BRUNEL UNIVERSITY

'Brunel University' is a university situated in West London, England.

Contents

History

Halls of residence

League tables

Runnymede campus

Formula Student

Notable alumni

Politics

Sports

Media

Other

Trivia

References

External links

History

Brunel is one of a number of UK universities created in the 1960s following the Robbins Report on higher education (often called the plate glass universities).
Originally Acton Technical College, based in Acton on the outskirts of London, it was decided in 1957 that the college should split into two sections – Acton Technical College continued to cater to technicians and craftsmen, whereas Brunel College of Technology (named after Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the British engineer) was dedicated to the education of technologists.
In 1961 it was awarded the status of College of Advanced Technology, and it was decided that Brunel College should expand at another site in order to accommodate the extra buildings that would be needed.
Uxbridge, Hillingdon was chosen to house the new buildings, and work hadn’t even started before the Ministry of Education had officially changed the College’s status. From April 1 1962 it was officially named Brunel College of Advanced Technology – it was only the 10th Advanced Technology College in the country, and the last to be awarded this title.
The first buildings were due to be finished in 1967. However, in 1963 it was decided that the College should become a technological university, and after the many hurdles and pitfalls had been overcome the Royal Charter was awarded on the June 9 1966 giving university status. Uxbridge was now a campus of Brunel University.

The University continued to use both campuses until 1971, when it was eventually able to evacuate the Acton site, and for the next nine years used only the Uxbridge campus.
In 1980 the University merged with Shoreditch College of Education, located at Cooper's Hill, Runnymede since 1951. This became Brunel's second campus, and was owned by the University, in later years just as halls of residence until sold to Oracle in 2007.
It wasn’t until 1995 that the University expanded again, integrating the West London Institute of Higher Education, giving campuses in Osterley and Twickenham. This increased the number of courses that Brunel University was able to offer – traditionally its strengths had been engineering, science, technology and social sciences. With the addition of the West London Institute, departments such as arts, humanities, geography & earth science, health and sports science were available to the students, which now numbered over 12,000.
Then Brunel put together a £250 million Masterplan,^[3] to sell off all but the Uxbridge campus and to concentrate its activities there, using the revenue to renovate and update the buildings and facilities. Works carried out include the library extension, a state-of-the-art sports complex, renovated students' union facilities, a new Heath Sciences teaching centre, and many more halls of residence. Still to be completed is a new teaching block and exhibition space for the School of Engineering and Design and Business School, a halls of residence 'village' to replace the Isambard flats, and the chancellory building.
In recent years Brunel University has been the subject of controversy as its approach to higher education has been both market-driven and politically conservative. The decision to award an honorary degree to Margaret Thatcher in 1996, following the University of Oxford's refusal to do so, provoked an outcry by staff and students, and as a result the ceremony was held in the House of Lords, instead of on campus. In the late 1990s, amid the excitement of the merger with the West London Institute, the Departments of Physics and Chemistry were closed. In 2004, the then Vice-Chancellor Steven Schwartz, initiated the reorganisation of the university's faculties and departments into schools, and also announced the closure of the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences^[4]. The present Vice-Chancellor, the sociologist Christopher Jenks,^[5] who took office in 2006, may be developing a less market-and rankings-driven philosophy.

Halls of residence

Many of the halls of residence around the Uxbridge campus are named after bridges that Isambard Kingdom Brunel either built or helped to design. Other halls are named either directly after him, or after other notable scientists.

★ Clifton Halls (named for the Clifton Suspension Bridge)

★ Chepstow Halls (named for the bridge across the River Wye at Chepstow)

★ Saltash Halls (named for the Royal Albert Bridge that cross the River Tamar at Saltash

★ Galbraith Hall (named for W R Galbraith, who designed the Kew Railway Bridge)

★ Fleming Halls (named for Sir Alexander Fleming)

★ Faraday Halls (named for Sir Michael Faraday)

★ Bishop Hall

★ Isambard Close Flats

★ Mill Hall (named for John Stuart Mill)

