University of East Anglia

The University of East Anglia (abbreviated as UEA) is a research-intensive public university located in the city of Norwich, England. Established in 1963, today the university comprises 4 faculties and 28 schools of study. Situated to the south-west of the city of Norwich the university campus is approximately 362 acre in size. In 2012 the University was named the 10th best university in the world under 50 years old, and 3rd within the United Kingdom. In national league tables the university has most recently been ranked 17th in the UK by The Times and Sunday Times, 17th by The Guardian and 20th by The Complete University Guide. The university also ranked 1st for student satisfaction by the Times Higher Education magazine in 2013. The university celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2013.

History


The university opened in October 1963, not on its present campus, but in the "University Village" on the other side of Earlham Road, a collection of prefabricated structures  designed for 1200 students, laid out by the local architectural firm Feilden and Mawson. There were no residences. The Vice-Chancellor and administration were based in nearby Earlham Hall.

In 1961, the first vice-chancellor, Frank Thistlethwaite, had approached Denys Lasdun, an adherent of the "New Brutalist" trend in architecture, who was at that time building Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, to produce designs for the permanent campus. The site chosen was on the western edge of the city, on the south side of Earlham Road. The land, formerly part of the Earlham Hall estate was at that time occupied by a golf course. Lasdun unveiled a model and an outline plan at a press conference in April 1963, but it took another year to produce detailed plans, which diverged considerably from the model. The first buildings did not open until late 1966.

Lasdun put all the teaching and research functions into the "teaching wall", a single block 460 metres long following the contour of the site. Alongside this he built a walkway, giving access to the various entrances of the wall, with access roads beneath. Attached to the other, southern, side of the walkway he added the groups of terraced residences that became known as "Ziggurats". In 1968, Lasdun was replaced as architect by Bernard Feilden, who completed the teaching wall and library, and created an arena-shaped square as a social space of a kind not envisioned in his predecessor's plans. Many of the original buildings now have Grade II* listed status, reflecting the importance of the architecture and the history of the campus.

In the mid-1970s, extraction of gravel in the valley of the River Yare, which runs to the south of the campus, resulted in the university acquiring its own lake or "Broad" as it is often referred to. At more or less the same time, the gift of a collection of tribal art and 20th-century painting and sculpture, by artists such as Francis Bacon and Henry Moore, from Sir Robert and Lady Lisa Sainsbury resulted in the construction of the striking Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the western end of the main teaching wall, one of the first major works of architect Lord Foster.

In 2005 the university, in partnership with the University of Essex, and with the support of Suffolk County Council, the East of England Development Agency, Ipswich Borough Council, Suffolk College, and the Learning and Skills Council, secured £15 million funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for England for the creation of a new campus in the Waterfront area of Ipswich, called University Campus Suffolk or UCS. The campus opened in September 2007.

In November 2009, computer servers at the Climatic Research Unit (a research institute within the University) were hacked, and the stolen information made public. Over 1,000 emails, 2,000 documents, and source code were released. Because the Climate Research Unit is a major repository for data regarding man-made global warming their release directly prior to the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference attracted international attention and led to calls for an inquiry. As a result, no fewer than eight investigations were launched in the both the UK and US, but none found evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct.

Campus


Features of the UEA campus include Earlham Hall, childhood home of Elizabeth Fry which is now home to Norwich Law School; the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the western end of the main teaching wall designed by Lord Foster to house the art collection of Sir Robert and Lady Lisa Sainsbury; and "Sportspark", a multi-sports facilities built in 2001 thanks to a £14.5 million grant from Sport England Lottery Fund.

Other features include the large university lake or "broad" at the southern edge of campus and "The Square", a central outdoor meeting place flanked by concrete steps.

Accommodation the university campus includes eight en-suite residences; Constable Terrace, Nelson Court, and Britten, Pasto, Colman, Victory, Kett and Browne Houses. The residences are named after Horatio Nelson, John Constable, Benjamin Britten, Jeremiah Colman, Horatio Nelson's ship HMS Victory, Robert Kett, Sir Thomas Browne and the Paston family who wrote the Paston Letters. The university offers en-suite accommodation at the University Village, located next to the university campus. There are four non en-suite residences on campus; Norfolk and Suffolk Terraces, and Orwell and Wolfson Close. The university manages Mary Chapman Court, a hall of residence in Norwich city centre.

