University of Sheffield
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Template:Infobox British University
The University of Sheffield is a university located in Sheffield, UK.
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History
The Sheffield School of Medicine was founded in 1828. This was supplemented in 1870 by the opening of Firth College by Mark Firth, a steel manufacturer, to teach arts and science subjects. The college funded the opening of the Sheffield Technical School, which was founded in 1884 to teach applied science. The three institutions merged in 1897 to form the University College of Sheffield, which received a Royal Charter in 1905 and became the University of Sheffield. The University grew slowly until the 1950s, when new buildings were constructed and student numbers increased to their present levels.
Location
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. This includes the students' union, the original Firth Court building, the Geography building, the Alfred Denny Building housing natural sciences and a small museum, the Dainton Building housing chemistry and the Hicks Building housing mathematics and physics. The Grade II* listed university library and the Arts Tower are also located here.
East of this lies Mappin Street, which is also home to a number of University buildings. This includes the faculty of engineering (partly housed in the Grade II listed Mappin Building) and departments of management and computer science. The university maintains the Turner Museum of Glass here. The university has acquired the nearby former Jessop Hospital, and plans to convert this to house more departments.
To the west lies parkland, the Sheffield City Museum and Mappin Art Gallery, the university's sports facilities and the faculties of law and medicine, the latter housed in the city's extensive teaching hospitals.
Further west still lie the six university halls of residence and the music department, in the Broomhill and Crookes areas of the city. Nursing is mainly taught on the Manvers campus, between Rotherham and Barnsley.
Organisation
Sheffield_University_Arts_Tower.jpg
The University of Sheffield is headed by a Vice-Chancellor, and an honorary Chancellor. Today, it is organised into seven faculties:
- Faculty of Architectural Studies
- Faculty of Arts
- Faculty of Engineering
- Faculty of Law
- Faculty of Medicine
- Faculty of Pure Science
- Faculty of Social Sciences
The university is known for its engineering faculty and its departments of archaeology, law, architecture and politics.
Students and faculty
The University of Sheffield's 25,000 students arrive mostly from the UK, but 2,500 are international students, with many from Malaysia.
The university employs 5,500 people, including almost 1,400 academic staff.
Students' union, sports and traditions
The University of Sheffield Union of Students is the largest in the UK, with two bars, three club venues, nearly one hundred student societies and a turnover of around £8,000,000.
The union is generally left-wing, and is run by a variety of working, representative and standing committees, presided over by the Union Assembly and eight elected full-time sabbatical officers. It is a constituent member of the National Union of Students.
A union group publishes The Steel Press newspaper fortnightly, while another runs the Sure FM (http://www.sureradio.com) radio station, which usually broadcasts city-wide for two months a year on 96.1FM and throughout the Union building for the rest of the year and is currently attempting to obtain a permanent year-round license to broadcast on AM radio. A third group, sheffieldbase (http://www.sheffieldbase.com), maintains a news-based website.
The union holds various student nights through out the week, in the Fusion and Foundry within the Union building. Including pop music nights Juice! and Pop Tarts on Wednesday and Saturday as well as less mainstream Drum and Bass and Indie rock nights The Tuesday Club and Fuzz Club.
Sheffield supports a large number of student societies and sports teams. Every year, some of these teams win their BUSA championships. Sheffield University Bankers play top-flight 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 the rag week, University of Sheffield students used to take part in the Pyjama Jump pub crawl, dressed only in their nightwear, in mid-winter. This event was banned in 1997 following the hospitalisation of several students.
Another rag week tradition is the Spiderwalk, a fifty mile trek through the city and the Peak District, the first half through the night.
Sheffield_University_Students_Union_buildings.jpg
Notable alumni
- Sir Donald Bailey, civil engineer and inventor of the Bailey bridge
- David Blunkett (BA Political Theory and Institutions, 1972), politician
- Stephen Daldry, film director
- Eddie Izzard, comedian
- Amy Johnson (BA Economics, 1926), pilot
- Harold Kroto (BSc Chemistry, 1961, PhD, 1964), chemist and Nobel Prize winner
- Richard Roberts (BSc Chemistry 1965, PhD, 1968), geneticist
- Jack Rosenthal, playwright
- Helen Sharman (BSc Chemistry, 1984), astronaut
- Linda Smith, comedian
- Ann Taylor, politician
- Howard Wilkinson, football manager
- Carol Barnes, ITN Newsreader
Notable faculty
- Angela Carter (1976-1978), author
- Joanne Harris (2000), author
- Sir Ian Kershaw, historian
- Hans Krebs (1935-1954), biochemist and Nobel Prize winner
- Edward Mellanby, pharmacologist (discovered Vitamin D)
- George Porter (1955-1966), chemist and Nobel Prize winner
- William Sarjeant, geologist
- William Empson, poet
See also
External links
- University of Sheffield (http://www.shef.ac.uk/)
- University of Sheffield Union of Students (http://www.sheffieldunion.com/)
- The Steel Press (http://www.shef.ac.uk/steelpress/) - student newspaper
- Sure (http://sure.shef.ac.uk/) - student radio station
- BBC News: New DNA extraction technique (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2495437.stm)
- BBC News: Developing a humanoid robot (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/4529979.stm)