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Queen Mary, University of London
Queen Mary, University of London (known as Queen Mary and Westfield College until 2000, and still officially named as such in its charter)[1] is the third largest college of the University of London. It is organised into four faculties: Arts; Engineering and Mathematical Sciences; Law and Social Sciences; and Natural Sciences, in addition to Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry. The College is a research university, with over 80% of research staff working in departments where research is of international or national excellence (RAE 2001). It has a strong international reputation, with 24 per cent of students coming from over 100 countries.[2][3][4] Queen Mary incorporates several leading international research units such as the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, the Interdisciplinary Research Centre in Biomedical Materials, as well as many centres for medical and dental teaching and research. In particular the University is very highly rated for Law, Medicine and Dentistry. Queen Mary is known for student employability: The Sunday Times ranked it second highest in the UK for graduate starting salaries after the London School of Economics.
HistoryQueen Mary's origins are in the mergers over the years of four older colleges: Queen Mary College, Westfield College, St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College and the London Hospital Medical College. In 1989 Queen Mary merged with Westfield College to form Queen Mary & Westfield College. Although teaching had begun at the London Hospital Medical College in 1785, it did not become part of Queen Mary until 1995. In that year the two medical schools merged together and into Queen Mary & Westfield College to form the School of Medicine and Dentistry, although to a large extent a separate Barts and The London identity has been maintained. In 2000, the college adopted the present title of Queen Mary, University of London for day to day purposes, although the official name in the charter has not been changed. Queen Mary CollegeFormative yearsThe origins of Queen Mary College began in the mid Victorian era when growing awareness of conditions in London's East End led to drives to provide facilities for local inhabitants, popularised in the 1882 novel All Sorts of Conditions of Men - An Impossible Story by Walter Besant, which told of how a rich and clever couple from Mayfair went to the East End to build a "Palace of Delight, with concert halls, reading rooms, picture galleries, art and designing schools."[5] Although not directly responsible for the conception of the People's Palace, the novel did much to popularise it. The trustees of the Beaumont Trust, administering funds left by Barber Beaumont, purchased the site of the former Bancroft's School from the Drapers' Company. On May 20 1885 the Drapers' Court of Assistants resolved to grant £20,000 "for the provision of the technical schools of the People's Palace."[6] The foundation stone was laid on June 28 1886 and on May 14 1887 Queen Victoria opened the palace's Queen's Hall as well as laying the foundation stone for the technical schools in the palace's east wing. The technical schools were opened on October 5 1888, with the entire palace completed by 1892. When opening them, the Master of the Drapers' Company declared their aims to be "to improve the scientific and technical knowledge of apprentices and workmen engaged in industrial life". However others saw the technical schools as one day becoming a technical university for the East End.[7] The conflicting demands of pleasure and education were identified by the Assistant Charity Commissioner as early as 1891 and for the next forty years this was to dog the People's Palace. In 1892 the Drapers' Company provided £7000 a year for ten years to guarantee the educational side income. Into the University of London
Part of the Charterhouse Square site During the First World War the College admitted students from the London Hospital Medical College who were preparing for the preliminary medical examination, the first step in a long process that would eventually bring the two institutions together. After the war, the College grew, albeit constrained by the rest of the People's Palace to the west and a burial ground immediately to the east. In 1920 it obtained both the Palace's Rotunda (now the Octagon) and rooms under the winter gardens at the west of the palace, which became chemical laboratories. The College's status was also unique, being the only School of the University of London that was subject to both the Charity Commissioners and the Board of Education. In April 1929 the College Council decided it would take the steps towards applying to the Privy Council for a Royal Charter, but on the advice of the Drapers' Company first devised a scheme for development and expansion, which recommended amongst other things to reamalgamate the People's Palace and the College, with guaranteed provision of the Queen's Hall for recreational purposes, offering at least freedom of governance if not in space.[9] In the early hours of February 25 1931 a fire destroyed the Queen's Hall, though both the College and the winter gardens escaped. In the coming days discussions on reconstruction led to the proposal that the entire site be transferred to the College which would then apply for a Charter alone. The Drapers' Company obtained St Helen's Terrace, a row of six houses neighbouring the site, and in July 1931 it was agreed to give these over to the People's Palace for a new site adjacent to the old, which would now become entirely the domain of the College. Separation was now achieved. The Charter was now pursued, but the Academic Board asked for a name change, feeling that "East London" carried unfortunate associations that would hinder the College and its graduates. With the initial proposed name, "Queen's College", having already been taken by another institution and "Victoria College" felt to be unoriginal, "Queen Mary College" was settled on. The Charter of Incorporation was presented on December 12 1934 by Queen Mary herself.[10] Under the Charter
