Lancaster University

Categories: English universities | Education in Lancashire | City of Lancaster

Lancaster University
Image:Lancaster university logo.png
Motto Patet omnibus veritas (Truth lies open to all)
Established 1964
Chancellor Sir Christian Bonington
Vice-Chancellor Prof. Paul Wellings
Location Lancaster, UK
Students Over 10,000
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Affiliations 1994 Group, AMBA, NWUA
Homepage www.lancs.ac.uk

Lancaster University (originally created as the University of Lancaster) is a collegiate campus university in Lancaster, UK. The University has a good academic reputation, doing well in national league tables. It has one of the best environmental science departments in the UK and a world-renowned business school. The physics department has a global reputation for its research in low temperature physics. The sociology department also has an excellent reputation. Typical offers in most subjects are around BBB at A-level.


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History

One of a series of new British universities, Lancaster University was opened in 1964 on a purpose-built site, three miles south of the city, at Bailrigg, near the villages of Ellel and Galgate.

The logo of the University is based on the spire of the University Chaplaincy Centre.

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Colleges

Image:Scan10044.JPG
Bowland tower

The University originally had two colleges, Bowland and Lonsdale.

It has expanded greatly since then and now has 8 undergraduate colleges, which are all named after the surrounding area:

The University also has one post-graduate college:

The college buildings accommodate a number of academic departments, but are primarily social and accommodation facilities, each with its own bar and Junior Common Room. A selling-point of the University is that the colleges are more than mere halls of residence, offering a sense of community. Every student and member of staff is a member of a college.

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Campus

The campus is organised around a central walkway known as The Spine. This walkway down the middle of the campus from north to south and is covered all the way as protection from the frequent rainfall which dominates the Lancashire climate. For most of its length one is walking due north or south.

The campus is undergoing further expansion, primarily in the provision of on-campus accommodation in a new area of campus, Alexandra Park. The process has seen controversy, due to the rate of expansion, the increase in rents due to the new accommodation being en-suite, and the limited amount of new social space.

Facilities on campus include:

  • Food Outlets
    • a fish and chip shop
    • Pizzetta Republic
    • Mama Mia's cafe
    • Gregg's the baker
    • Diggles sandwich shop
    • Cartmel coffee bar
    • Coffee shops in County South, Bowland, Grizedale and Fylde colleges
    • Wibbly Wobblys Too
    • George's, a cafe in the Chaplaincy Centre
    • The Venue, a slightly upmarket cafe operated by the University itself
    • Wongs' Kitchen

The University is also home to the Ruskin Library.

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Student Activities

Heavy drinking feature prominently, but there are also many student-run clubs and societies on campus; these include:

  • Bailrigg FM, the student radio station
  • Scan, the student union's newspaper
  • Lancaster University Cinema (run by the film society)

Every summer the students take part in the Roses Tournament, a sports competition against the University of York. The venue of the event alternates each year between York and Lancaster. Otherwise, sporting activities are focussed on inter-college competition rather than national leagues. The colleges compete for the Carter Shield and George Wyatt Cup, and in 2004 the Founder's Trophy was played for the first time between the University's two founding colleges, Bowland and Lonsdale.

LUSU, the Students' Union own a nightclub in Lancaster called the Sugarhouse. This is a major source of income for the Students' Union. They also have two shops on the campus and an administration building. However, there no Students' Union entertainment complex on campus as other similar-sized campus Universities tend to have.

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Chancellorship

The Chancellor of the university is Sir Chris Bonington, who took office in January 2005. He succeeds Princess Alexandra of Kent, who held the post for forty years from the University's inception. This makes her the longest serving Chancellor of any British university.

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Notable Professors

Norman Fairclough, a proponent of critical discourse analysis, is Professor of Language in Social Life. With Oxford University, Lancaster compiled the British National Corpus, a 100 million word collection of a range of spoken and written texts, in the 1990s. This is an important contribution to corpus linguistics.

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Notable alumni


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Chancellors Wharf

Chancellors Wharf is the name of the university's off-campus accommodation for students. It is organised into several buildings (blocks) which are by the canal within the city. The location is considered perfect by many students as it is next to The Water Witch pub, often voted as one of the best in the country. The location is also close to central bus routes, the local infirmary and the city centre. Residents are members of the various Colleges; Chancellors Wharf is itself only a hall of residence.

The blocks, each of which are named, are divided into flats that are numbered in a horizontal manner, i.e. Flats 1 - 5 are all first floor flats, while flats 20 - 29 are second floor flats. There are three floors per block and each flat serves 5 to 10 students and has available showers, baths and a kitchen for each flat as well as toilets. Most rooms have access to a small, shared balcony.

'The Wharf', as it is known by students, has its own porters' lodge and is maintained by University staff. It is a favourite residence for many third years who may have had less than pleasing accomadation the previous year, as well as for groups of friends who wish to share a floor or flat together, something the univeristy accommodates.

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George Fox Six

These are six members of the local community, including University students, who were prosecuted by the Crown Procecution Service, with the university's assistance, for taking part in a demonstration against multinational corporations meeting at the university in September 2004. Speakers at the conference were drawn from controversial arms manufacturer BAe Systems, and other companies that campaigners argue pursue unethical policies, such as Shell.

It is not disputed that six protestors entered a lecture theatre in the university's George Fox building, rather than remaining outside. The protesters and their supporters say this was to to hand out leaflets and engage delegates of the "Corporate Venturing" Conference, a networking meeting for multinational corporations, in conversation. The University says this was to aggressively disrupt the conference. Security removed the protestors from the lecture theatre. The demonstration then continued outside. The police were called and told the demonstrators they were doing nothing illegal by protesting outside.

Five months later, all six received a court summons for Aggravated Trespass. This is a criminal offence under the 1994 Criminal Justice Act and is defined as trespass 'with intent to intimidate, obstruct or disrupt'. This carries a maximum sentence of three months imprisonment. However, trespass itself is a civil offence, which means that the police needed the University's approval to press charges, since only the University can decide whether the protesters were trespassing. They gave this approval, hence 'taking its own students to court'.

The University's action attracted an international campaign of support for the 'George Fox Six'. Supporters include eminent academics, both within the university and internationally (including Noam Chomsky), the Lancaster University Lecturers Union (LAUT), the National Union of Students (NUS), the civil rights group Liberty, local Green Party councillors, and the Council for Academic Freedom and Academic Standards.

On 30 September, 2005, the six were found guilty of Aggravated Trespass: specifically of intending to disrupt the conference. There will be an appeal against the judgement.

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External links


Colleges of Lancaster University Image:Lancaster university swish.png

Bowland | Cartmel | County | Furness | Fylde | Grizedale | Lonsdale | Pendle | Graduate