The 'University of Leicester' is a major research led university based in
Leicester,
England, with approximately eighteen thousand registered students - about ten thousand of them full-time students, and six thousand of them distance-learning students. The main campus is about a mile from the city centre, adjacent to
Victoria Park and
Wyggeston and Queen Elizabeth I College.
History
The University was founded as Leicestershire and Rutland College in 1918. The site for the University was donated by a local textile manufacturer, Thomas Fielding Johnson, in order to create a living memorial for those who lost their lives in
World War I. This is reflected in the University's motto ''Ut Vitam Habeant'' — 'so that they may have life'. The central building, now known as the Fielding Johnson building and housing the University's administration offices and Faculty of Law, dates from 1837 and was formerly the Leicestershire and Rutland Lunatic Asylum.
Students were first admitted to the college in 1921. In 1927, after it became University College, Leicester, students sat the examinations for external degrees of the
University of London. In 1957 the college was granted its
Royal Charter, and has since then had the status of a University with the right to award its own degrees. The University won the first ever series of
University Challenge, in 1963.
Organisation
The University is organised into five faculties.
★ Faculty of
Medicine and
Biological Sciences
★ Faculty of
Arts
★ Faculty of
Law
★ Faculty of
Science
★ Faculty of
Social Sciences (expanded in 2004 to include the Faculty of
Education)
Academic achievements
Science
The University of Leicester is one of the United Kingdom's major research universities. The University is world renowned for its scientific research groups, particularly in the areas of
astrophysics,
biochemistry and
genetics. The techniques used in
Genetic fingerprinting were invented and developed at Leicester in 1985 by Sir
Alec Jeffreys. It also houses Europe's biggest academic centre for space research, in which space probes have been built, most notably the
Mars Lander
Beagle 2, which was built in collaboration with the
Open University. A Leicester built instrument has been operating in space every year since 1967. Leicester Physicists (led by Professor Ken Pounds) were critical in proving a fundamental law of
Einstein's General
Theory of Relativity - that
black holes exist and are common in the
universe. It is a founding partner of the £52 million
National Space Centre. In total Leicester has the highest research income of any non
Russell Group institution in the UK. The University of Leicester is one of a small number of Universities to have won the prestigious
Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher Education on more than one occasion: in 1994 for physics & astronomy and again in 2002 for genetics.
The Guardian's 2008 University Guide, published in 2007, ranked Leicester 2nd in the UK for Physics and 8th for Mathematics.
Arts, humanities and social sciences
Aside from its scientific achievement, the university also has a rich history in the arts. Many of the country's most prominent sociologists have been students or teachers at Leicester. Literary connections include
Kingsley Amis, who is believed to have partially based his Campus novel
Lucky Jim on Leicester University. Amis is alleged to have been inspired to write the book when visiting his friend
Phillip Larkin who was working at the university as a librarian at the time. Malcolm Bradbury also used Leicester as a basis for his
satire on university life
The History Man. More recently, popular novelist
Adele Parks graduated from the university in the 1990's, and the university library now holds the writings of both
Joe Orton and
Sue Townsend.
The Centre for Mass Communication Research, now part of the Department of Media and Communications, is one of the longest established academic centres at Leicester, engaging in pioneering research in the 1970s and 80s and now specializing in Masters courses, as does the Department of Museum Studies, in terms of both campus-based and distance-learning MAs.
The School of Historical Studies at Leicester is, with 35 full time members of staff, including 11 Professors at current, one of the largest of any university in the country. It is has made considerable scholarly achievements in many areas of history, notably Urban History, English Local History, American Studies and Holocaust Studies.
The Department of English is one of the UK’s leading providers of English at degree level.
The Guardian's 2008 University Guide, published in 2007, ranked Leicester 7th in the UK for English and 2nd for American Studies. The department comprises 25 members of staff, including 8 Professors, and committed to offering the whole spectrum of English Studies from Contemporary Writing to Old English and language studies. The Centre for Victorian Studies is amongst the most distinguished academic centres in the country, and Malcolm Bradbury one of the Department's most famous alumni: he graduated with a First in English in 1953.
