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| Motto: | Latin: Rerum cognoscere causas |
| Motto in English: | To discover the causes of things |
| Established: | 1905 (1897 as University College of Sheffield) |
| Type: | Public |
| Endowment: | £31.5 million |
| Chancellor: | Sir Peter Middleton |
| Vice-Chancellor: | Prof. Keith Burnett |
| Staff: | 1,306 |
| Students: | 25,700 |
| Undergraduates: | 18,480 |
| Postgraduates: | 7,225 |
| Location: | Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK |
| Campus: | Urban |
| Colours: | Gold & Black |
| Affiliations: | Russell Group WUN EUA ACU N8 White Rose Yorkshire Universities |
| Website: | http://www.shef.ac.uk/ |
The University of Sheffield is a leading research university, located in Sheffield in South Yorkshire, England. Ranked within the World's top 100 Universities and constantly ranked amongst the top 20 universities in Britain, it is one of the original 'red brick' universities and a member of the Russell Group.
History
Origins
The University of Sheffield was originally formed by the merger of three colleges. The Sheffield School of Medicine was founded in 1828, followed in 1879 by the opening of Firth College by Mark Firth, a steel manufacturer, to teach arts and science subjects. Firth College then helped to fund the opening of the Sheffield Technical School in 1884 to teach applied science, the only major faculty the existing colleges did not cover. The three institutions merged in 1897 to form the University College of Sheffield. Sheffield is one of the six original red brick universities.
Victoria University
It was originally envisaged that the University College would join Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds as the fourth member of the federal Victoria University.
Royal Charter
However, the Victoria University began to split-up before this could happen and so the University College of Sheffield received its own Royal Charter in 1905 and became the University of Sheffield.
From 200 full-time students in 1905, the University grew slowly until the 1950s and 1960s when it began to expand rapidly. Many new buildings (including the famous Arts Tower) were built and student numbers increased to their present levels of over 20,000. In 1987 the University began to collaborate with its once would-be partners of the Victoria University by co-founding the Northern Consortium; a coalition for the education and recruitment of international students.
In 1995, the University took over the Sheffield and North Trent College of Nursing and Midwifery, which greatly increased the size of the medical faculty. In 2005, the South Yorkshire Strategic Health Authority announced that it would split the training between Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University - however, the University decided to pull out of providing preregistration nursing and midwifery training due to "costs and operational difficulties".
Over the years, the University has been home to a number of notable writers and scholars, including the literary critic William Empson, who was head of the Department of English; author Angela Carter; five Nobel Prize winners; and Bernard Crick.
Histories
There are two official histories of the university:
- Arthur W. Chapman (1955) The Story of a Modern University: A History of the University of Sheffield, Oxford University Press.
- Helen Mathers (2005) Steel City Scholars: The Centenary History of the University of Sheffield, London: James & James.
Organisation
Like most British universities, the University of Sheffield is headed by a Vice-Chancellor. Professor Keith Burnett, CBE, is the current Vice-Chancellor, and he took over from Prof. Bob Boucher, CBE on 1 October 2007. There is also a titular Chancellor, Sir Peter Middleton. Professor Burnett was Head of the Division of Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences at the University of Oxford and, before that, the Chairman of Physics.
The University is in the process of changing its structure, from the existing seven faculties[5] into five new faculties:
- Faculty of Arts and Humanities
- Faculty of Engineering
- Faculty of Medicine and Health
- Faculty of Pure Science
- Faculty of Social Sciences
Reputation
Sheffield was the Sunday Times University of the Year in 2001 and has consistently appeared as one of their top-20 institutions. Just three universities nationally have more than Sheffield's 30 top-rated subjects for teaching excellence and only five have a greater number than the 35 subject areas at Sheffield deemed to have conducted world-class research in the most recent ratings.
