24.10.2007
The idea of universities as active stakeholders in their local communities will be discussed at a Universities UK conference on Thursday 25 October.
Entitled “Uni and the community - new directions for public engagement”, the conference will look at how universities can manage studentification and how the benefits that students bring to university towns and cities can be fully nurtured.
The conference will be chaired by Professor Julian Crampton, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Brighton, who will briefly describe the work taking place at the university and how students and universities can be a positive force in their community.
“We need to turn the debate from how to manage the downside - minimising or mitigating negative student impact in university towns and cities - into how to manage the upside – finding and nurturing the mutual benefit between a university and its host community. In Brighton we have over 100 students taking up voluntary posts each year. We also have 200 students involved in community projects as part of a personal development module, learning for academic credit. Through our community network we fund over 50 projects at any one time as well as offering research expertise to community organisations from our academics. We, with other universities in Sussex, Hampshire and Kent, have recently won £3m funding from HEFCE to take forward work in university-community engagement, to develop health and well-being. This activity sits squarely alongside our work in teaching, learning, research and economic engagement.”
“At the start of the twenty-first century, we need more universities to commit to making connections of this kind and to finding ways of making our intellectual capital more widely available. But we also need to ensure that our engagement brings mutual benefit and that we learn from, as well as share, our intellectual capital with our partners.”
Dr Darren Smith, urban geographer from the University of Brighton, who coined the term studentification, will discuss the lessons that have been learnt and adopted since the publication of the UUK report in 2006 – ‘Studentification – a guide to opportunity, challenges and practices’.
Dr Smith commented: “We now need to broaden the debate wider than just looking at studentification. We need to more fully unlock and make transparent the benefits that students bring to our towns and cities. Ensuring students are integrated into established residential communities in sensitive and balanced ways is essential for more fully realising the multiple cultural and social benefits, not just the economic advantages. To do this, we need to learn to work with our partners in local government and other services to plan and realise these benefits more systematically. However, this means that we need more research so that we are armed with a strong message when talking to our partners.”
For more information please visit the Universities UK site.
Contact: Marketing and Communications, University of Brighton, 01273 643022
