West London Institute of Higher Education

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The West London Institute of Higher Education was located in Isleworth, West London, UK from 1976 until 1995 when it merged with Brunel University.

Lancaster House, Osterley campus

West London Institute was created in 1976 from the merger of Borough Road and Maria Grey teacher training colleges and Chiswick Polytechnic. Borough Road College, on the Osterley campus, dated back to 1889 in that location, and to 1804 in its previous home on Borough Road in Southwark. As a College of Higher Education from 1976, West London received funding from local government, and it had to perform adequately in the higher education sector. It was placed under the direction of a geographer, Murie Robertson, who served as Vice-Principal. It awarded HNDs and undergraduate degrees (CNAA), and continued to train teachers. Operating over two campuses, one in East Twickenham,Middlesex and the other on the Great West Road in Osterley, Isleworth it had a strong reputation for sport, and trained several star athletes, particularly in track and field sports and rugby. The Borough Road name persisted on the rugby field and on the sports strip.

By the 1980s the degree and diploma programmes at WLIHE were operating in a variety of disciplines. The Osterley campus was home to Business Studies, Geography, Geology and Sports Studies, while the arts and humanities were clustered a mile away at the old Maria Grey College site at East Twickenham. The Institute's degrees were mostly joint honours awards in various combinations including: American Studies, Business Studies, English, Geography, Geology, History, Physiotherapy, Social Work, and Sports Studies. The Twickenham site also contained a ballet and dance school. By the 1990s a few Masters programmes were also offered, for example in Social Work, and Environmental Change. A small number of PhDs were also awarded across the disciplines. The British and Foreign Schools Society[1] kept an archive and ran a National Religious Education Centre on the Osterley site. For its size and status (Higher Education colleges in the UK were not really expected to be high research performers), the Institute performed relatively well, with several Departments achieving national recognition in the Research Assessment Exercises of the 1980s and 1990s 1996 here, and a few staff held national research awards from the ESRC and other bodies.

For this reason the merger approach by the Vice Chancellor of [Brunel University], Michael Sterling, went amicably - WLIHE had expertise and subject areas that Brunel did not. In 1993 WLIHE ceased to exist - for the next two years, its campuses and departments were known as Brunel University College, under the stewardship of a Provost, Prof. Eric Billett; and then simply Brunel University from 1995. Then Brunel decided to centralise its operations on its Uxbridge campus, 8 miles away. By this time, many departments had already moved to Uxbridge. The East Twickenham campus - which contains several older buildings and has a riverfront location - was sold off in 2005. The Osterley campus suffered the same fate in 2006.

The merger with Brunel was generally seen as a positive development by WLIHE staff, given the attraction of a University name for student recruitment and prestige. Almost all staff continued in their jobs, eventually moving to Uxbridge, although the greater expectation of research output at a 'proper' university forced a few into early retirement. In addition, Sterling's replacement, Stephen Schwartz, later forced several staff into redundancy, closed the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences[[2]], and merged several other groups. The Brunel merger ended most teacher-training activity. The subsequent sale of the two campuses is mourned, and the history [3] slowly being erased in publicity material: for example in 2007, "Brunel celebrates the unification of the entire University on one campus for the first time in 25 years" [4] with no mention of its lost assets.

[edit] Alumni

Ian Taylor (1976) GB Hockey goalkeeper and Olympic gold medalist
Kevin Browring (1978) Wales National Ruby Union coach
Kathy Smallwood-Cook (1981) 13 medals at the Olympics, World, European and Commonwealth Games in athletics
Paul Stimpson (1981) GB and England Basketball Captain and most capped player of all time
Paul Honeyford, a successful author and linguist
Richard Hill (flanker) Rugby international cap.
Olympic athlete Iwan Thomas, double Silver medalist in 1996 Olympics and 1997 World Championships
Dave Heaven, a musician.
Ian Keary, professional starjumper

Former staff of some renown include:

Prof. Bill McGuire, UCL, geologist, TV presenter and author [5]
Dr. Iain Stewart, University of Plymouth, earth sciences television presenter and geologist [6]
Prof. David Marsland, "new right" sociologist.