Middlesex University

Middlesex University is a university in north London, England, located in the historic county boundaries of Middlesex (from which it takes its name).

History
The history of Middlesex University began in the late 1880s, when two educational institutions opened their doors in north London - St Katherine's College and the Hornsey School of Arts and Crafts. Both would become part of Middlesex Polytechnic, which was founded in 1973. Middlesex was awarded the title 'University' - by Royal Assent - in 1992.

The institution was created in 1973 when Enfield College of Technology, Hendon College of Technology and Hornsey College of Art, joined to create Middlesex Polytechnic. The College of All Saints (St Katherine's College, founded 1878, uniting with Berridge House in 1964 to form All Saints) and Trent Park College joined in 1978 and in 1992 it became Middlesex University. In 2005, Middlesex University opened an overseas campus in Dubai, offering undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Business, Computing Science, Media Studies and Psychology.

Key dates in Middlesex history

 * 1878 - St Katherine's College opens in Tottenham and is in use for more than a century
 * 1882 - Hornsey School of Arts and Crafts founded
 * 1901 - Ponders End Technical Institute (still the home of the University's Social Sciences programmes) begins
 * 1939 - Hendon Technical Institute opens in the Burroughs, Hendon.
 * 1947 - Trent Park College of Education opens to train necessary teachers in the post-war period.
 * 1962 - New College of Speech and Drama opens

Campuses
The University is spread across 5 sites. All campuses are located in North London. Each campus has a quite distinct character and some of the campuses are important architecturally, especially Trent Park.

The university is planning to consolidate many of its activities onto the Hendon campus over the next few years.

Hendon
Hendon was known as the Hendon College of Technology. Today's main (or college) building was build in neo-Georgian style by H.W. Burchett and opened in 1939. It has been refurbished in a £40 million project, which includes the addition of a glass covered central court yard. The college was extended in 1955 and in 1969 a new refectory and engineering block (the Williams Building) was added. In 2004 The new Learning Resource Centre, The Sheppard Library opened on the site. Hendon also has a sports club, known as The Burroughs for students and staff which has one of the few real tennis courts in the UK. Middlesex University Business School and the School of Computing Science are located in Hendon.Home movie clip of the campus and Ricketts Quadrangle.

The campus in Hendon is planned be expanded over the next two years using a number of London Borough of Barnet office buildings including the current Town Hall in The Burroughs.

Enfield
The campus will be closed in Summer 2008, and the departments located here will move to the extended Hendon campus. Enfield campus was originally the Enfield College of Technology, founded in 1901 as Ponders End Technical Institute. Today Enfield campus is home of the social sciences and health sciences. The research centres for herbal medicine, and sport and performance therapies are based here, as well as the National Flood Hazard Control Centre. It is home to the Ted Lewis and Robbins halls of residence.

Trent Park
See Trent Park for a short history of the campus 

Trent Park is a palatial mansion set in a 4 km² country park, originally a fourteenth-century hunting ground of Henry IV. Performing arts, teacher education, product design, engineering and biological science, modern European philosophy, critical theory and art theory/aesthetics are based here. It is home to the Gubbay and Sassoon halls of residence. The university had ambitious plans to redevelop the site, however, these were rejected by Enfield council leading to the current plan to expand at Hendon.

Cat Hill
Cat Hill Campus is located in Cockfosters. It was originally the illustrious Hornsey College of Art, founded in 1880. In the late 1970s the campus was extended to become the Faculty of Art & Design of the then Middlesex Polytechnic. Today, art and design, cinematics and electronic arts are located at Cat Hill. The Cat Hill Campus houses MoDA, the University's Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture and the National Lesbian and Gay Newsmedia Archive. The campus houses the Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts, named after John Lansdown which runs a variety of graduate and undergraduate degrees in interactive media and electronic arts including MA Design for Interactive Media which teaches interaction design, usablity, information architecture, game design and other digital disciplines.

The photograph is not of Cat Hill Campus, but of the old campus for the Hornsey College of Art, which is in Hornsey, several miles south of the current campus.

Hospital campuses
Additionally, the School of Health and Social Sciences occupies the Archway and Hospitals campuses operating from four sites at the Royal Free Hospital, Whittington hospital (jointly owned and in development with University College London), Chase Farm and North Middlesex hospitals.

Dubai
In 2004, Middlesex University opened an overseas campus in Dubai, situated in the Knowledge Village Dubai. In Dubai, Middlesex currently offers undergraduate degrees in Business Administration, Business Information Systems, Information Technology, Communications and Media, Psychology and Tourism. It also offers Masters degrees in Marketing, Human Resource Management and Management, and an MBA.

Tottenham
The campus was closed in Summer 2005, and its programmes of study have been moved to the university's other campuses. Tottenham campus started life as one of the first British teacher training colleges  in 1878. It was then called The College of St Katharine's, later to be called The College of All Saints. The campus was expanded in the 1960s, although much of the campus retains its Victorian architecture. The site was home to humanities and cultural studies, business studies, law, sociology and women's studies, which have been moved to other campuses.

Bounds Green
Bounds Green campus, home to the Engineering and Information Technology schools was sold to a residential developer in December 2003. It was used extensively for location shooting for the 1989 film, Wilt.

Schools of Middlesex University
Middlesex University is divided into four Schools:
 * School of Arts and Education
 * Middlesex University Business School
 * School of Computing Science
 * School of Health and Social Sciences

Students
Middlesex University has a very diverse student body, around 22,000 strong, many of whom are mature students. Around 5,000 students are from overseas, coming from more than 100 countries (2004). The application/places ratio is 6.1:1 (2002). The University also has student exchange links with 100 colleges and universities around the world.