The University of Sheffield is rated 8th in the UK, 18th in Europe and 69th in the world in an annual academic ranking of the top 500 universities worldwide published in August 2005. Shanghai Jiao Tong University evaluated the universities using several research performance indicators, including the number of highly cited researchers, academic performance, articles in the periodicals Science and Nature, and the number of Nobel prize-winners. A separate ranking, published in the US by Newsweek magazine, and released in August 2006, ranked Sheffield 9th in the UK, 18th in Europe and 70th in the world in a list of the Global Top 100 Universities. The University is rated 12th in the UK, 22nd in Europe and 68th in the world in the Times Higher Education Supplement's November 2007 ranking of the top 100 universities in the world.
Branding
The brand (encompassing the visual identity) is centred on the theme of "discovery", led by the Latin motto from the coat of arms "Rerum Cognoscere Causas" – "to discover the causes of things" (the same motto is used by the London School of Economics).
The identity has been applied across print, screen and other areas such as signage, vehicle livery and merchandising. The project was key to the University's Marketing Department receiving "HEIST Marketing Team of the Year, 2005".
Location
Main campus
The University of Sheffield is not a campus university, though most of its buildings are close together. The centre of the University's presence lies one mile to the west of Sheffield city centre, where there is a mile-long collection of buildings belonging almost entirely to the University. This area includes the students' union (housed in University House), the Octagon Centre, Firth Court, the Geography and Planning building, the Alfred Denny Building (housing natural sciences and including a small museum), the Dainton and Richard Roberts Buildings (chemistry) and the Hicks Building (mathematics and physics). The Grade II*-listed library and Arts Tower are also located there. The Arts Tower houses one of Europe's few surviving examples of a Paternoster lift. A concourse under the main road (the A57) allows students to easily move between these buildings. The Information Commons is the newest building, added in 2007. The Information Commons is a new library, coffee shop and cafe, with a digital and computer infrastructure, lounge areas and flexible learning space.
St George's
To the east lies St George's Campus, named after St George's Church (now a lecture theatre and postgraduate residence). The campus is centred on Mappin Street, home to a number of University buildings, including the Faculty of Engineering (partly housed in the Grade II-listed Mappin Building) and the University of Sheffield School of Management and Department of Computer Science. The University also maintains the Turner Museum of Glass in this area. The University has recently acquired the listed old Victorian Jessop Hospital for Women buildings and HSE Building. Both buildings are currently being refurbished to house the Departments of Modern Languages, History and English, thus fully joining the West and St. George's campuses. The Law School moved from the Crookesmoor Building to Bartolomé House in early 2008.
West of the main campus
Further west lies Weston Park, the Weston Park Museum, the Harold Cantor Gallery, sports facilities in the Crookesmoor area and medicine, in the Royal Hallamshire Hospital (although taught in the city's extensive teaching hospitals under the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and throughout South Yorkshire and North East Lincolnshire).
Student accommodation
Further west still lie the University halls of residence. These comprise Tapton Hall of Residence, and the Endcliffe Student Village (comprising of several new blocks of apartments, the established Halifax and Stephenson Hall of Residence, newly created Burbage, Stanage, Howden, Froggatt, Yarncliffe and Derwent, as well as University owned private houses). The music department, in Broomhill, is also based in this area. A new series of student residences comprising 1200 beds is due to open on the site of the former Ranmoor Halls of Residence in time for the 2009/10 intake.
Manvers campus
The Manvers campus, at Wath-on-Dearne between Rotherham and Barnsley, is where the majority of nursing is taught.
Research and teaching quality
The University of Sheffield has been described by The Times as one of the powerhouses of British higher education. The University is a member of the Russell Group, the European University Association, the Worldwide Universities Network and the White Rose University Consortium. It is a major contributor to research, being the sixth most highly rated research university in the UK (As of 2001).[citation needed]
In the latest round of Teaching Quality Assessments (TQA 1993-2001) Sheffield ranked third in the UK for the highest number of "Excellent" rated subject areas. Nearly 75% of all teaching subjects achieved a 24/24 (Excellent) score.
