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University of Kent

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The University of Kent is a plate glass campus university in Kent, UK.

Contents

Disambiguation

The original and main campus of the University is in Canterbury, and until 2003 the official title of the University was the University of Kent at Canterbury (or UKC). In recent years the University has expanded and now has campuses in Medway, Tonbridge and Brussels, and works in partnership with Canterbury College, South Kent College and Mid-Kent College. Accordingly, University of Kent is now the formal title for the umbrella term incorporating all these campuses; although UKC the term referring to the Canterbury campus is still widely used by those Canterbury students as well as by many almuni.

History

The University of Kent's Coat of Arms
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The University of Kent's Coat of Arms

A university in the ancient city of Canterbury was first considered in 1959, when Kent County Council explored the possibilities of a university through its education committee. The proposals were largely accepted by the authorities and by 1963 a site was found at Beverley Farm, suitably straddling the then boundary between the City of Canterbury and the County of Kent. The University was granted its Royal Charter in 1965 and the first students arrived in the October of that year. In 1966 Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent was formally installed as the first Chancellor.

The University of Kent at Canterbury was envisaged as being a Collegiate establishment, with most students living in College; and specialising in inter-disciplinary studies in all fields. Over the years, changes in Governments' policies have effectively destroyed this original concept, leading to the present state, near the "norm" for a British University.

In recent years the University's expansion to include other campuses has led to its dropping the "at Canterbury" from its official title.

Coat of Arms

The University of Kent's Coat of Arms were granted by the College of Arms in September 1967. The white horse is taken from the arms of the County of Kent. The three Cornish Choughs, originally belonging to the arms of Thomas Becket, were taken from the arms of the City of Canterbury. The Crest depicts the West Gate of Canterbury with a symbolic flow of water, presumably the River Stour, below it. Two golden Bishops' Croziers in the shape of a St.Andrews Cross are shown in front of it. The supporters - lions with the sterns of golden ships - are taken from the arms of the Cinque Ports. Graham Martin, From Vision to Reality: the Making of the University of Kent at Canterbury (1990) ISBN 0904938034

Campus

Students studying in the Templeman Library, which offers impressive views of Canterbury and Canterbury Cathedral.
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Students studying in the Templeman Library, which offers impressive views of Canterbury and Canterbury Cathedral.

The main Canterbury campus covers 300 acres (1.2 km²) and is in an elevated position just over two miles (3 km) from Canterbury's city centre. It currently has approximately 11,000 full-time and 3,500 part-time students and some 600 academic and research staff.

Colleges

The university is now divided into four colleges (eighteen were originally planned), named after distinguished people with local connections. In chronological order of construction:
Tyler Court, Block C, is part of a new halls of residence built in 2004.
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Tyler Court, Block C, is part of a new halls of residence built in 2004.

Each College features residential rooms, lecture theatres, study rooms, computer rooms and social areas. The point of the Colleges was that they should not be just Halls of Residence, but complete academic communities. Each College has its own bar, all rebuilt on a larger scale, and originally its own dining hall (today, only Eliot and Rutherford have functioning dining halls; Darwin's is now hired out for conferences and events).

However the University cannot be considered collegiate in any true sense - applications are made to the University as a whole, and many of the colleges rely on each other for day-to-day operation. Many students are allocated accommodation irrespective of their college, which reduces the ties further. In addition to these college accommodations there are also:

Darwin Houses, a set of student housing next to Darwin college, surrounds a large rose garden
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Darwin Houses, a set of student housing next to Darwin college, surrounds a large rose garden

Library

The Templeman Library (named after Dr Geoffrey Templeman, the University's first Vice-Chancellor) contains over a million items in stock including books, journals, videos, DVDs, and archive materials (for example, a full text of The Times from 1785 onwards), yet it is still only half its planned size. It has a materials fund of approximately £1million a year, and adds 12,000 items every year. It is open every day in term time, and is currently open 24 hours a day for a trial period during the exam term. It receives 800,000 visits a year, with approximately half a million loans per annum.

It also houses the [Centre for the study of Cartoons and Caricature], a national collection of, mainly, newspaper cartoons, with over 90,000 images catalogued.

Theatre and Cinema

The University is home to the Gulbenkian Theatre, an acclaimed 344-seat theatre that shows a variety of local, national and international plays and productions as well as playing host to well-known comedians and celebrities. The theatre was opened in 1969 and was named after the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation which helped fund its construction. Attached to the building is the popular Cinema 3, an arthouse cinema showing a mix of classics, films in association with the University's film studies department, and new Hollywood movies. In the daytime the cinema is used as a lecture theatre. Both the cinema and theatre are open to the public and are popular with residents of Canterbury.

A new cafe-bar extension was completed in 2005.

Sports Centre

A £1.5million development completed in 2003 meant that the Sport Centre is among the best of all UK universities. Its facilities include tennis and squash courts, hockey and football pitches, a state of the art gymnasium, a cardio theatre, a dance studio, a multi purpose sports hall and a fair trade cafe.

