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Royal Holloway, University of London

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Royal Holloway, University of London
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Image:Rhulcoa.jpg

Motto Nil desperandum

(Latin for: There is no cause for despair; never despair).

Established Bedford College - 1849</br>Royal Holloway College - 1879</br>Merged in 1985 to form RHUL
Type Public
Endowment £48 million [1]
Principal Prof. Stephen Hill
Students 7,700
Location Egham, Surrey, England
Campus Suburban
Affiliations 1994 Group, University of London, ACU, AMBA
Website www.rhul.ac.uk

Royal Holloway, University of London (RHUL) is one of the larger institutions of the University of London. As of May 2006, the college had 7,700 enrolled students from 120 countries.

The college's campus is located at Egham, Surrey, just outside the boundary of Greater London. This was originally the campus of Royal Holloway College, an establishment founded by Victorian entrepreneur Thomas Holloway as a women-only college in 1879. Royal Holloway College became part of the University of London in 1900, and men were first admitted in 1965. In 1985, Royal Holloway College merged with Bedford College (another formerly all-women's college in London which was founded in 1849 and, just like Royal Holloway College, joined the University of London in 1900 and became fully co-educational in 1965). The merged college was named Royal Holloway and Bedford New College (RHBNC). This remains the official registered name of the college, though the name was changed for day-to-day use to "Royal Holloway, University of London" by the College Council in 1992.

Contents

[edit] Campus

The campus at Egham is dominated by its original building, known as the "Founder's Building", designed by William Henry Crossland and inspired by the Château de Chambord in the Loire Valley, France. The building was officially opened in 1886 by Queen Victoria, who allowed the use of "Royal" in the college's name. The Founder's Building is part of a campus which is set in 55 hectares (135 acres) of parkland and is within walking distance of Windsor Great Park. On-campus student accommodation is some of the most extensive available in the London area. The size of the campus has also allowed the college to develop some of the best sports facilities of any university institution in the London area, and helped build the college's reputation as one of the leading sporting institutions in the South-East of England. The campus is also well-known for its Picture Gallery, located within the Founder's Building, housing a collection of over seventy pieces of Victorian era art given to the college at the time of its founding by Thomas Holloway.

Founder's Building

















The college is currently in the middle of a £100 million investment scheme which has seen the addition of new buildings and the refurbishment of some of the old. The scheme has seen the building of 564 new study bedrooms in two new blocks, Gowar and Wedderburn, which will be used as accommodation for rowers at the 2012 Olympic Games. Similar accommodation blocks will be built to replace Athlone, Cameron and Williamson halls, three aging accommodation blocks built in the 1960s and knocked down in 2006. The new buildings have been designed to be environmentally friendly, featuring a sedum-planted undulating roof, and cedar shingles to reflect the surrounding woodland setting, and the rooms will have en suite showers and toilets, internet connections and well-equipped kitchens. These are due to completed by September 2007. In addition to the new accommodation, the campus now has the new £8 million Windsor Building, a lecture theatre complex opened in September 2006, featuring a state-of-the-art 400 seat auditorium and eight new seminar rooms. The aging Bourne Laboratory science complex is being rejuvenated in a £12 million scheme, whilst an extension to the management department is also under construction.


[edit] Current Position

Image:RoyalHolloway FrontEntrance.jpg

Royal Holloway is recognised as one of the UK’s leading teaching and research institutions, ranking among the top 10 elite research-led UK universities (in the most recent Research Assessment Exercise). All the Royal Holloway academic departments earned the top three ratings for research, with scores of 4, 5 and 5* in the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise.

The Top Universities 2007 Guide published by The Times newspaper (5 June 2006) ranked Royal Holloway 12th in a table of 109 institutions surveyed around the UK. The table places Royal Holloway 4th in the University of London, after Imperial College London, LSE and University College London, accelerating it above King's College London this year.

The Physics Department of Royal Holloway was ranked first in the United Kingdom by The Guardian newspaper [citation needed]. The School of Management has all three of its MBA programmes accredited by the prestigious AMBA. The departments of History, Geography, Psychology, Music, Drama, and Media Arts also have strong reputations, as do several of the European Language departments. In 1998 the college was awarded the Queen's Anniversary Prize in recognition of the work of the Information Security Group.

Royal Holloway also came 5th in a league table of UK universities in the 2005 ‘National Survey of Student Satisfaction’ (BBC survey).

[edit] Study Abroad Programme

RHUL has developed one of the UK's best study abroad programmes[citation needed] [2], allowing its students to spend a year in elite institutions including Boston College, the University of California (UC Berkeley, UCLA and the other campuses), and New York University in the United States; the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto in Canada; Korea University in Republic of Korea; the University of Sydney in Australia; and the National University of Singapore. Postgraduate students also have the opportunity to study at Yale University, making RHUL one of the few university institutions in the UK to be linked with an outstanding Ivy League university alongside the likes of Oxford University, Cambridge University, University College London, and Durham University.

[edit] Students' Union

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The Royal Holloway Students' Union (SURHUL) provides entertainment and pastoral services for the student body. This includes providing the on-campus entertainment and social venues through to organising and sponsoring the sport clubs and special-interest societies, and providing advice and counselling to students.

Like most students' unions in the United Kingdom, SURHUL is run entirely by the student body itself, headed by a team of elected student officers, including four paid sabbatical officers. In keeping with democratic practice, the elected officers' executive power is held in check by the legislative power of General Meetings. General Meetings take place every month during term time.

