However Gilbert had as of 2007 honoured his pledge to achieve the staff reductions without compulsory redundancies, and in October 2007 announced that the university's budget had been brought in to "a modest surplus" as a result mainly of a voluntary redundancy scheme. In 2008 Gilbert announced a "root-and-branch review" of Manchester's teaching quality that the university's 'strategy to join the world's elite universities will be worthless unless staff can be 're-invented' to interact more with students". In the aftermath of the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise Gilbert is quoted by Prof. Dame Nancy Rothwell as saying to the Senate of the university It is vital for the University to be strengthening its research profile through research selectivity (in the sense of investing in quality and divesting in [sic] mediocrity) and research concentration (in the sense of investing to develop and/or sustain world leading clusters of supreme excellence). If we do not make major progress on that research re-profiling agenda over the next year or so we will have lost a priceless opportunity. On 14 January 2010, the University of Manchester announced Alan Gilbert would be retiring from his position as president and vice chancellor of the university. Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell was then appointed acting vice chancellor. Her appointment as the new vice chancellor was announced on 21 June 2010. October 2012 saw the opening of the Alan Gilbert "Learning Commons", named in honour of the former president. This building provides a variety of state of the art individual and group study facilities, and is managed by the University of Manchester Library. Personal life and death Gilbert was married to Ingrid, whom he married in 1967. They had two daughters, Michelle and Fiona. Gilbert died on 27 July 2010 in hospital in Manchester following a serious illness for the last few months of his life. Publications 1973: The Growth and Decline of Nonconformity in England and Wales, with special reference to the period before 1850: an historical interpretation of statistics of religious practice. Thesis (D.Phil.)--University of Oxford (Nuffield College). 1976: Religion and Society in Industrial England: church, chapel and social change, 1740–1914. London: Longman 1977: Churches and Churchgoers: patterns of church growth in the British Isles since 1700. Oxford: Clarendon Press (with Robert Currie & Lee Horsley) 1980: The Making of Post-Christian Britain: a history of the secularization of modern society. London: Longman 2004: The Idea of a 21st Century