In my March newsletter: the new Women in Sport hub, BUCS Big Wednesday, Loughborough’s Real Living Wage supplement, Sustainability Week, and recognising our students’ entrepreneurial and academic achievements.

New hub to drive research and innovation in women’s sport

Women’s sport is growing and professionalising at a rapid pace, but research and education to date has not progressed sufficiently to understand the unique challenges that women face in the sector. As the world’s top-ranked university for sports related subjects – we retained our number one placing in the recent QS rankings for the ninth consecutive year – Loughborough is at the forefront of driving this agenda. But we want to do even more, which is why we have invested more than £2 million in our new Women in Sport Research and Innovation Hub.

The Hub was launched this month by Stephanie Peacock, Minister for Sport, Tourism and Civil Society within the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to an audience that included Karen Carney, the University’s ambassador for Sport, Health and Wellbeing, and Denise Lewis, UK Athletics President. It will bring together academics from four of our Schools/Institutes (Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, the Sports Technology Institute, Design and Creative Arts, and the Institute of Sport Business in London) with industry partners, national governing bodies and athletes to drive positive change at every level of the women’s sporting ecosystem.

We have a strong foundation from which to build. For instance, research by the Peter Harrison Centre for Disability Sport has led to a rule change in World Wheelchair Rugby, increasing female participation in the sport; and research by the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences informed UK Sport’s pregnancy guidance to help support performance athletes who want to have a child.

The Women in Sport hub, which is a priority within both our Sporting Excellence and Opportunity core plan and our Sport, Health and Wellbeing strategic theme, will help more women from all backgrounds to be active, provide valuable insight into the issues that women in sport face, and support the government’s goal of removing barriers to sport.

Our new Director of Sport, Louise Gear, whose appointment we announced last week, will also bring a wealth of experience to this agenda.  

Louise, a former netball player, is currently Head of Development at The Football Association (The FA). During her time at The FA she played a key role in helping to double participation in women’s and girls’ grassroots football, was instrumental in working with key commercial partners, including from Sport England and UEFA to grow the women’s game, and launched an award-winning disability football programme.

I’m sure you will join me in welcoming Louise to Loughborough later this year.

Loughborough Real Living Wage supplement addresses pay compression

The work of Loughborough’s Centre for Research in Social Policy on the Minimum Income Standard, which identifies the amount of money different types of households require to achieve a socially acceptable standard of living, has been instrumental in encouraging employers, including the University, to adopt the Real Living Wage (RLW). From November 2024 the RLW hourly minimum increased to £12.60 per hour; as an accredited Real Living Wage employer, we have committed to implementing this uplift.

This is a positive move, but it has also presented us with some challenges, primarily pay compression within the University salary scale structures, particularly in the lower grades. This is a nationally recognised issue and not unique to us, but in order to address it, we have decided to implement a Loughborough Real Living Wage supplement to spine points F06 to F18 for 2025/26, creating a 1.1% pay differential to the take home pay for staff on grades 1 to 4, with effect from April 2025. Further details of this and how it will be implemented will be shared in the staff newsletter on Friday.

This decision, in liaison with our trade union partners, to address lower pay compression at this financially challenged time, demonstrates our strong commitment to all our staff and aims to show a genuine appreciation for their contributions.

Events mark Sustainability Week

Earlier this month we held Sustainability Week, which allows us to find out more about the actions we can all take to create a more sustainable future for everyone.

During the week we announced a partnership with JogOn, a social enterprise that aims to reduce the number of trainers and sports shoes that end up in landfill. You can now drop off your old shoes at the collection bin in the Herbert Manzoni building on the East Midlands campus and JogOn then sort them; shoes in good condition are reused, those at the end-of-life are disposed of through a government programme. This aligns with the work being undertaken by the Centre for Sustainable Manufacturing and Recycling Technologies (SMART) at Loughborough, which has been exploring and developing recycling processes to improve the quality of recycled footwear materials.  

Our students were also invited to take part in a hackathon to help influence the future of food sustainability at the University; and on 11 March, honorary graduate Sir Jonathon Porritt CBE, the eminent writer and campaigner for sustainable development, gave a lecture in which he discussed the criminalisation of environmental protest, looking at instances such as the Just Stop Oil arrests and imprisonments.

