University of Sheffield

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University of Sheffield

Motto Rerum cognoscere causas ("to discover the causes of things")
Established 1897 (became university 1905)
Type Public
Endowment £31.5 million [1]
Chancellor Sir Peter Middleton
Vice-Chancellor Prof Keith Burnett
Staff 1,306
Students 26,785 [1]
Undergraduates 19,480 [1]
Postgraduates 7,300 [1]
Location Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK
Campus Urban
Colours Azure
Affiliations Russell Group
WUN
EUA
ACU
N8
White Rose
Yorkshire Universities
Website http://www.shef.ac.uk/
Image:University of Sheffield logo.png

The University of Sheffield is a research university, located in Sheffield in South Yorkshire, England.

Reputation

Sheffield was the Sunday Times University of the Year in 2001 and has consistently appeared as their top 20 institutions. Just three nationally have more than Sheffield’s 30 top-rated subjects for teaching excellence and just five can better the 35 subject areas deemed to have conducted world-class research in the most recent ratings. [1]

Sheffield's strategic aim is to place itself in the top five of UK Universities and to enhance its position as a World leading University. [1]

History

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.

It was originally envisaged that the University College would join Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds as the fourth member of the federal Victoria University. 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 1995, the University took over the Sheffield and North Trent College of Nursing and Midwifery, which greatly increased the size of the medical faculty although in 2005 it decided to pass these subjects over to Sheffield Hallam University.

Over the years, the University has been home to a number of famous 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, who taught politics with future Labour Party politician David Blunkett as one of his students.

Location

Image:Shefuniartstower.JPG
The Arts Tower. In recent years the windows of south facing façade have occasionally been blanked out with paper to form massive advertisements for charity campaigns.

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, 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 restaurant, with a digital and computer infrastructure, lounge areas and flexible learning space.

To the east lies St George's Campus, named for St George's Church, now a lecture theatre. 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 will move from the Crookesmoor Building to Bartolomé House in early 2008.

Further west lies Weston Park, the Weston Park Museum, the Harold Cantor Gallery, sports facilities and the faculties of law 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).

Further west still lie the University halls of residence, Ranmoor House, Halifax Hall of Residence, Stephenson Hall of Residence and Tapton Hall of Residence, and the music department, in the Broomhill and Crookes areas of the city. The University is currently building a new student residence village worth in excess of £150 million.

The Manvers campus, at Wath-on-Dearne between Rotherham and Barnsley, is where the majority of nursing is taught.

Organisation

Image:Sir Frederick Mappin Building.jpg
Sir Frederick Mappin Building, Faculty of Engineering.
Image:Sheffield law school.jpg
Bartolomé House, new home of the Faculty of Law from January 2008.
Like most British universities, the University of Sheffield is headed by a Vice-Chancellor, Professor Keith Burnett, CBE who took over from Prof Bob Boucher, CBE on 1 October 2007, and a titular Chancellor, Sir Peter Middleton. Prof Burnett was Head of the Division of Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences at the University of Oxford and before that Chairman of Physics.
Image:Crookesmoor 2.jpg
The Crookesmoor Building, home of the Faculty of Law until January 2008

The University is organised into seven faculties, with all the faculties except Law being sub-divided into numerous departments:

Research and Teaching Quality

The University of Sheffield has been described by The Times as one of the powerhouses of British higher education.[1] 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).

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.
Image:Firth court.jpg
Firth Court Quad

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. 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 Awards in 1998, 2000 and 2002. It was also named the Sunday Times University of the Year in 2001. In 2005, the Sunday Times rated the University as the 24th best in the UK.[citation needed]

Sheffield is particularly famous for its Archaeology, Architecture, Management, Chemistry, Engineering, Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, Dentistry, English, Geography, History, Music, Philosophy, Politics Physics, Computer Science and Town Planning departments, which are heavily oversubscribed.

In the 2007's 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." [1]

Major research partners and clients include Boeing, Rolls Royce, Unilever, Boots, AstraZeneca, GSK, ICI, Slazenger, and many more household names, 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.[1]

Nobel Prizes

The University's Faculty of Pure Science may boast an association with five Nobel Prizes, one for the Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology:

As well as three to its world-renowned Department of Chemistry:


Students and academics

The University of Sheffield's 25,000 students arrive mostly from the UK, but include some 3,700+ international students from 120 different countries that come to Sheffield not only for its world-class research and teaching quality but also for the city's renowned student and social scene and its relatively cheap costs of living. 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 is one of the largest students' unions in the UK,[citation needed] and was founded in 1956. 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) and coffee shop (Coffee Revolution), various restaurants, shops, a supermarket, the cinema Film Unit, a fully functioning and student run theatre company (suTCo), a student radio station called Sure Radio, its own newspaper, The Steel Press, and about two hundred student societies, many sports teams and a turnover of around £8,000,000. The Union is also home to a variety of advice and support services and manages the successful USports sports facilities.

Image:Sheffield University Students Union buildings.jpg
Left to right: the Hicks Building, students' union/University House (conjoined), walkway to the Octagon Centre and the Education Building (in background).

In addition to the student union-supported sports teams, Sheffield University Bankers Hockey Club play top-flight 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[2] pub crawl, dressed only in nightwear in mid-winter: the men often to dress in nighties and the women in pyjamas. This event was banned in 1997 following the hospitalisation of several students.[3] The roleplaying society run a 24 hour roleplaying 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. Although publication has been sporadic in recent years, Twikker, the Rag Magazine, is usually sold to raise funds.[citation needed] 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.

Notable alumni

See also Category:Alumni of the University of Sheffield.

Academia

Business

Law

Literature

Media

Pioneers

Politics

Science

Sport

Notable academics

Clubs & Societies

The Sheffield Students Motor Club existed from the mid 1960s to the early 1980s and membership was open to students and post-graduates from the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Polytechnic (now Sheffield Hallam University). The club organised twelve-car rallies and treasure hunts and two major annual rallies, the Rallye Escafeld and the Witchhunt rally. The club also ran the Mid Summer Venture Rally one year. Many of the members subsequently made their careers in the motor industry including Ford, Austin-Rover and Lotus. There was a reunion of members on 12th - 14th October 2001 in Sheffield and another one on 25th & 26th of September 2004. See also Sheffield Students Motor Club reunion

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.

See also

References


External links

Template:Universities navbox Template:Universities in the United Kingdom Template:Worldwide Universities Network Template:Russell Group Template:N8 Groupde:University of Sheffieldeo:Universitato de Sheffield fr:Université de Sheffield fi:Sheffieldin yliopisto

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Some of the initial content on this page may be incorporated in part from copyleft sources in the public domain including wikis such as Wikipedia and AskDrWiki. Drug information for patients came from the The National Library of Medicine. Infectious disease information may have come from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Differential Diagnoses are drawn from clinicians as well as an amalgamation of 3 sources: 1.The Disease Database; 2. Kahan, Scott, Smith, Ellen G. In A Page: Signs and Symptoms. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 2004:3; 3. Sailer, Christian, Wasner, Susanne. Differential Diagnosis Pocket. Hermosa Beach, CA: Borm Bruckmeir Publishing LLC, 2002:7 .

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