Law
Within the university structure, the Faculty of Law is the smallest Faculty, however, it has one of the biggest departments as the Department of Law. The Law School has strong formal relationships with top law schools in many other countries such as South Africa, Singapore and Australia. It also has a number of leading academics who provide consultation to a number of legal and governmental bodies such as Professor Erika Szyszczak, Professor Chris Clarkson and Professor Malcolm Shaw QC.
In July 2007, two undergraduate law students, namely Steven Meltzer and Michael Weinstein won the International Negotiation Competition in Singapore, which is only the second occasion that a team from England and Wales has won the competition. As a result of this win, the law school will be the hosts for the 2008 National Negotiation Competition, which is sponsored by the College of Lw and CEDR.
The Faculty maintains links with many top law firms, including the
Magic Circle firm
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, who offer a one year scholarship to a Leicester student studying for the dual Law and French degree. The Law School is very proud of its flourishing Student Law Society which plays a central role in the life of the student body. Many law graduates at the university go on to follow careers in the City as commercial solicitors or barristers and so law at the university remains a popular choice and is always over-subscribed.
Teaching
The University is also held in high regard for the quality of its teaching. 19 subject areas have been graded as "Excellent" by the Quality Assurance Agency — including 14 successive scores of 22 points or above stretching back to 1998, six of which were maximum scores. Leicester was ranked joint first amongst full-time mainstream English universities in the 2005 and 2006
National Student Survey for teaching quality and overall satisfaction. Leicester is home to two prestigious national Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (in Genetics and Geographical Information Science) and plays an important role in a third (Physics). Over two thirds of subjects feature in the national top 10.
Leicester Medical School
The university is home to a large medical school, Leicester Medical School, which opened in 1971. Leicester Medical School was formally in partnership with the
University of Warwick, and the Leicester-Warwick medical school proved to be a success in helping Leicester expand, and Warwick establish. The partnership ran the end of its course towards the end of 2006 and the medical schools became autonomous institutions within their respective universities.
Centre for Labour Market Studies
The Centre for Labour Market Studies (CLMS) is actively involved in research with emphasis on the interdisciplinary approach based on subjects of
Sociology,
Psychology,
Public Administration,
Management Studies,
Economics and
Adult Education. CLMS has a strong international reputation for the quality of its research.
CLMS offers programs like Doctorate in Social Sciences,
PhD,
MSc,
Diploma and
Certificate programs in areas related to
Human Resource Management,
Organizational studies and Training & development.
League tables
Leicester is ranked 21st in the UK by
The Guardian University Guide 2007 and 18th in
The Times Good University Guide for 2007.
[2] The Guardian's league tables are compiled mainly on the basis of teaching data (staff/student ratio, job prospects, inclusiveness), and the Times's also include data on research ratings and the percentage of students who complete a degree. It is also ranked in the top 200 in Shanghai Jiao Tong University's world rankings.
Notable architecture
The Engineering Building, designed by James Stirling
The skyline of Leicester University is punctuated by three distinctive, towering, buildings from the 1960s: the Department of Engineering, the Attenborough tower and the Charles Wilson building.
The University's Engineering Building was the first major building by important British architect
James Stirling. It comprises workshops and laboratories at ground level, and a tower containing offices and lecture theatres. It was completed in 1963 and is notable for the way in which its external form reflects its internal functions. The very compact campus contains a wide range of twentieth century architecture, though the oldest building, the Fielding Johnson building, dates from 1837. The
Attenborough Tower houses the tallest working
paternoster in the UK and is undergoing extensive renovation.
Leicester's halls of residence are also worthy of mention in their own right: many of the halls (nearly all in prosperous, leafy, Oadby) date from the early 1900’s and were the homes of Leicester’s wealthy industrialists. The magnificent Edwardian houses, set in landscaped grounds, have been extended to include modern refectories and bedroom blocks.
The future of the University
The university is currently undergoing a £300+ million redevelopment. A new biomedical research building (the Henry Wellcome Building) has already been constructed.
The University Library is currently undergoing a substantial extension, which will double its size. The first phase of the expansion was completed in early 2007. It is scheduled for completion during 2007.
Student accommodation includes 16 new pavilions varying in size in the new John Foster Hall. On
1 October 2006, the university opened its new halls of residence located on Manor Road in
Oadby. The new hall, now named "John Foster Hall" (in honour of the retiring Chair of University Council) was built on the former site of Villiers Hall. It houses over 700 students in flats housing 4-5 students, each en suite with fully fitted kitchens. The new pavilions are named after villages and towns around Leicestershire.