Facilities on campus include the "Union Pub and Bar", a concert and disco venue called "The LCR", a canteen called "The Campus Kitchen", a cafe/coffee shop called "The Blend", a bar/coffee shop called "The Hive", a graduate bar called the "Graduate Students Club" and "The Street" with a 24-hour launderette, the Union Shop, a coffee shop called "Cafe Direct", a branch of Barclays, and a Waterstones book shop. Most of these are situated in the centre of the campus, next to The Square.

The campus is linked to the city centre and railway station by frequent buses, operated by First, via Unthank Road or Earlham Road. First also operate frequent buses from the campus to the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital and to Bowthorpe.

Admissions
In 2013 the ratio of applications to acceptances was 6.7 to 1. 71.6% of graduating students achieved First-class honours or Upper second-class honours. In 2011 the proportion of students admitted to the University from independent schools was 14%.

Faculties and schools
The University offers over 300 courses it its four Faculties, which contain 23 Schools of Study.:


 * Faculty of Arts and Humanities
 * American Studies
 * Art History and World Art Studies
 * Film, Television and Media
 * History
 * Language and Communication Studies
 * Literature, Drama and Creative Writing
 * Music
 * Philosophy
 * Political, Social and International Studies


 * Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences
 * Norwich Medical School
 * Nursing Sciences
 * Rehabilitation Sciences


 * Faculty of Science
 * Actuarial Sciences
 * Biological Sciences
 * Chemistry
 * Computing Sciences
 * Engineering
 * Environmental Sciences
 * Mathematics
 * Natural Sciences
 * Pharmacy


 * Faculty of Social Sciences
 * Economics
 * Education and Lifelong Learning
 * International Development
 * Norwich Law School
 * Norwich Business School
 * Psychology
 * Social Work

Rankings and reputation
The results of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), published on 8 December 2008, showed that over 50% of the University's research activity was deemed to be "world leading" or "internationally excellent", with 87% in total being of "international standing". The university's research in the domains of American and Anglophone Area Studies, Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, and in Development Studies placed its respective Schools within the top three nationally. The university also has the highest percentage of national world leading research in History of Art, Design and Architecture; in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences and in Pharmacy, the university places in the top ten nationally.

The postgraduate Master of Arts in Creative Writing, founded by Sir Malcolm Bradbury and Sir Angus Wilson in 1970, is regarded as the most respected in the United Kingdom, and admission to the programme is competitive. The course has gone on to produce a number of distinguished authors, including Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Anne Enright, Tash Aw, Andrew Miller, Owen Sheers, Tracy Chevalier, Trezza Azzopardi, Panos Karnezis, and Suzannah Dunn. The German émigré novelist W. G. Sebald also taught in the School of Literature and Creative Writing, and founded the British Centre for Literary Translation, until his  death in a car accident in 2001. Experimental novelist Alan Burns was the University's first writer-in-residence.

The Climatic Research Unit, founded in 1972 by Hubert Lamb in the School of Environmental Sciences has been an early centre of work for climate change research. Publications include the recent study on anthropogenic polar warming. The School was also stated to be "the strongest in the world" by the Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government, Sir David King during a lecture at the John Innes Centre in 2005.

UEA Literary Festival
The University hosted its inaugural literary in 1991 and has welcomed a host of notable speakers including Madeleine Albright, Martin Amis, Martin Bell, Alan Bennett, Cherie Blair, Melvyn Bragg, Eleanor Catton, Richard Dawkins, Alain de Botton, Sebastian Faulks, Niall Ferguson, Stephen Fry, Frank Gardner, Richard E. Grant, Germaine Greer, Seamus Heaney, Clive James, P. D. James, Doris Lessing, Mario Vargas Llosa, Hilary Mantel, Iris Murdoch, Rageh Omaar, Michael Palin, Jeremy Paxman, Harold Pinter, Stephen Poliakoff, Terry Pratchett, Salman Rushdie, Simon Schama, Will Self, John Simpson, Zadie Smith, Paul Theroux, Peter Ustinov, Shirley Williams and Robert Winston.