This month the University’s Infrastructure Committee, which advises Senate and Council on the best use of the estate, formally approved the Sustainability Strategy that will guide the delivery of all our activity under the Climate Change and Net Zero theme – our research and innovation, teaching and student experience, our partnerships and international engagement, as well as our everyday working practices and the way we develop and manage our facilities and estates. The strategy’s delivery will be overseen by the Sustainability Sub-Committee, which has been established to reflect the importance of this area.

We’ll be formally launching our Sustainability Strategy later this year, and I hope you will all engage with its delivery.

BUCS Big Wednesday brings more Loughborough success

Campus was alive with activity last week as the University hosted BUCS (British Universities and Colleges Sport) Big Wednesday, showcasing the very best of elite student sport. More than 2,000 athletes, coaches and support staff were at Loughborough to contest 57 Championship, Trophy and Vase finals across 16 different sports, with around 2,500 spectators cheering on their respective university teams. More than 100 student volunteers from Loughborough’s Coach and Volunteer Academy (CVA) helped to deliver the event.

It was a hugely successful day for our athletes, with Loughborough securing 14 of the 20 possible pieces of silverware, with victories in sports ranging from basketball to volleyball – a perfect illustration of our strategic aim of Sporting Excellence and Opportunity.

As well as the BUCS Big Wednesday action, the University was also the finish line for day three of Jamie Laing’s Comic Relief challenge, which saw him run 30.5 miles from Market Harborough to the University. Over the course of the week Jamie, who co-founded the Candy Kittens sweet company with Loughborough alumnus Ed Williams, ran five ultra marathons in five days, raising more than £2 million.

Congratulations to all those involved in these events and thank you to everyone who worked so hard to deliver them.

Recognising our students’ entrepreneurship

Those of you who watch the BBC programme Dragons’ Den may have spotted Loughborough alumnus Zak Marks’ appearance a few weeks ago. Zak and his business partner successfully pitched to the dragons, securing £75,000, the full investment they had requested, for their company Kitt Medical.

Kitt Medical provides schools and businesses with adrenaline pens, which are stored in a secure wall-mounted kit along with instructions for administering the medicine during a life-threatening allergic reaction. Zak began developing the concept during the final year of his degree at Loughborough. Kitt Medical launched in 2023, assisted by a £2,500 grant from Loughborough’s Start-Up Fund, one of three funding schemes run through the Loughborough Enterprise Network to help students and graduates on their enterprise journeys.  

Providing our students with opportunities to be imaginative and creative and ensuring they are supporting in running their own businesses is part of our Education and Student Experience core plan. I’m always astounded by the entrepreneurship of our students and graduates, who are regularly recognised for their products and companies.  

Last month, three of our graduates – Sri Ellen Hollema, Katie Michaels and Katerina Mouliadou – were named winners of Innovate UK’s Women in Innovation Awards for 2025, each receiving a grant of £75,000 and business support to accelerate the growth of their businesses.

Sri founded Mat Zero, a heated sleeping mat powered by solar energy that provides a safe and sustainable source of warmth for refugees and disaster relief; Katie developed Moti Me, a physiotherapy-focused product to help children with learning and movement disabilities such as cerebral palsy; and Katerina founded LIGNOO, the first brand to create sustainable water bottles using biobased materials and UK supply chains.

Each will now be honoured with a purple plaque, a scheme developed by Innovate UK to inspire more girls into STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). The plaques will be displayed in the graduates’ schools and on the University campus.

Celebrating our high achieving students

We recently held the Academic Excellence Awards celebration to recognise and reward some of our top performing students. Thirty-three students were presented with awards this year, each receiving £500 in recognition of their achievements.  

Our students work very hard and this event is always a wonderful opportunity for us to mark significant milestones in their journey through the University. I have no doubt that many of them will go on to achieve incredible things in whatever they choose to do in their lives.

As well as congratulating the award recipients, I would like to say thank you to the members of staff in the Schools who support the students with their academic progression. I know it is a real team effort that includes the academics who teach them, the technicians who help to bring the students’ ideas to life, and the many support staff who help our students to navigate university life. You should all be proud of the part that you play in helping our students on their journey through Loughborough and beyond.