De Montfort University
De Montfort University Leicester is a public university in the city of Leicester, England. It was established in accordance with the Further and Higher Education Act in 1992 as a degree awarding body. The name De Montfort University was taken from Simon de Montfort, a 13th-century Earl of Leicester.
De Montfort University has approximately 27,000 full and part-time students, 3,240 staff and an annual turnover in the region of £168 million. The university is organized into three faculties: Business and Law ; Health and Life Sciences ; and Technology, Arts, and Culture and Art, Design, and Humanities. It is a Sustainable Development Hub, focusing on Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, an initiative by the United Nations launched in 2018. The Department for Education awarded the university an overall Silver rating in the 2023 Teaching Excellence Framework. It is a member of the Association of Commonwealth Universities.
History
Origins
The university's origins are in the Leicester School of Art, established in 1870 on a voluntary basis. The school expanded in response to the changing needs of late 19th-century industry; leading to the introduction of subjects such as engineering, building and machine drawing. By 1897, it was clear the buildings being used were no longer suitable. £25,000 was raised to build "a very handsome school that would be enormous credit to the town and... so that it would answer its purpose for the next 100 years". The building in question is the Hawthorn Building, which today still houses the sciences; in the shape of the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences. At the time of the first phase its construction, there were 500 art students and 1,000 technical students. In 1903, a letter from His Majesty's Inspector praised the success of the technical subjects. Increasing demand for courses prompted an extension to the Hawthorn Building in 1909. In 1919, further properties were rented. The Duchess of Atholl laid the foundation stone of Hawthorn's new west wing in 1927; by which time the establishment was known under by the joint name of The Leicester Colleges of Art and Technology.In 1930, the college was recognised for the external degree course in Pharmacy of the University of London, and the Pharmaceutical Chemist Diploma of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. In 1934, the University of London recognised the college as suitable for preparing students for the External Degree in Engineering, and so the courses on offer developed apace. The prospectus for 1936–37 included details of various technically based schools, including the Schools of Architecture, Building and Building Crafts, and Engineering. The fourth phase of extensions to the Hawthorn Building was completed in 1938–39. The first accommodation was secured in 1946 when three houses were purchased by the university.
More space was needed to meet the academic demand, and so in 1948, F. Bray, Under Secretary of the Ministry of Education, opened the converted Downings Warehouse. In 1966, the new Fletcher building was opened by The Queen Mother. In the same year, a white paper, "A Plan for Polytechnics and Other Colleges", was published, leading to the creation of the City of Leicester Polytechnic.
City of Leicester Polytechnic
On 1 April 1969, it was the fourth polytechnic to be established, by Edward Short, Baron Glenamara, to be one of around 30 polytechnics planned.Under the provision of the Education Reform Act 1988, Leicester Polytechnic became a Higher Education Corporation, with Dame Anne Mueller appointed Chancellor in June 1991.
Fashion and textiles
By 1971 it had a well-established fashion department, that produced fashion shows.Janet Reger, with husband Peter Reger, set up a well-known lingerie company in 1966, and had trained in the department in the 1950s, when under Leicester College of Art. Leicestershire woman Liz Szadbey, studied Fashion at the Art College and with her husband George Davies founded Next plc in 1982, and was later the design director of Mothercare.
The department was nationally-known for its work in Contour Fashion and Knitwear Technology in the Fletcher Building. It was the only Contour Fashion degree in Europe, which started in 1947, after a request from the Corset Guild of England. Swimwear design started in 1965. The Qiana fabric of DuPont was designed from the mid-1970s, with the Lycra elastane fabric. Nearly all of the students in the School of Contour Design were female, with only one or two exceptions. It worked with the British Clothing Industry Association in the 1990s.
In the 1980s M&S had a university sponsorship scheme for 19 students taking Textiles courses at UMIST in Manchester, the University of Leeds and Leicester Polytechnic. In the 1980s, the department's fashion students were being often offered jobs before their course had finished, which was mostly the Contour Fashion students. The Polytechnic had the UK's largest faculty of art and design.
In cooperation with 22 companies and 4 universities, and the DTI, an automated knitwear research centre, known as CIMTEX, and factory, costing £7.6m, would be established from 1990. It opened in January 1992.