John Foster Hall also houses a laundrette, large facilities building with bar/JCR, dining hall, kitchen, reception, two sets of toilets, four conference rooms and disabled access.
The 30-year plan is the largest in the university's history, expanding building space by 30% and student numbers from 19,000 to 25,000.
Library special collections
Christine and Paul Hatton were able to view examples from the rare books from the Hatton Topographical Library that their grandfather had donated to the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland College in 1920. This generous gift formed the nucleus of the University Library’s exceptional
English local history collections.
★ Local history collections (for the Centre for English Local History), including:
★
★
Thomas Hatton (1876 – 1943)'s collection. Born in Manchester, he began work as a junior clerk in a
corset factory in
Market Harborough and later moved to Leicester to set up his own
boot manufacturing business. He also had interests in
crossword promotion,
greyhound racing and
boxing (and on one trip to America was photographed with
Laurel and Hardy, with all three of them wearing the trademark bowler hat), but his forté however was
book collecting. A discriminating collector who applied his professional knowledge as a boot manufacturer to his book collecting by pioneering the use of glazed goat skin as a binding material, over a period of ten years he gathered one of the finest private collections of
topographical and
local history books. When his interests moved from topographical to
Dickensian material, he agreed to donate his nearly 2,000 local history books to what was then Leicester College.
The library also holds a number of collections containing items written by several famous writers, these include:
★
Joe Orton Collection. Joe Orton (1933-1967) was a Leicester-born playwright, the collection contains his manuscripts and correspondence.
★
Laura Riding Letters. The collected correspondence of the American poet and critic Laura Riding (1901-1991).
★
Sue Townsend Collection. The personal papers of Sue Townsend (born 1946). The collection contains Townsend's literary correspondence and notebooks detailing her works.
★ Archives of the Institute for the Study of Terrorism (see
Jillian Becker).
Facts and figures
From the 2004-2005 annual report:
[3]
Students
★ 18,005 Registered students
★ 9,491 Undergraduate students
★ 8,514 Postgraduate students (7,096 taught, 1,321 research)
★ 5,962 Distance learning students
★ 9,911 Full-time students (8,350 UK and EU, 1,561 other)
:
★ 28.3% Faculty of Social Science (includes former Faculty of Education)
:
★ 25.8% Faculty of Medicine and Biological Sciences
:
★ 18.6% Faculty of Arts
:
★ 17.1% Faculty of Science
:
★ 10.3% Faculty of Law
Staff
★ 709 Full-time academic staff
★ 43 Part-time academic staff
★ 415 Full-time research staff
★ 68 Part-time research staff
★ 336 Full-time academic-related staff
★ 87 Part-time academic-related staff
★ 860 Full-time support staff
★ 920 Part-time support staff
People
Chancellors
★
The Lord Adrian (1957–1971)
★
Alan Lloyd Hodgkin (1971–1984)
★
Sir George Porter (1984–1995)
★
Sir Michael Atiyah (1995–2005)
★
Sir Peter Williams (2005– )
To date, each of the former chancellors has had a University building named after him.
Notable academics
★
Khurshid Ahmad, Islamic Scholar
★
Isobel Armstrong, Scholar of Nineteenth-Century Poetry and Women's Writing
★
Graeme Barker,
Disney Professor of Archaeology, University of Cambridge
★
Richard Bonney, Historian
★
Alan Bryman, Social Scientist
★ Chris Clarkson, prominent Criminal lawyer, specialising in Corporate Liability. Recently consulted the Government on reform proposals for corporate liability.