With little nearby off-campus activity, there is a great emphasis placed on providing entertainment for the students. As such on-campus entertainment and social life revolves around three student-run campus bars (Medicine, The Stumble Inn and Tommy's), with a fourth (Crosslands) run by the College. The main SURHUL building has a large function hall which hosts a wide variety of entertainment events three to four nights a week (plus functions on the other nights in Tommy's and Medicine) during term time. Medicine bar was reopened a few years ago after a refit and according to the official SURHUL website is one of the top five union bars in the country[citation needed]. Every three weeks the Union publishes its Communicate Card which outlines the forthcoming social events. At least one event runs each night, from a fancy dress night in the main hall, through to the weekly pub quiz in the Stumble Inn. The Union operates a strict security system and also provides a bus service which, for a small fee, ferries students back to off-campus accommodation in an effort to ensure student safety.

Towards the end of the academic year the Union organises the Summer Ball, the annual highlight of the social calendar. In recent years the RHUL Summer Ball has booked many high-profile talents, including well-known rock, pop and DJ acts such as Lemar, Jamiroquai, Brandon Block, Lisa Maffia, Rolf Harris, Steps, Republica, Wheatus and Atomic Kitten, and comedians such as Ali G. 2006 saw Rachel Stevens and the Bodyrockers headlining. The ball takes place at the end of the examination period, and is held in the quads of the Founder's Building. The ball includes fairground attractions and themed bars.


There are numerous societies run through the Union, spanning culture, religion and differing academic and artistic pursuits. One of the societies, the James Bond Appreciation Society (JBAS), runs a high-profile boat party on the River Thames every year. Through the Royal Holloway World Cinema Society, free screenings of movies from around the world in many different languages are available on campus during term time. The 2005/06 "Society of the Year" award went to the Islamic Society, primarily due to their fundraising activities for the 2005 Kashmir Earthquake relief effort. The People & Planet society received the VP Cup for their efforts in making Royal Holloway a fair trade university. Other societies include the Comedy society (which hosts stand up evenings throughout term time), the Institute for Impure Science (IFIS) the Science Fiction and Fantasy society, the longest running society, and Anime & Manga, which won society of the year for 2004/05. The Union also maintains a number of successful sports club, catering to sports as diverse as rowing and ultimate. The 2005/06 "Sports Club of the Year" award went to the Lacrosse team, although many of the sports teams enjoyed a high level of success in the 2005/06 season.

[edit] Insanity Radio

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Within the local area around Egham, SURHUL is known for its award-winning student radio station, Insanity. Established in 1997, Insanity broadcasts all-year round, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and is available locally over 1287 AM and worldwide over the internet. Insanity was named the UK's second-best student radio station in the Student Radio Association's Student Radio Awards in 2004 and 2005.






[edit] The Orbital Magazine

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The Student's Union also publishes a student magazine called The Orbital, which is published seven times a year. Each issue is loosely based around a theme, such as drugs, 'coolness' or love (for the Valentine's Day edition).

At the National Student Journalism Awards held on Friday 24th November 2006 in London, The Orbital was awarded Best Student Magazine. Judges from the media industry commented on the magazine's standards, describing it as "gritty, witty, relevant and coherent, packaged with good design and strong front covers." [[3]]



[edit] Media

The Founder's Building has been the centre of some media attention. The 2006 movie Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction was partly filmed in the Founder's Building during the summer of 2005. The character Sophie Neveu in the best-selling book The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown studied cryptography in the (real) Information Security Group at Royal Holloway. This book has now been made into a film starring Tom Hanks. The movie Howards End had some scenes shot inside one of the courtyards with the statue of Queen Victoria visible. [4] Founder's was also used as a university during the filming of "MacGyver: Lost Treasure of Atlantis" starring Richard Dean Anderson and Brian Blessed back in the summer of 1993. The Antiques Roadshow for the BBC has also filmed inside the Quads of the Founder's Building.

[edit] Notes

The Royal Holloway shield (top of page) was created following the merger of Bedford and Royal Holloway Colleges in 1985. The chequer design was taken from the Bedford College coat of arms, whilst the ermine spots (feather-like symbols representing ermine tails) are from Royal Holloway. The lozenge shape in the chequered pattern is a traditional heraldic symbol for women. The three crescents are taken from Thomas Holloway's own coat of arms, as can be seen on the statue in the South quad of the college.

[edit] Famous alumni

[edit] Fictional Alumni

[edit] See also

[edit] External links





Recognized bodies of the University of London

Birkbeck | Courtauld Institute of Art | Central School of Speech and Drama | Goldsmiths | Heythrop | Imperial | Institute of Cancer Research | Institute of Education | King's | London Business School | LSE | London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine | Queen Mary | Royal Academy of Music | Royal Holloway | Royal Veterinary College | St George's | SOAS | School of Pharmacy | UCL

Listed bodies

University of London Institute in Paris | School of Advanced Study | University Marine Biological Station, Millport

The 1994 Group (of smaller British research universities)
Bath | Birkbeck | Durham | East Anglia | Essex | Exeter | Goldsmiths College | Lancaster | Leicester | Loughborough | Queen Mary | Reading | Royal Holloway |
School of Oriental and African Studies | St Andrews | Surrey | Sussex | Warwick* | York
* Also a member of the Russell Group
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