Following an initial founding meeting held in Melbourne in February this year a Friends of PASCAL Association was formed on 4 July 2015, and is registered in Melbourne, Victoria, in Australia. This will be a valuable supplement to the work of the International Observatory. It sits very well with changes in governance arrangements under way with the Board, especially its new and wider concept of membership.

As PASCAL Website users and many members of PASCAL anyway well know, David was an outstanding person and a leading global-local advocate of university engagement and of useful and relevant education for the community and for society generally.

For any colleagues not familiar with it, University World News is an excellent Website to access for its weekly update on universities worldwide.

Congratulations are in order to the Talloires Network for the excellent coverage achieved by partnership collaboration and taking over the whole of the current (21 December 2014) number of University World News with its World Conference convened in South Africa – brilliant to win the whole Number on Engagement.

In a government reshuffle in Britain in July 2014, newly appointed universities Minister and Cabinet Member Greg Clark assumed a role expanded from that of his predecessor David Willetts. Cities were added to his portfolio. The Times Higher Education leader for 24 July, Closing the “town-gown” gap, mentions a concern that this further signals ‘the reduction of universities into economic tools or “engines of growth”’.