‘Nottingham, one of the long established agricultural higher education establishments in the UK’
University of Nottingham
Great to see your 10 of the best entry. As the article points out, there are many other great places and I thought I would just mention a few points about the University of Nottingham, one of the long established agricultural higher education establishments in the UK.
* Midlands Agricultural College (MAC) was incorporated into the University of Nottingham as its School of Agriculture in 1948. The agricultural programmes at Nottingham are now hosted within our School of Biosciences, led from the Division of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
* For 2012 entry we have launched three new agricultural BSc Hons degrees – Agricultural and Environmental Sciences; Agricultural and Crop Sciences and Agricultural and Livestock Production Sciences – not many places are showing such investment in new agriculturally-focused degrees. These are all in addition to our BSc Agriculture degree and related courses such as Animal Science, Plant Science, Environmental Science and Food Science.
* Based at the Sutton Bonington Campus, Nottingham opened (five years ago) the first Vet School in the UK for 50 years. This means we have Agricultural, Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine and Science being delivered from our campus. The campus is nestled in the countryside of south Nottinghamshire, with free regular transport to the University Park Campus near to Nottingham city centre – the free bus extends into the evening to do night club drop-offs too.
* We have a 440ha university farm (dairy and arable) with a robotically milked herd of Holsteins averaging 11,000 litres; the farm is adjacent to the campus and is used directly in teaching across all years of the undergraduate degrees.
* Our agricultural courses have industry opportunities which include competitive industry scholarships
* We are ranked as number one for “Research Power” in the Agriculture, Food and Veterinary Science Research Assessment Exercise grouping – our research feeds directly into our teaching. All BSc Hons students do a final year research project which counts for nearly 25% of their overall degree mark – so they get a really good appreciation of the importance of research to the future of agriculture
* We have exciting research programme going on across animal science, crop science and agricultural business management and economics. These extend across many subject areas – for example, we have a research project examining using wheat straw as a feedstock for second generation liquid transport fuel (as a petrol substitute)
* Students have great international opportunities – in addition to our own Nottingham campuses in Malaysia and China, we have links with leading Universities in mainland Europe through the Erasmus scheme and also across the globe with our “Universitas 21” club of leading institutions facilitating student exchange programmes.
* We have undergraduate, masters (taught – MSc) (research – MRes) and PhD students from an extensive range of countries
* Getting a degree from Nottingham is a great addition to the CV!
* You may be familiar with one of our third year students – Mike Neaverson who has contributed to the FW over the last year and continues to do so.
* … plus we regularly top the league tables for agriculture courses
I guess it was a hard choice to decide which places went in to your first top 10 article, but I hope the above gives you some pointers as to why Nottingham should definitely be in the next list.
writes Dr Paul Wilson, course manager for the Agricultural degrees at the University of Nottingham
nottingham review