★ Kilmorey Hall

★ Lacy Hall

★ St. Margaret's Hall

★ Stockwell Hall

★ Southwark Hall

★ Lancaster Hall

★ Gordon Hall

★ Maria Grey Hall

★ Borough Road Hall

★ Ex-RAF Halls

League tables

Brunel's league table rankings have taken a hit in recent years. In the past Brunel has performed well in both The Guardian and The Times tables at least in part due to the university's good performance in the Teaching Quality Assessment (TQA). However, the compilers of both league tables have moved away from using the TQA and now use National Student Survey (NSS) results to calculate the rankings. Brunel has performed poorly in the NSS, which measures student satisfaction, and this has had a knock-on effect on its placing in the league tables. The poor student satisfaction ratings in the NSS can be attributed to a combination of factors including: the recent closure of some academic Departments, a shift in emphasis from teaching quality to research, and to the campus's four-year long status as a building site.
'The Guardian Good University Guide 2007/8'
ranks Brunel 50th overall out of 122 institutions in the UK - a drop of 18 places from the 2006/7 rankings.
'The Times Higher 2006/7'
also places Brunel 50th overall in The Times league table.
According to the 'Sunday Times' league table, Brunel graduates are ranked 13th nationally in terms of highest average graduate starting salaries.^[6]
Brunel University has received good TQA scores, with every subject scored receiving a score of 20/24 or better.^[7]
In the most recent RAE (2001) the university achieved scores typically clustered at 3a-4 (on a scale of 1-5
★ ) for Arts and Social science subjects; and 5 for physical and applied sciences.^[8]

Runnymede campus

At Runnymede, the halls of residence built in the Shoreditch College era were named after staff (Scrivens, Marshall, Bradley, Reed, Rowan). Existing buildings were named in the Royal Indian Engineering College era, such as President Hall (where the College president resided) and College Hall. These fine Victorian buildings were built by Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt, who had been Isambard Kingdom Brunel's architect for Paddington Station in London, and also for the famous Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge (now the Judge Institute). Corridors in President and College Halls were named after prominent British and Anglo-Indian figures, such as George Canning, Warren Hastings, Richard Wellesley and Charles Cornwallis.
Because of Runnymede's Brunel Design graduates' eminence in many new media and web industries in east London (particularly Shoreditch and Hoxton), the term "Shoreditch College" has sometimes become applied as a back-formation nickname for Brunel's Design school, perhaps independently of historical knowledge about the origins of the design school, but probably reinforced by the pre-existence of the name.
The Design unit relocated to the Uxbridge campus in 2005 as part of the Brunel Masterplan and Runnymede is no longer used for teaching purposes, although it remains under the ownership of Brunel for the timebeing.
On 18 May 2007 it was announced that the University has agreed to sell its campus at Runnymede to Oracle Homes Runnymede Limited for £46.5 million, and that from October 2007 all activities will be consolidated on the Uxbridge campus.^[9]

Formula Student

Brunel was one of the first UK universities to enter the Formula Student^[10] engineering competition. It is an annual event in which universities from around the world compete in static and dynamic events using formula style racing cars designed and manufactured by students.
The Brunel Racing^[11] team is composed of undergraduate and postgraduate students, each being allocated an area of the car to develop. The students on MEng Mechanical Engineering courses act as team leaders and manage BEng students throughout the year to ensure a successful completion of a new car each year.
Brunel Racing were UK Class 1 Formula Student Champions in 2002, and were the leading UK team at Formula ATA 2005, the Italian Formula Student event. In 2006 Formula Student Event, Brunel Racing were also the highest finishing UK competitor using E85 (fuel comprising of 85% ethanol and 15% petrol.)
The university also runs a second racing team, comprising exclusively of post-graduate students from the MSc Automotive and Motorsports Engineering course, called Brunel Masters Motorsports.^[12] The 20 students on this course are from 10 different countries, with various cultural backgrounds and a with a wide range of industry experience.
The BMM team were the UK Class 2 Formula Student Champions in their first year, 2005.
Brunel's Formula Student teams have won prizes at the annual competition every year since they first entered in 1999.

Notable alumni

Politics

★ David Crutcher (''Mechanical Engineering 1962''), Canadian politician

★ Guillaume, Hereditary Grand Duke of Luxembourg

★ John Leech (''History and Politics)'', politician, MP for Manchester Withington

★ John McDonnell, politician, MP for Hayes and Harlington

★ Ralph Miliband, political theorist

★ Anastasios Papaligouras (''Masters in Comparative European Law''), Greek politician

★ Pekka Sauri (''PhD 1990''), Finnish psychologist and politician, writer and cartoonist

★ John Tomlinson (''Health Services Management''), Labour politician and life peer

★ Shailesh Vara (''Law''), politician, MP for North West Cambridgeshire

Sports

★ Tony Adams (''Sports Science''), former Arsenal and England footballer

★ Allyn Condon, Athlete

★ Mike Coughlan (''Mechanical Engineering 1981''), Chief Designer for the McLaren Formula One team