The Queens' Building The East End had suffered considerable bomb damage (although the College itself had incurred little) and consequently several areas of land near to the College site now became vacant. The former church of St Benets' to the immediate east of the College was now defunct and was demolished in 1950, with the space used to build a new block for physics, but most of the acquisitions in the immediate post war years were to the west of the college. Even the new People's Palace was no longer able to meet its needs and it was acquired by the College along with several pieces of land that together formed a significant continuous stretch along the Mile End Road. New buildings for engineering, biology and chemistry were built on the new sites, whilst the arts took over the space vacated in the original building, now renamed the Queens' Building (to reflect the support and patronage of both Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother). Limited accommodation resulted in the acquisition of further land in South Woodford (now directly connected to Mile End tube station by means of the Central Line's eastward extension), upon which tower blocks were established. Consequently, student numbers continued to expand. The College also obtained the Co-operative Wholesale Society's clothing factory on the Mile End Road which was converted into a building for the Faculty of Laws (and some other teaching), despite being physically separated from what was now a campus to the west. [12] From the mid 1960s until the mid 1980s the College was in a period of uncertainty and flux. Much planning was dominated by the "BLQ scheme" which proposed to link Queen Mary College with the London Hospital Medical College and St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College with a joint facility in Mile End, but the land was not yet available. Over the period land that come onto the market was purchased with the intention to consolidate as soon as possible. The Queen Mary College Act 1973 was passed "to authorise the disposal of the Nuevo burial ground in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets and to authorise the use for other purposes thereof..." and gave the authority to disinter and reinter most of the graves to Dytchleys. A further link with both The London and St. Bartholomew's was made in 1974 when an anonymous donor provided for the establishment of a further hall of residence in Woodford, to be divided equally between Queen Mary College students and the two medical colleges.[13] At the start of the 1980s changing demographics and finances caused much concern through the university sector and led to a reorganisation of the University of London. At Queen Mary some subjects, such as Russian and Classics were discontinued, whilst the College became one of five in the University with a concentration of laboratory sciences, including the transfer of science departments from Westfield College, Chelsea College, Queen Elizabeth College and Bedford College.[14] From the mid 1980s onwards the College began expanding across the newly acquired land to the east, taking the campus to the Regent's Canal. A part of the burial ground remains to this day but the rest of the area has been absorbed by the College's expansion. The long planned Pre Clinical Medicine building for the BLQ Scheme finally materialised in the late 1980s, further strengthening the ties between the three colleges.[15] In 2007 parts of the School of Law ? postgraduate facilities and the Centre for Commercial Law Studies? moved to premises in Lincoln's Inn Fields in central London. Westfield CollegeQueen Mary & Westfield College
The arms of Queen Mary & Westfield College (prior to the merger with the medical schools), combining details from the arms of the two individual colleges. The triple crowns come from the arms of Queen Mary College, originating in the Drapers' arms. Continued uncertainty about the future of Westfield College led to its merger with Queen Mary in 1989 to form Queen Mary & Westfield College (often abbreviated to QMW). Over subsequent years, activities were concentrated on the Queen Mary site, with the Westfield site eventually sold off. Merger with the medical schoolsA reorganisation of medical education within the University of London resulted in most of the freestanding medical schools being merged with existing large colleges to form multi-faculty institutions. In 1995 the London Hospital Medical College and St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College merged together and into Queen Mary & Westfield College to form Barts and The London, Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry. Public name changeIn 2000 the college changed its given name to Queen Mary, University of London. However the College's charter has not been reissued and its legal name remains Queen Mary & Westfield College. The purchase, in 2007, of a car maintenance shop on Mile End Road has resulted in its demolition to make way for a new humanities building. University of London Institute in ParisQueen Mary collaborates with Royal Holloway, University of London to help run programmes at a remote college of the University of London in Paris, France, known as the University of London Institute in Paris (ULIP). This offers undergraduate and graduate students the chance to study University of London ratified French Studies degrees in France. University RankingsQueen Mary was ranked 100th in The Times Higher Education Supplement rankings of higher education institutions worldwide in 2004,[16] but moved down to joint 112th place in 2005, alongside Humboldt University of Berlin.[17] In 2006, it had moved back up to be joint 99th,[18] but moved down again in 2007 to the world's 149th best higher education institution, along with City University of Hong Kong.[19] The Times Higher Education Supplement's peer review-based separate table for the top 100 international Universities in Arts and Humanities subjects included Queen Mary in joint 21st place in the world, alongside University College London.[17] The Shanghai Jiao Tong University's 2007 Academic Ranking of World Universities placed it 57 - 80 in Europe and 151 - 201 globally, putting it level with LSE, Durham and St. Andrews.[20] The 2007 CHE-ExcellenceRanking, examining the academic performance of graduate programs in natural sciences, placed Queen Mary in the European top group for biology and physics.[21] In addition, The Guardian Newspaper's League Tables placed it 12th in the UK in 2005, 42nd by The Times, 28th in 2006. Queen Mary has also been ranked the sixth best UK university for student employability [22] - with the second highest UK graduate starting salary.[23] In the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise, it achieved the highest possible rating of 5*, which is very rarely granted, for Law; Linguistics; and Iberian and Latin American Languages. Moreover, it was given the second highest rating of 5, still indicating international excellence, for Clinical Dentistry; Physics; Pure Mathematics; Statistics and Operational Research; Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering; Metallurgy and Materials; Geography; Economics and Econometrics; English Language and Literature; French; German, Dutch and Scandinavian Languages; Russian, Slavonic and East European Languages; and History. Over 80 per cent of its research staff is working in departments where research is of international or national excellence.[24] In 2006, the Guardian University Guide ranked QMUL top in the country for Physics.[25] Notable staff
Notable alumni
In addition, the musician Pete Doherty attended Queen Mary, but left before completing his course. Students' accommodationMany QMUL students are accommodated in the college's own halls of residence or other accommodation; QMUL students are also eligible to apply for places in the University of London intercollegiate halls of residence, such as Connaught Hall. Most students in college or university accommodation are first-year undergraduates or international students. The majority of second and third-year students and postgraduates find their own accommodation in the private sector. See also
ReferencesExternal links
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