Enhancing our global reputation: how you can help

Last week’s Times and Sunday Times rankings and award success are a reminder that our actions on campus can have a major positive impact on our global reputation.

The work of colleagues in all roles across the University helped us to top the People and Planet University League Table last year, which has subsequently helped us become Sustainable University of the Year 2025 and, as a result, leap up the Times and Sunday Times overall league table.

Focusing attention on progressing our climate action mission has therefore marked Reading out as a leader in environmental sustainability, earning us rewards that will play a direct part in raising our recruitment prospects for the coming years.

While some of our current financial challenges have been driven by factors out of our control, our reputation is something we can directly influence, and actions we can all take as colleagues have a positive effect.

What you can do

All colleagues can raise awareness of Reading’s recent Sustainable University award success by using the email signatures, social media banners and other artwork in a library of digital artwork created to help us share the news.

A number of email signatures sharing other recent Reading successes are also available for colleagues, and are currently being updated with our latest ranking results.

Small actions like this help raise awareness of Reading and our strengths among our contacts and the public. We will be sharing more in the coming weeks.

What else are we doing?

Beyond work to make environmental sustainability a unique selling point for Reading, work already under way to boost our reputation includes concerted efforts to improve our rankings position based on global reputation.

While our academic ranking is relatively strong, our reputation scores lag behind.

A rankings project group established and led by Peter Miskell, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Student Experience and Education), has therefore brought together colleagues in Careers, academic schools, Marketing and Communications, Student Recruitment and others to start to change this.

Their work has led to individual actions to help improve our reputation score in the QS World University Rankings – an important table for our global recruitment prospects – through its academic reputation survey.

There will be further communication soon on how academic colleagues can support this and other work.

Vice-Chancellor Robert Van de Nort said: “In these challenging times, we can and should use our existing strengths and reputation to our advantage.

“We can capitalise on achievements by proudly sharing them with the world. We can cultivate strong relationships with partners to put Reading in a good light, and support central efforts to invite positive feedback.

“All staff can play a part in this, and we have seen in the last week how they pay off in the long run.”