Students Union
The UEA Union has a selection of sports clubs and societies ranging from football and American football clubs to the student newspaper Concrete.

UEA:TV (previously named Nexus UTV), the campus television station, creates internet content, due to analogue broadcasts being no longer used, and their shows include news, comedy, documentaries and various other programmes, and is one of the oldest still-running student television stations in the country having been established in 1968. Livewire 1350AM is the campus radio station was established in 1989 and transmits to air on 1350AM in the vicinity of the University, as well as broadcasting online.

The UEA Student Union operates many of the services on the university campus. Connected to both "The Street" and "The Square" is one of the most popular Union venues, the "Union Pub and Bar", which underwent extension and refurbishment at the cost of £1.2 million in 2002. Other bars include "The Hive", and the "Graduate Students Club". In the same building is The LCR, known in full as either The Large or Lower Common Room. The LCR is home to weekly campus discos, as well as the many touring gigs. The students' union also run The Waterfront venue, off campus in Norwich's King Street.

Notable alumni
UEA alumni in British politics include two former Leaders of the House of Lords, Valerie Amos, Baroness Amos (Applied Research in Education, 1978), and Thomas Galbraith, 2nd Baron Strathclyde (European Studies, 1982), Liberal Democrat peer Rosalind Scott, Baroness Scott of Needham Market (European Studies, 1999), Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Caroline Flint (American Literature, History & Film, 1983), and Conservative backbencher Douglas Carswell (History, 1993). UEA is also the alma mater of the former Crossbench peer Tim Bentinck, 12th Earl of Portland (History of Art, 1975); the Members of Parliament Tony Colman (International Development), Jon Owen Jones (Ecology, 1975), Tess Kingham, Judith Chaplin and Ivor Stanbrook (PhD, 1995);    and the MEP David Thomas (English & Law).

Foreign Heads of State and Government include the Governor General of Grenada Sir Carlyle Glean (Education), and Governor of Gibraltar Sir Robert Fulton (Social Sciences, 1970), while at Cabinet level alumni include Australian Finance Minister Mathias Cormann (Law, 1994), Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Murat Karayalçın (Development Economics), Thai Finance Minister Suchart Thada-Thamrongvech, Icelandic Foreign Minister Össur Skarphéðinsson (PhD, 1983), Tanzanian Vice President Ali Mohamed Shein, Kiribati Vice President Teima Onorio (Education, 1990), and the Gambian Foreign Minister Ousman Jammeh (Rural Development, 1984). In Diplomacy alumni include two UN Permanent Representatives, Albert Chua (English Literature, 1990), and Shofry Ghafor (Development Studies), as well as British Ambassadors and High Commissioners to Australia, Singapore, Slovenia, Tanzania, Belize, Kyrgyzstan and Gabon.

UEA Literary alumni include three Booker Prize winners, Ian McEwan (Creative Writing, 1971), Kazuo Ishiguro (Creative Writing, 1980), and Anne Enright (Creative Writing, 1988) in addition to the writers Tracy Chevalier (Creative Writing, 1995), Rose Tremain (Creative Writing, 1967), John Boyne (Creative Writing, 1996), Andrew Miller (Creative Writing, 1991), Susan Fletcher, Trezza Azzopardi, Mick Jackson (Creative Writing, 1995), Naomi Alderman (Creative Writing, 2006), David Almond (English Literature, 1993), Mohammed Hanif (Creative Writing), Paul Murray, Tash Aw, James Scudamore (Creative Writing, 2006), Stephen Cole (English Literature, 1992), Snoo Wilson, Erica Wagner, Matthew Dunn (Politics, 1996), Jeremy Sheldon, Christopher Catherwood (PhD, 2006), Lucasta Miller (PhD, 2007), Mario Reading, and Adam Foulds (Creative Writing, 2001).