The University of Sheffield is rated 8th in the UK, 18th in Europe and 69th in the world in an annual academic ranking of the top 500 universities worldwide published in August 2005.[citation needed] Researchers at China's Shanghai Jiao Tong University evaluated the universities using several research performance indicators, including the number of highly cited researchers, academic performance, articles in the periodicals Science and Nature, and the number of Nobel prizewinners. A separate ranking, published in the US by Newsweek magazine, and released in August 2006, ranked Sheffield 9th in the UK, 18th in Europe and 70th in the world in a list of the Global Top 100 Universities.
The University has won Queen's Anniversary Prizes in 1998, 2000, 2002 and 2007. It was also named the Sunday Times University of the Year in 2001.
In the 2007 National Student Survey, five of the University of Sheffield's departments reached the top of the table for overall student satisfaction among the UK universities. "Dentistry, Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Philosophy, East Asian Studies and courses in Modern Languages and Modern Languages with Interpreting returned the highest satisfaction scores in the UK".
Major research partners and clients include Boeing, Rolls Royce, Unilever, Boots, AstraZeneca, GSK, ICI, and Slazenger, as well as UK and overseas government agencies and charitable foundations.
For many years the University has been engaged in theological publishing through Sheffield Academic Press and JSOT Press.
The University of Sheffield is also a partner organisation in Higher Futures, a collaborative association of institutions set up under the government's Lifelong Learning Networks initiative, to co-ordinate vocational and work-based education.
Students and academics
The University of Sheffield's 25,000 students arrive mostly from the UK, but include more than 3,700 international students from 120 different countries. The University employs nearly 6,000 people, including almost 1,400 academic staff.
Students' Union, sports and traditions
The University of Sheffield Union of Students was founded in 1906. It has two bars (Bar One – which has a book-able function room with its own bar, The Raynor Lounge – and The Interval); three club venues (Fusion, Foundry and Octagon); one off-campus public house (The Fox and Duck in Broomhill and coffee shops, restaurants, shops, a supermarket, the cinema Film Unit, a fully functioning and student run theatre company (suTCo), a student radio station called Forge Radio, its own newspaper, The Forge Press, and about two hundred student societies and many sports teams.
The Union is also home to a variety of advice and support services and manages the successful USports sports facilities.
In addition to the student union-supported sports teams, Sheffield University Bankers Hockey Club play field hockey in the national first division. The annual "Varsity Challenge" takes place between teams from the University and its rival Sheffield Hallam University in over 30 events.
As part of rag week, University of Sheffield students used to take part in the Pyjama Jump pub crawl, cross-dressed only in nightwear in mid-winter: the men often dressed in nighties or in drag featuring mini-skirts and fishnet tights, and the women in pyjamas. This event was banned in 1997 following the hospitalisation of several students. The role-playing society run a 24-hour role-playing event on RAG weekend. Another rag week tradition is the Spiderwalk, a fifty mile trek through the city and the Peak District, the first half through the night. Sheffield's students are also very active when it comes to volunteering for good causes. The Union's "SheffieldVolunteering" scheme is one of the countries most active and well-recognised student volunteering schemes that has won various national acclaim over the years.
Varsity sports
The University has 26 varsity sports (sports contested in varsity). The University sports colours are black and gold.
| Male
| Female
| Mixed
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Nobel Prizes
The University's Faculty of Pure Science may boast an association with five Nobel Prizes, two for the Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology:
- 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (joint award) Prof. Howard Florey, for his work on penicillin.
- 1953 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Prof. Hans Adolf Krebs, "for the discovery of the citric acid cycle in cellular respiration"
And three to its Department of Chemistry:
- 1967 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (joint award), Prof. George Porter (later Lord Porter), "for their work on extremely fast chemical reactions" (see Flash photolysis)
- 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (joint award), Richard J. Roberts, "for the discovery that genes in eukaryotes are not contiguous strings but contain introns, and that the splicing of messenger RNA to delete those introns can occur in different ways, yielding different proteins from the same DNA sequence"
- 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (joint award), Sir Harry Kroto, "for their discovery of fullerenes").
