Sutton Bonington Campus
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sutton Bonington Campus is a site of the University of Nottingham, and houses the School of Biosciences and the School of Veterinary Medicine and Science. The campus is a 160,000 m² site situated in a rural location near Sutton Bonington village, 12 miles (20km) south of the University's principle site University Park Campus. The campus contains research buildings and teaching facilities, a large library and is also home to Bonington Hall, the universities largest hall of residence, which accommodates around 650 students (in reality it is a series of small halls rather than one big hall). A 16 km² (400 acre) farm, University Farm and a dairy are also attached to the site.
The Campus has a refectory serving cafeteria-style hot food; The Mulberry Tree cafe serviving sandwhiches and coffee, a small private function room (Oak Room) for 10-20 people; a student bar and linked JCR, and a non-smoking area linked to the bar (The Octagon - often used for external meetings); a small sub-branch of Natwest bank; a Londis and a Blackwells bookshop. Outside of undergraduate term-time, all of these facilities have shorter opening hours. The campus also has a single cashpoint.
Sports facilities include a gym, a sports hall, and an astro-turf pitch. External sports facilities are relatively spacious and run alongside the University between the main road and the railway line. All sports facilities are due to be reorganised and refurbished in the summer of 2007.
Travel to Nottingham is facilitated by a free shuttle bus between the distant and more central campuses, which leaves approximatly once an hour and takes 25 minuites. There is no train station nearby, Sutton Bonington Station having closed in the 1960's, the closest are at Loughborough or Nottingham (20-30 mins by taxi). The East Midlands Airport is very close with some flight paths being over the campus itself.
The campus was formerly the Midlands Agricultural and Dairy College before merging with the university in 1947, this was originally located in Kingston on Soar, about a two minute walk down the road from the campus, but relocated to its current location after the First World War. The site (which had been built but not yet occupied prior to the war) was used as a prisoner of war camp during the First World War¹. It was from here that a group of 21 German Officers, led by Captain Karl von Müller, escaped through an underground tunnel dug from one of the huts. 15 tons of soil are said to have been removed and hidden under the tiers of a lecture room. All but one of the prisoners were recaptured.
The campus is also home to the Nottingham Arabidopsis Stock Centre or NASC, which is attached to the plant sciences division.
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[edit] The School of BioSciences
The School consists of five divisions including Plant Sciences, Food Sciences, Animal Physiology, Nutritional Sciences, and Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. The School is a strong and strategically smart academic community with an internationally competitive research environment. It comprises 65 academic staff, 700 undergraduates, 120 taught postgraduates and 150 research postgraduates. The School's research philosophy is:
- to discover and apply fundamental knowledge from "Farm to Fork
- to ensure effective resource utilisation
- to enhance sustainability and
- to improve quality and safety of food production in the context of animal and human health.
The School's teaching quality is regularly recognised as outstanding. A score of 23 out of 24 was achieved in the most recent Teaching Quality Assessment and in 2005 the Times Higher Education Supplement stated: "Nottingham's undergraduate courses in Agriculture and related subjects produce the greatest degree of student satisfaction for the subject area in the country as a whole". The latest Research Assessment Exercise awarded grades of 5A to all divisions.
[edit] School of Veterinary Medicine and Science
The School of Veterinary Medicine and Science opened in september 2006 with its first intake of undergraduate students. The first new veterinary school in the UK for 50 years. Purpose-built, state-of-the-art learning, research and clinical teaching facilities have been provided by a comprehensive building programme at the Sutton Bonington Campus.
The school provides innovative, flexible course structure, combined with the pioneering excellence in science and medicine for which The University of Nottingham is world renowned.
[edit] Student Organisations
The Sutton Bonington Campus is the home of the Sutton Bonington Student Guild, an association of the University of Nottingham Students' Union. All officers of the 'SB Guild' are non-sabbatical and elected annually by show of hands. The Guild used to be separate from the union, and still has a degree of independence. The Guild runs its own clubs and societies (including the rugby team SBRFC, who play as the universities fourth team in the BURSA league). In addition it also has its own international students organisation (ISSB), and student run sound, lighting and projection unit (SB-TEC). Bonington Hall also has a student run JCR committee, however this works closely with the Guild, to such an extent that in practical terms the JCR acts as the social section of the guild.
The old students association for both the campus, and the hall of residence is known as OKA (the Old Kingstonian Association, the name pre-dating the move to Sutton Bonington!), and its members include both students from the Midlands Agricultural and Dairy College, and from the University. OKA produces a publication known as Agrimag annually (and has done so since at least the 1920's). OKA organises a reunion weekend on the third weekend in November every year for recently graduated students to return (this is also known as OKA).
[edit] Bonington Hall
Bonington Hall is the name given by the university to the student accommodation (halls of residence) at Sutton Bonington. It is owned by Opal Property Group. It is a mixed sex hall holding both undergraduates and postgraduates. In reality (like much at Sutton Bonington) it is not really a standard 'nottingham university hall' but a number of small separate ‘halls’ of varying age and design holding between 8 and 60 people, in addition to a shared dining room, laundry and bar. Bonington Hall holds approximately 650 students (an additional 300 student rooms having been built in 2006 by Ocon Construction). This makes it the university’s largest hall of residence (regaining the title from Jubilee's Newark hall). The hall has a JCR committee, but this operates more along the lines of the entertainment committee of the Student Guild as it arranges activities for both the residents of Bonington Hall and those students studying at Sutton Bonington but living off campus. The Halls at Sutton Bonington are named after local villages and are as follows:
- Kingston (The oldest hall), built just before the first world war and used to house German POWs during the war, until recently it was an all male hall.
- Normanton (originally built as an all female hall, and remained so until recently, now a postgrad hall)
- Wymeswold
- Ratcliffe
- Rempstone
- Kegworth
- Dishley
- Hathern
- Lockington
- Zouch
- Stanford
- Barton
- Everton House (postgrad only house at the far end of the arboretum)
- St. Michaels Flats (used to house students with families, mainly international students)
[edit] External links
- University of Nottingham Biosciences
- Sutton Bonington - About the University - University of Nottingham
- SB-TEC
[edit] References
1. Sutton Bonington Local History Society 1982, Discovering Sutton Bonington Past and Present, ISBN 0-9508309-0-9