Students' Union

''Main article: University of Kent Students' Union
The Students' Union is known as "Kent Union" and has a considerable presence on campus (although it has been claimed that the Union has less power than it once did: in 1974 the University was threatened with closure because of Student Union activities). Kent Union runs three shops on campus, Essentials (all-purpose food and essentials), Parklife (ditto, but in student village Parkwood) and Extras (off-licence). The Union also runs the Parkwood bar Woody's and the three-storey nightclub The Venue, which in 2006 played host to big names such as Zane Lowe, Pendulum, DJ Hype, the Scratch Perverts and Tim Westwood.

The union is notable for having the unique 'joke' position of "Duck Warden", (currently held by 1st year psychology student Sam Leivers) amongst its many office bearers.

The Student Bar

''Main article: The Student Bar
The Student Bar is an online community, with currently over 4700 members that either study or work at the University of Kent. The website itself is similar to national and international community websites, such as Facebook, Faceparty and MySpace. Members are able to provide a profile which can include information about their course of study, personal details and interests as well as a photograph. The mainstay of The Student Bar is the ability to create and join groups for discussion on a range of topics.

Academic Faculties and Departments

The University is divided into three faculties: Originally, there were intended to be no sub-divisions of faculties, with all studies being to some extent inter-disciplinary within a particular faculty. However, these Faculties are, currently, further divided into 18 Departments and Schools, ranging from the School of English to the Department of Biosciences, and from the Kent Law School to the Department of Economics. Also of note is the University's Brussels School of International Studies, located in Brussels, Belgium. The School offers Master's degrees in international relations theory and international conflict analysis, along with an LLM in international law. In 2005 a new department, The Kent School of Architecture, began teaching it's first students.

Alumni services

In contact with almost 30,000 alumni worldwide, the Development & Alumni Relations Team produces publications, undertakes fundraising activities to support the University and organises events for alumni. This year's highlight will be the [Alumni Reunion Weekend] on 8-10 September 2006, which will focus on alumni from the 1970s.

The chaplaincy

Whilst the University is secular, there is a strong chaplaincy consisting of permanent Anglican and Catholic priests, a Pentecostal minister, as well as part-time chaplains from other denominations and faiths.

The chaplaincy runs the annual Carol Service that takes place every year in the Cathedral at the end of Autumn Term.

League Table Results

The 2006 Guardian Newspaper University League Tables puts the University of Kent in 30th place in the institutional rankings, while The Times Good University Guide (2007 - published 2006) puts Kent in 34th place.

Kent does not appear in the top 200 World Universities listed by the Times Higher Education Supplement or the top 500 World Universities listed by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University's world rankings table.

In the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise the University of Kent was placed 46th (according to the Times Higher Education Supplement's RAE league tables).

Sixteen departments from Kent appear in the top 20 of either The Times or The Guardian's British subject rankings from 2005 (including six departments in the top ten).

A National Student Survey conducted in 2005 reported that the University of Kent had the best student satisfaction in the South East (excluding London, which is considered a region in its own right) and was 26th out of 128 institutions surveyed. Part-time students gave the University an even better ranking, putting Kent in 4th place nationally when only part-time student opinions were taken into account.[Teaching Quality Information] - publishers of the National Student Survey

The Franco-British double degree programme

This bi-lingual programme combines subjects in one degree and is taught in two countries. The first year is spent at the University of Kent, the second year at the Institut d'études politiques de Lille (IEP), the third year at the University of Kent, the fourth year at the IEP of Lille and the fifth is either spent in Canterbury, in Brussels or in Lille.

The students of the Franco-British double degree programme receive at the end of the fourth year the BA (Bachelor of Arts) from the University of Kent, the Diplôme by the IEP of Lille and at the end of the fifth year, either the MA (Master of Arts) in Canterbury or in Brussels or the Master delivered by the IEP of Lille, chosen between [14 parcours de formation] by the IEP of Lille.

People

Chancellors

Sir Robert Worcester was appointed as the new Chancellor of the University of Kent in March 2006. He will take up his position in August 2006.

Vice-Chancellors

Famous

Plagiarism Detected

In a case that received widespread national and international media attention, Michael Gunn, a third year English Literature student at the University of Kent, was found in 2004 - just before taking his final examinations - to have plagiarised large proportions of his essays and examinations from the time that he began the course, and he was subsequently expelled from the University without a degree. The case was widely reported after Gunn and his parents threatened to sue the University for negligence, on the grounds that the University had not caught him earlier or told him that his actions were forbidden. The University pointed out that plagiarism was clearly forbidden by the School of English handbook. Gunn's proposed legal action never took place. [BBC News Story.] Kent has recently been praised as one of "the best universities at tackling plagiarism" (alongside six other Universities) by Oxford Brookes academic Jude Carroll, cited in the Times Higher Education Supplement on 19 May 2006.

Trivia

References

See also

External links

 

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