Notable alumni
Academia
- Prof. John Brooks, Vice-Chancellor, Manchester Metropolitan University (PhD Microbiology 1978)
- Prof. Paul Curran, Vice-Chancellor, Bournemouth University (BSc Geography 1976)
- Prof. Tolu Olukayode Odugbemi, Vice-Chancellor, University of Lagos (PhD 1978)
- Prof. Sir David Melville, Vice-Chancellor, University of Kent (BSc Physics 1965, PhD 1970)
- Prof. Stuart Palmer FREng, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, University of Warwick
- Prof. Michael Sterling, Vice-Chancellor, University of Birmingham (BEng Electronic and Electrical Engineering 1967, PhD 1971)
- George Martin Stephen, High Master, St Paul's School (PhD)
Business
- Gareth Davis, CEO, Imperial Tobacco
- John Devaney, Chairman, Marconi PLC
- Penny Hughes, former president of Coca-Cola Enterprises (UK) (BSc(Hons) Chemistry
- Edward H Ntalami, Chief Executive, Capital Markets Authority, Kenya
- Sir Peter Middleton, Camelot Barclays Chairman
- Richard Simmons, CEO Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE)
- Steve Sunnucks, President of Gap
- Nigel Turner, CEO BMI
- Peter Chambers CEO, Legal & General Investment
- David Hughes CEO, Swanke Hayden Connell
Law
- David Childs, Clifford Chance, Managing Partner (LLB Hons)
- Nicholas Liverpool, President of Dominica (PhD)
- The Rt Hon. Lord Justice Maurice Kay, Lord Justice of Appeal (LLB Hons) (PhD)
- Sir Nigel Knowles, Co-Chief Executive, DLA Piper
- Shonaig Macpherson, IP Lawyer, Chairman of National Trust for Scotland (LLB Hons)
- Dame Julia Macur, High Court Judge (LLB Hons)
- Sir Alistair MacDuff, High Court Judge (LL.M)
- Dame Anne Rafferty, High Court Judge (LLB Hons)
- Nigel Savage CEO, College of Law (LL.M)
- The Hon. Justice Templeman, Supreme Court of Western Australia (BEng)
- Phil Wheatley, HM Prison Service Director-General (LLB Hons)
- Henry M. Joko-Smart, former Sierra Leonean Supreme Court Justice (LL.M)
- Tommy Sihotang, Noted Indonesian Lawyer (LL.M)
Literature
- Nicci Gerrard, author
- Lee Child, author (LLB)
- Joanne Harris, author (later became faculty)
- Hilary Mantel author (LLB)
- Jack Rosenthal, playwright
- John Thompson (poet) (1938–1976), Canadian poet
Media
- Stephen Daldry, film director
- John O'Leary, Times Higher Education Supplement editor
- Martin Fry, lead singer of ABC
- Eddie Izzard, comedian
- Paul Mason, BBC Newsnight
- Linda Smith, comedienne
- Rachel Shelley, actress (BA(Hons) English and Drama)
- Chris Fawkes, BBC Weather forecaster
- Carol Barnes, ITN Newsreader
- Sid Lowe, The Guardian, journalist
- Joseph Marcell, actor
Pioneers
- Amy Johnson, pilot (BA(Hons) Economics, 1926)
- Helen Sharman, first British astronaut (BSc(Hons) Chemistry, 1984)
- Roy Koerner, Polar Explorer
Politics
- Baron Ahmed Labour Peer
- David Blunkett Member of Parliament (MP), former Home Secretary (BA(Hons) Political Theory and Institutions, 1972)
- Baroness Taylor, Defence Minister
- Lord Clark Labour Peer
- Anne Margaret Main, Conservative MP for St Albans.