In the arts alumni include the actors Matt Smith (Drama, 2005), Jack Davenport (English & American Literature, 1995), James Frain (Drama, 1990), and John Rhys-Davies; comedians Paul Whitehouse, Charlie Higson (English & American Literature), Simon Day (Drama, 1989), Arthur Smith (Comparative Literature, 1976), and Nina Conti (Philosophy, 1995); film director Gurinder Chadha (Development Economics, 1983); Art Historians Philip Mould (History of Art, 1981), Paul Atterbury (Archaeology & Landscape History, 1972), and Bendor Grosvenor (PhD, 2009); Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House Mary Allen (Creative Writing, 2003); Chief Executive of English National Opera Sean Doran (Music 1983), Museum Director Jack Lohman (History of Art, 1979), and the Emmy Award winning choirmaster Gareth Malone (Drama, 1997). Elsewhere in the media alumni include the newsreaders Selina Scott (English & American Literature) and Geraint Vincent (History, 1994); news correspondents Razia Iqbal (American Studies, 1985), David Grossman (Politics, 1987), and Mark Stone (History of Art and Architecture, 2001); Radio 1 presenter Greg James (Drama, 2007); political commentator Iain Dale (German & Linguistics, 1985); BBC executives Dame Jenny Abramsky (English), Jonathan Powell (English Literature), and James Boyle; and the weather forecasters Penny Tranter (Environmental Sciences, 1982) and Darren Bett (Environmental Sciences, 1989).

Scientific alumni include the current President of the Royal Society and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Sir Paul Nurse (PhD, 1973), co-discoverer of Hepatitis C Michael Houghton (Biological Sciences, 1972), and Royal Society Fellows Terrence Rabbitts (Biological Sciences), Nick Barton (PhD, 1979), James Barber (Biological Sciences), Richard Flavell (PhD, 1967), Don Grierson (Biological Sciences, 1967) and Brian Hemmings (PhD, 1975). Alumni in academic administration include Vice-Chancellors of Lancaster, Wollongong, Chichester, Rockefeller, Canterbury Christ Church, BPP University and the Royal College of Art.

UEA alumni in business and economics include the former Governor of the South African Reserve Bank Tito Mboweni (Development Economics, 1988), in addition to the founders of Autonomy and Café Rouge, and CEOs of ICI, Jaguar Land Rover, Premier Foods, Diageo, Punch Taverns, Computacenter, Pier 1 Imports and HBO Films. UEA is also the alma mater of the explorer Benedict Allen (Environmental Sciences); Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police Sir Peter Fahy (Human Resource Strategy, 1997); England rugby player Andy Ripley; football commentator Martin Tyler (Sociology), and the Bishop of Ramsbury Edward Condry (BA, 1974).

Notable academics
See also Category:Academics of the University of East Anglia

UEA has benefited from the services of academics at the top of their fields, including Sir Malcolm Bradbury and Sir Angus Wilson who co-founded the MA in Creative Writing programme; Lord Zuckerman who was influential in the establishment of the School of Environmental Sciences; Nobel Prize winning chemist Richard Synge; scientists Sir David King and Sir David Baulcombe; writers W. G. Sebald and Angela Carter;  poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion, historians Sir Richard Evans, Paul Kennedy and Baroness Hollis,   and the political scientist Lord Williams of Baglan. Present faculty include former IPCC Chairman Sir Robert Watson; author of The Last King of Scotland Giles Foden, and the former Home Secretary Charles Clarke.

Chancellors

 * Harold Mackintosh, 1st Viscount Mackintosh of Halifax (1962–1964)
 * Oliver Franks, Baron Franks (1965–1984)
 * Owen Chadwick (1984–1994)
 * Sir Geoffrey Allen (1994–2003)
 * Sir Brandon Gough (2003–2012)
 * Rose Tremain (2013–present)

Vice-Chancellors

 * Frank Thistlethwaite (1961–1980)
 * Sir Michael Thompson (1980–1986)
 * Derek Burke (1987–1995)
 * Dame Elizabeth Esteve-Coll (1995–1997)
 * Vincent Watts (1997–2002)
 * David Eastwood (2002–2006)
 * Bill MacMillan (2006–2009)
 * Edward Acton (2009–2014)
 * David Richardson (from September 2014)