University of Plymouth

One of the University of Plymouth's newly renovated buildings in the City of Plymouth with the university logo on it

The University of Plymouth is the largest university in the southwest of England, with over 30,000 students and is the 4th largest UK university based on student population. (Larger universities are London, Manchester, and Manchester Metropolitan respectively.) It has almost 3,000 staff (one of the largest employers in the southwest), and an annual income of around £110 million.

Plymouth is an up-and-coming 'Modern University' that is currently undergoing a great deal of development, including, new buildings and restructuring. The University jumped an impressive thirty places in The Guardian's national university league tables published in May 2006- from 73rd place in 2005 to 40th place in 2006; the Times table, which unlike the Guardian's takes research performance into account, places it 55th. The Guardian describes the university as "forward thinking", as well as placing Plymouth in the coveted "top 20" for ten subjects including social work (5th), drama, fine art, and architecture.

Undergraduate and postgraduate programmes are currently taught at campuses in Plymouth, Exeter, Exmouth. However the university's current policy is to centralise its campus activities in Plymouth. Many of the University's Faculty of Arts subjects (such as History, English, and Media Arts) have already moved to Plymouth. Subjects currently based at Exeter (such as Fine Art, Art History, Photography and 3-D Design) and Exmouth (such as Theatre & Performance) will be relocating to Plymouth in Autumn 2007. An exception to this trend is the university's extensive activities in education for the health professions; in addition many of its students are taught at Further Education Colleges throughout Devon, Cornwall and Somerset, such as Dartington College of Arts.

The University of Plymouth was previously (and unpopularly) known as Polytechnic South West (1989-1992) ; before that, its constituent bodies were known as Plymouth Polytechnic, Rolle College, and Seale-Hayne College. Designated as a university in 1992 along with the other former polytechnics, Plymouth has a reputation as one of England's leading new universities. In part because of its coastal location and strong maritime history, it is particularly renowned for marine engineering and biology. It also scores well in law, psychology, geography, computer science and art history. The university offers a course in "MediaLab Arts" (which recently changed name to "Digital Art and Technology"), a unique new media and computer science hybrid course.

Portland Square Building, University of Plymouth, Plymouth Campus, UK

Jointly with the University of Exeter and the National Health Service in the region, the University runs the recently founded Peninsula Medical School. A new dental school has also been approved in 2006 and will open in 2007. A new £13 million building on the University of Plymouth's main campus provides teaching rooms, office space, a clinical skills laboratory and research facilities for the Plymouth-based activities of the School. Other investment in campus facilities includes a £30m arts complex, due to open in September 2007, a new £25m building for the Faculty of Education, which is relocating from Exmouth to the main campus in Plymouth in 2008, and an £8m extension and enhancement of library facilities.

The university is internationally renowned for its courses in shipping with maritime law and logistics. In October 2005, The Sun national newspaper voted The University of Plymouth as having the most bizarre degree in the country: BSc (Hons) Surf Science and Technology. Commonly known as surfing, this course is centred on surfing equipment design and surfing-related business, which is very popular in the Plymouth area. Another possibly unique course is the BA in Business and Perfumery. There is also a renowned MSc in E-Commerce on offer [1].

Staff include Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, who have written extensively on electoral systems, results and British politics and have regularly appeared on national television election programmes for both the BBC and ITV over the last 15 years.

Extensive construction of the Plymouth campus.

The University has its own students' union called UPSU.

Sport

The University has many active sport teams. These include:
*Sailing
*Ultimate Frisbee
*Beach Volleyball

External links

*Official Site
*The Surfing Degree
*The Digital Art & Technology Course
*Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research (ICCMR)
*Centre for Research in Information Storage Technology (CRIST)
*University of Plymouth profile (The Guardian, 2006)