- Peter Adams, Canadian Politician
- Lord Norton Conservative Peer & academic
- Graham Eric Stringer Labour MP
- Kevin Barron Labour MP
- Hugo Antonio Laviada Molina Mexican Politician
- Sir Frederick Archibald Warner Diplomat & Member of the European Parliament
- Kadi Sesay Minister of Trade and Industry, Sierre Leone
- Serge Joyal Canadian Senator (LLM)
- Baron Varley, former Labour Cabinet Minister
Public service
- Air Marshal Stuart Peach CBE, Chief of Defence Intelligence
- Lim Neo Chian, former Chief of Singapore Army
- Sir Michael Carlisle, Senior Civil Servant
- Vanessa Lawrence, Ordnance Survey Director-General
Religion
- Wesley Carr Dean of Westminster Abbey
- Henry William Scriven Bishop of Pittsburgh
Science
- Sir Donald Bailey, civil engineer and inventor of the Bailey bridge
- Sir Harold Kroto, Nobel Prize-winning chemist (BSc(Hons) Chemistry, 1961; PhD, 1961-1964)
- Sir Hans Kornberg, biochemist, Master of Christ's College Cambridge
- Sir Richard Roberts, Nobel Prize-winning geneticist (BSc(Hons) Chemistry, 1965; PhD, 1968)
Sport
- David Davies, The Football Association Chief Executive
- Jessica Ennis, heptathlete
- Tony Miles, Britain's first chess grand master
- David Wetherall, footballer
Notable academics
- Francis Berry, poet and literary critic
- Peter Blundell Jones, Professor in Architecture
- Sir Anthony Bottoms, Professor of Criminology
- Angela Carter, author (1976-1978)
- Peter Cole, ex-editor of The Correspondent and deputy editor of The Guardian, Professor of Journalism
- Henry Coward, conductor
- Sir Bernard Crick, former Professor of Politics
- Sir Graeme Davies, Vice-Chancellor University of London
- Sir Gordon Duff, Florey Professor of Molecular Medicine
- Charles Eliot, diplomat, Vice-Chancellor
- Sir William Empson, poet (The School of English names its facilities after him)
- Lord Florey, Nobel Prize winner, Joseph Hunter Professor of Pathology
- Bob Hale, philosopher
- David Bell, philosopher and phenomenologist
- Stephen Stich, Honorary Professor of Philosophy in the Philosophy Department
- Joanne Harris, author (2000; was also a student)
- Peter Hill, world famous pianist and expert on the works of Olivier Messiaen
- Sir Robert Honeycombe, metallurgist
- David Hughes, Award winning astronomer. Asteroid 4205 is named in his honour.
- Dame Betty Kershaw, Dean of the School of Nursing
- Sir Ian Kershaw, historian
- Sir Hans Adolf Krebs, Nobel Prize-winning biochemist (1935-1954)
- Stephen Laurence, philosopher and cognitive scientist
- Sir Colin Lucas, historian, Chair of the Board of the British Library
- David Marquand, politician
- Edward Mellanby, Professor of Pharmacology, discoverer of Vitamin D
- Lord Morris, Professor of English
- Lord Porter, Nobel Prize-winning chemist (1955-1966)
- Sir David Read, Emeritus Professor of Plant Science
- Lord Renfrew, archaeologist
- Sir Gareth Roberts, Vice-Chancellor
- William Sarjeant, geologist
- Prof. Noel Sharkey, broadcaster, Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Professor of Public Engagement
- Sir J. Fraser Stoddart, chemist
- Professor W E S Turner (1881-1963), Professor of Glass Technology and founder of the Museum which bears his name
- Sir James Underwood, Joseph Hunter Professor of Pathology and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine
- Sir John Wood, Emeritus Professor of Law
- Sir Michael Woodruff, Transplant surgeon
Vice-Chancellors
- 1905: Charles Eliot
- 1912: Herbert Fisher
- 1917: William Ripper
- 1919: William Henry Hadow
- 1930: A. W. Pickard-Cambridge
- 1938: Irvine Masson
- 1953: John Macnaghten Whittaker
- 1965: Arthur Roy Clapham (acting)
- 1966: Hugh Robson
- 1974: Geoffrey Sims
- 1991: Gareth Roberts
- 2001: Bob Boucher
- 2007: Keith Burnett
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