★
Philip Collins,
Dickensian Scholar
★
Philip Cottrell, Economic and financial Historian
★
Heather Couper, Astronomer and Television Presenter
★
Nicholas J. Cull, US Historian
★
Gabriel Dover, Geneticist
★
Eric Dunning, Sports Sociologist
★
Christopher Dyer, Medieval Historian
★
Norbert Elias, German Sociologist
★
Brian J. Ford, Scientist, Visiting Professor
★
G. S. Fraser, Scottish Poet
★
Anthony Giddens, prominent sociologist, taught
social psychology at Leicester
★
Reuben Goodstein, Mathematician, proponent of
Goodstein's theorem
★
Cosmo Graham, Public law and Competition law specialist. Member of the Competition Commission
★
Jan Grodecki OBE, Emeritus Professor and founder of the Law school, 1965-1983. Honorary Bencher of Lincoln's Inn
★
Jeffrey A. Hoffman, NASA astronaut and physicist
★
Richard Hoggart, Sociologist
★
W. G. Hoskins, (1931-1952) (1965-1968), local historian, author of ''The Making of the English Landscape''
★
Norman Housley, Crusading historian
★
Leonard Huxley, Physicist
★ Sir
Alec Jeffreys, geneticist, inventor of
genetic fingerprinting
★
Hans Kornberg, Biochemist
★
Philip Larkin, Librarian and Poet
★
John McManners, Former Head of History dept, Regius Professor of History at the
University of Oxford until retirement
★
Ken Pounds, Emeritus Professor of Physics, discovered black holes were common in the universe
★
Charles Rees, Organic Chemist
★
Lord Rees of Ludlow, The
Astronomer Royal, is a visiting professor at Leicester
★ Clive Ruggles, Professor of
Archaeoastronomy, believed to be the only such post in the world
★
J.B. Schneewind, Philosophy professor,
Johns Hopkins University
★
Malcolm Shaw QC, The Sir Robert Jennings Professor of International Law, prominent International Lawyer & Jurist. Author of best selling book on International Law
★
Brian Simon, Professor of Education 1966-1980
★
Erika Szyszczak, Professor of European Competition and Labour Law, Jean Monnet Professor of Law ad personam, Barrister at Littleton Chambers, London. She is also the Director of the Centre of European Law and Integration.
★
Sami Zubaida, Political Scientist
Notable alumni
Numerous public figures in many diverse fields have been students at the University, including:
★
Peter Atkins, physical chemist
★
David Blanchflower, Economist,
Dartmouth College Professor
★
Malcolm Bradbury, author
★
Liam Donaldson, Chief Medical Officer
★
Lord Grocott, former MP,
Captain of the Gentlemen-at-Arms
★
Pete McCarthy, writer, broadcaster, comedian
★
Michael Nicholson, journalist
★
J. H. Plumb, Historian of
Eighteenth century Britain
★
Patrick Redmond , novelist
★
C. P. Snow, author
★ Sir
John Stevens, former
Metropolitan Police Commissioner and current Adviser on international security issues to
Gordon Brown
★
John Sutherland,
Guardian Columnist, Emeritus Professor of English Literature,
University College London
★
Laurie Taylor, broadcaster, actor, sociologist
★
Jon Tickle, celebrity
★
Storm Thorgerson, Artist
Bryan R. Wilson, Reader Emeritus of Sociology at Oxford University.
★
Tony Underwood, England rugby union international
★ Professor Sir
Alan Walters, Economist
★
Bryan R. Wilson, Oxford Sociologist
★
Ted Wragg , educationalist
★
Malik Zahoor Ahmad , Pakistan diplomat
See also .
The Attenboroughs
Two names commonly associated with the University of Leicester are
Richard and
David Attenborough. Their father
Frederick Attenborough was Principal of the University College from 1932 until 1951. The brothers grew up on the campus (with their younger brother John), in a house which is currently home to the careers service (and is now near to the Attenborough tower, the tallest building on the campus and home to many of the arts and humanities departments). They were educated at the adjacent
grammar school before attending the
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the
University of Cambridge respectively. Both have maintained links with the university - David Attenborough was made an honorary Doctor of Letters in 1970 and opened the Attenborough Arboretum in
Knighton in 1997. In the same year, the
Richard Attenborough Centre for Disability and the Arts was opened by
Diana, Princess of Wales. Both brothers were made Distinguished Honorary Fellows of the University at the
13 July 2006 afternoon degree ceremony.
External links
★
University of Leicester website
References
1. Table 0a - All students by institution, mode of study, level of study, gender and domicile 2005/06
2. The Good University Guide
3. Annual Report 2004-2005
See also
★
Bishop Grosseteste College
★
De Montfort University
★
Leicester University Law Society
★
National Space Centre
★
Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust Studies
★
The Ripple
★
University of Leicester Botanic Garden
★
University of Leicester Students' Union
★
University of Northampton
العربية
中国
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिन्दी
Italiano
日本語
Português
Русский
Español
