were evaluated and each one was checked for potential trademark issues before being analysed by an Evaluation Panel, consisting of academic and professional branding experts, to ensure each name was credible, compelling and distinctive. Based on this evaluation, a longlist and subsequent shortlist of names was produced. The School’s alumni, students and staff will have the opportunity to provide feedback on the shortlisted names before Council approves the new name in April. Ahead of the official launch of the name in September and to signal our commitment to the wider changes we are implementing, we are using the name ‘The Business School (formerly Cass)’ with the additional strap line ‘Changing more than a name’.
I hope you will enjoy this edition of Alumni News. It always fills me with immense pride to learn about the successes of our alumni and I am delighted for you to read about the latest developments at your University.
Best wishes, stay safe and I wish you continued success in your private and professional lives.
Kind regards,
Paul
Professor Sir Paul Curran
President