University status
Leicester Polytechnic became De Montfort University in accordance with the Further and Higher Education Act in 1992, establishing it as a degree-awarding body in its own right.File:Leicester Clock Tower Simon de Montfort 2.jpg|thumb|upright|A statue of Simon de Montfort on the Haymarket Memorial Clock Tower in Leicester
The name De Montfort University was chosen in allusion to Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, a prominent figure in establishing the Parliament of England in the 13th century. Honouring Simon de Montfort has been controversial, as in 1231 he expelled the Jews from Leicester. By taking his name the university's commitment to community values has been questioned.
From 6 August 1993, 550 cinemas showed a 30-second advert, and a TV advert was broadcast on Channel 4 from Monday 9 August until mid-October in 1993. The television advert was designed for people aged 17 to 19, and was the first time that cinema, television and print had advertised a university.
A £500,000 30-second cinema and TV commercial was again shown in mid-August 1994, with the first showing at Milton Keynes. Its message was 'Preparation for Life', voiced by Angus Deayton. The TV adverts ran from 15 August to 25 September 1994 on Channel 4 in Greater London, the Midlands and the North.
Expansion and contraction
In the 1990s the institution aimed to become a multi-campus collegiate university covering the entire East Midlands, and as such, the university swiftly acquired other campuses. Leicester Polytechnic built a new campus in Kents Hill in Milton Keynes, across the road from the Open University – the first brand-new higher education campus built in Britain for twenty years. This took its first students in 1991 and was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1992, prior to the official foundation of De Montfort University as a New University; it was branded The Polytechnic: Milton Keynes until it became De Montfort University Milton Keynes. Departments at Milton Keynes included Computer and Information Sciences, Built Environment and Business.On Thursday 9 December 1993, the Queen arrived at Leicester railway station, and visited Leicester Royal Infirmary, and in the afternoon visited the university to open the £9m Queen's Building, housing the Engineering department.
In 1994 De Montfort University took over the higher education activities of the Bedford College of Higher Education, while the further education section remained independent under the name Bedford College. The university absorbed the Lincolnshire College of Art in Lincoln, and the Lincolnshire College of Agriculture and Horticulture in Caythorpe, Lincolnshire in 1994; and the Riseholme Agricultural College in Riseholme, Lincolnshire and the Leicester-based Charles Frears College of Nursing and Midwifery in 1995.
Since 2000, the university's expansionist policy has been reversed, with all outlying campuses being sold off. The Bedford campus merged with the University of Luton to form the University of Bedfordshire; the campuses in Lincolnshire were transferred to the University of Lincoln; and the Milton Keynes campus was closed in 2003, with its buildings taken over by the Open University. The institution divested itself of its last outlying site, Charles Frears, in 2011, when the nursing school moved to the city centre campus.
Present day
The university has approximately 27,000 full and part-time students, 3,240 staff and an annual turnover in the region of £168 million. Its campus comprises ten halls of residence offering around 3,000 university sourced rooms, and is approximately a ten-minute walk from Leicester city centre.The proceeds from the campus sales have been ploughed back into the Leicester City Campus, which has consequently seen a large amount of development, including the construction of two new buildings and the extensive refurbishment of a third, the Edith Murphy building to house the students and staff of the School of Nursing and Midwifery, previously based at Charles Frears.
The Performance Arts Centre for Excellence, funded by a £4.5 Million grant from the Higher Education Funding Council for England, was opened in 2007 by the BBC's Creative Director Alan Yentob. A new building for the Faculty of Business and Law – the Hugh Aston building – designed by CPMG Architects opened in September 2009. The new Business and Law centre has the Magazine Square at its centre and cost £35 million.
The university's new sports facility, named the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Leisure Centre, was opened on campus on 30 July 2012 by Vice-Chancellor Dominic Shellard. The former John Sandford Site was renovated to a conference and events centre called The Venue@DMU. This was opened in September 2015. A new Arts and Design building opened in the centre of the Campus in September 2016, the Vijay Patel Building, which is split into the Arts Tower and the Design Wing.
In 2019, Vice-Chancellor Shellard resigned in advance of an Office for Students report which found serious and systematic failures in governance under his leadership.