The University of Sheffield is a university located in Sheffield, England. It was founded in 1905 and currently has 23,000 students. It is part of the Russell Group of Universities.

The university is known for its engineering faculty and its departments of archaeology, architecture and politics.

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 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.

Campus

The centre of the University of Sheffield’s campus 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 the central campus lies the Mappin Street campus. 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.

West of the central campus 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

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

Students and Faculty

The University of Sheffield's 23,000 students arrive mostly from the UK, but 2,500 are international students, many from Malaysia.

The university employs 5,500 staff in its faculties, including 1,100 professors and lecturers.

Student 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 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.

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.

Noted University of Sheffield Faculty

Angela Carter (1976 - 1978), author

Joanne Harris (2000), author

Hans Krebs (1935 - 1954), biochemist, Nobel Prize winner

Edward Mellanby, pharmacologist (discovered Vitamin D)

George Porter (1955 - 1966), chemist, Nobel Prize winner

William Sarjeant - geologist

Noel Sharkey (1994 - ), broadcaster

Noted University of Sheffield 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, 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

See also

Sheffield Hallam University

External links

University of Sheffield website (http://www.shef.ac.uk)

University of Sheffield Union of Students website (http://www.sheffieldunion.com)