Students' Union
As of 2005, Middlesex University Students' Union (MUSU) is undergoing a period of large-scale change. Academic year 2004-05 saw the university management force MUSU, against the wishes and votes of MUSU members, to give up its commercial areas, i.e. shops, bars, cafeterias and entertainments. These have now been taken over by a company called Scolarest, a major player in catering facilities to UK educational institutions, who already handle catering facilities for the university proper. This situation has arisen due to a dispute over a £250,000 debt owed by MUSU to the university.

MUSU has six sabbatical officers, each with a specific portfolio, and who also represent the students on their base campus. It publishes a magazine, Middlesex University Direct (MUD), six times a year.

In 1981 Union president Nick Harvey joined protests outside Rochester Row police station after six Irish students were detained without charge under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. That year student John Kennedy stood in the Crosby by-election to high-light the case of seven students suspended from the Polytechnic after an occupation demanding nursery facilities. election leaflet

Scholarships
In a controversial move, the university announced in 2004 an offer of £1,000 a year in cash to attract students with high academic grades. Full-time undergraduates enrolling for September 2004, who have achieved three Bs at A-level or equivalent, will be able to apply for the scholarships.

The university also offers a number of other scholarships awarded on the basis of sporting achievement and community or cultural activity. One high profile scholarship is a ballot style annual event when 3 students who 'put Middlesex first' on their UCAS choice might win a 'free education' - a scholarship of £30,000.

Quality and awards
The university has been awarded the Queen's Anniversary Prize three times, and has been named as one of Britain's Top 20 Universities in the 2004 Guardian University League Tables, which ranks Middlesex University 19th of 119 universities. However, in 2007, Middlesex University was ranked at the bottom of the Guardian University League Table scoring 37.88, only higher than specialist colleges which are not ranked.

In 2007, The Times Good University Guide ranked Middlesex University as 108th out of 128 universities.

In 2006, the University was ranked second in a re-assessment of teaching quality in all English universities. The Times Higher Education Supplement of 17 November 2006 reported on how the scores for each university, as marked by the Quality Assurance Agency, had been “adjusted to remove the link with research” and form a league table which had post-1992 universities performing strongly.

The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) ranks Middlesex University Business School among the top 20 international business schools in the world, ahead of Oxford and Cambridge.

Middlesex University Business School is also rated as a "centre of excellence" by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), the first university in the UK to offer courses accredited by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as well as accredited by the Association of MBAs.

The University is home to two HEFCE 'Centres for Excellence in Learning and Teaching' -one in Work Based Learning - one in Mental Health and Social Work.

Notable alumni
Famous alumni include:
 * Freema Agyeman, actress (Martha Jones in Doctor Who)
 * Monica Ali writer, author of Brick Lane
 * Adam Ant (real name: Stuart Goddard), musician (Adam & the Ants)
 * Gladys Asmah, Minister for Women and Children's Affairs, Ghana
 * Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones, daughter of Princess Margaret
 * Fiona McAuslan and Matt Norman, authors "The Rough Guide"
 * Nicholas Blincoe, novelist and screenwriter
 * Bryn Fowler, Bassist in the band the holloways
 * Joe Beevers, professional poker player
 * Rod Birtles, General Manager, Boston Philharmonic Orchestra
 * Baroness Blackstone, Minister for Education (1997-2001), Minister for Arts (2001-2003), (Labour peer)
 * Martin Booth, novelist
 * Langlands and Bell, artists
 * Christine Butler, MP (Labour)
 * Tim Campbell, winner The Apprentice
 * Ally Capellino, designer
 * Alan Carr, comedian
 * Lord Davies of Oldham, (Labour peer)
 * Richard Dinnick, writer
 * Jo Enright, comedian
 * Mike Figgis, film director, writer and composer
 * Mike Gapes, MP (Labour)
 * Ozlem Turkone, Turkish MP
 * Roger Glover, musician (Deep Purple)
 * Alison Goldfrapp, musician (Goldfrapp)
 * Simon Grant, television presenter
 * Nick Harvey, MP (Liberal Democrats)
 * James Heartfield, writer
 * Laura Hird, novelist
 * James Herbert, novelist
 * Kim Howells, MP (Labour)
 * Ashley Isham, fashion designer
 * Allen Jones, artist
 * Russell Kane, writer & comedian
 * Anish Kapoor, sculptor
 * Peter J. King, philosopher
 * Dermot O'Leary, TV presenter
 * Nick Leeson, rogue trader, studied after his prison sentence
 * Nick Mullen, framed Irish Republican Republican News
 * Tom Nairn, theorist on nationalism and political activist
 * Suzannah Olivier, nutritionist
 * Peter Polycarpou, actor
 * Vic Reeves, comedian
 * Ross Renton, educationalist and former student leader
 * Kevin Sacre, actor plays Jake Dean in Hollyoaks
 * Imran Shaik, modern cryptographer
 * Steve Sinnott, general secretary, National Union of Teachers
 * Holly Slater, jazz musician
 * Trevor Sutton, artist
 * Karen Thomson, chief executive of AOL UK
 * Johnny Vegas, comedian
 * Vivienne Westwood, fashion designer
 * Aaron Whitby, musician/record producer (Martha Redbone, Rodney Holmes)
 * Yasmin Yusuf, designer & director (Marks & Spencer)

Notable academics

 * Dan Cohn-Sherbok (theology)
 * Stephan Dahl (marketing)
 * Michael Driscoll (economist)
 * Ed Gallagher (environmental studies)
 * Bernard Ingham (marketing)
 * John Merrington deceased (history)
 * Francis Mulhern (critical studies)
 * Geoff Pilling deceased (political economy)
 * John Redwood (management)
 * Jonathan Rée (philosophy)
 * Adrian Rifkin (visual culture)
 * David Turner (computing science)
 * Roman Belavkin (computing science)
 * Judith Williamson (cultural history)