★ James Cracknell (''MSc 1999''), rowing champion and Olympic gold medallist

★ Ben Gollings, rugby player

★ Roger Hammond (''Materials Science''), Cyclist

★ Audley Harrison (''Sport Sciences 1999''), boxer, Olympic gold medallist

★ Richard Hill (''Geography and Sports Science''), rugby player

★ Catherine Murphy, athlete

★ Abi Oyepitan (''Politics and Sociology''), athlete

★ Kelly Sotherton, athlete

★ Iwan Thomas, (''Geography and Sports Science''), athlete

Media

★ Nick Abbot (''Psychology''), radio presenter

★ Hajaz Akram, actor

★ Mark Bagley, comic book artist

★ Carl Barat (''Drama''), musician with the band Dirty Pretty Things

★ Jo Brand (''Social Sciences and Nursing''), comedian

★ Neil Clark, journalist

★ Victor Ebuwa Big Brother contestant

★ Stephen Hawkes (''BSc Economics and Finance''), actor

★ Lee Mack, comedian

★ Oreke Mosheshe (''Management and Law''), actor, TV presenter and model

★ Archie Panjabi (''Management Studies 1996''), actor

★ Bindya Solanki (''Drama''), actor

★ John Watts, musician with the band Fischer-Z

Other

★ Philip Koomen, furniture maker

★ Ranulph Glanville, researcher and theoretician in both architecture and cybernetics

★ Martin Mobberley (''Electronic Engineering 1980''), astronomer

★ Cleopatra Mukula (''Master in Documentary Film''), charity founder

★ C. Kyle Ranson (''Design Engineering and Computer Science 1985''), President of InFocus

Trivia

★ The Uxbridge campus has been used as a filming location for several feature films and television programmes:
:
★ Some scenes from A Clockwork Orange: featuring the 1960s Brutalist architecture. Lecture Theatre 'E' was used for the 'aversion therapy' scene, unfortunately the interior has been renovated since. The atrium of the John Crank building was also used as the handover point from the prison officers to the doctors in the medical institute. Additionally a bedroom in Chepstow Hall was used as the hospital room for Alex's recovery at the end of the film, as of 2006 the rooms were still identical to the film.
:
★ number of episodes of 1970s police drama series The Sweeney.
:
★ an episode of The Comic Strip Presents first series entitled Summer School, where the area in front of the Lecture Theatre is turned into an Iron Age settlement.
:
★ An episode of Inspector Morse used the Chemistry building and the Lecture Theatre as a hospital.
:
★ Scenes for the Channel 5 soap opera Family Affairs were shot inside and outside the Students Union building.
:
★ Scenes for the "Sleeper" episode of The New Avengers were filmed on campus in 1976 and broadcast in January 1977.

★ Several films used the Runnymede campus as an outside location, particularly in the 1940s-1960s:
:
★ The Boulting Brothers' ''A French Mistress'', 1960, made extensive use of the campus as a boys' boarding school.
:
★ A number of scenes of ''The Belles of St Trinian's'' were filmed at Runnymede, including the Mews seen (from Cooper's Hill Lane) as a dairy. The hockey match takes place on the field between Chestnut Walk and the workshop buildings.

★ Sir George Chesney, founder and first president of the Royal Indian Engineering College is believed to have written his influential proto-science fiction short story 'The Battle of Dorking' (1871) whilst in residence at the College.
As the buildings at Cooper's Hill were owned by the London County Council (despite being in Surrey) in the mid-20th century, they have hosted a number of non-education related undertakings over the years, including the storage of the Statue of Eros from Piccadilly Circus during the Second World War along with the Post Office's motor vehicle licensing department. Because Cooper's Hill is the first significant piece of high ground along the Thames west from London, radio transmitter relays for the London Ambulance Service and London Transport buses are housed in the loft space above College Hall.

References

1. Financial Statements 2005-2006
2. Table 0a - All students by institution, mode of study, level of study, gender and domicile 2005/06
3. http://www.brunel.ac.uk/about/facts/masterplan
4. http://www.brunel.ac.uk/about/acad/ges
5. http://www.brunel.ac.uk/research/profiles/sssl/jenks
6. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8405-1246744,00.html
7. http://www.brunel.ac.uk/about/facts/teaching/
8. http://www.hero.ac.uk/rae/rae_dynamic.cfm?myURL=http://195.194.167.103/Results/openInst.asp
9. http://www.brunel.ac.uk/news/cdata/9047/runnymede
10. http://www.imeche.org.uk/formulastudent/
11. http://www.brunelracing.co.uk/
12. http://www.bm2racing.com/

External links

★ Brunel University website