Sheffield Hallam has been undergoing a physical transformation designed to alter its image and cater for an even bigger student population.

Its main site is in the heart of Sheffield and when the Faculty of Arts, Technology, Engineering and Sciences sets up home bordering the city’s cultural industries quarter in 2008, there will be only two campuses.

Development has been continuing apace, with £81 million already spent on teaching and learning facilities and as much again earmarked for projects due for completion by 2010.

They will support key areas for the university, including creative and digital disciplines, health and social care. An atrium provides social space for staff and students, and innovative library developments take pride of place on both campuses.

Business and management courses, which account for easily the biggest share of places, have their own city-centre headquarters.

Development

The Collegiate Crescent campus, a former teacher training college, houses education, health and community studies. The students’ union has taken over the spectacular but ill-fated National Centre for Popular Music, with facilities described by the former higher education minister Kim Howells as the best he had seen.

While most of the development has been on the main campus, adjoining the main bus and rail stations, the latest stage has seen the opening of a new social centre on the Collegiate Crescent site.

The £14-million development that opened in 2005 has allowed the Faculty of Health and Wellbeing to almost double in size, as extra provision is made for nursing, radiotherapy, physiotherapy and social work. The Centre for Sport and Exercise Science, with its £6-million research facility, won glowing praise from inspectors, and is one of Europe’s largest centres of its kind, with more than 2,000 students.

Teaching grades improved steadily after a disappointing start, with physics, psychology and hospitality, sport, leisure and tourism recording perfect scores. Physics has since been dropped as an undergraduate subject, but a new science learning centre is among a series of developments in this area.

Top performers

Maths and geography were the top performers in the 2007 National Student Survey. Research in art and design, history and materials were all rated nationally outstanding with significant work of international standard in the last research assessments. The university has since recruited a sports engineering group, which gained the top rating in that exercise.

Sheffield Hallam traces its origins in art and design back to the 1840s and celebrated the centenary of education and teacher training in 2005.

It is now one of the largest of the new universities, with more than 30,000 students, including high proportions of part-time and mature students, and more than 1,000 taught on franchised courses in further education colleges. Business and industry are closely involved in the development hundreds of courses, with almost half of the students taking sandwich course placements with employers.

More than 200 “specialist flexible courses” mix part-time study, distance learning and work-based learning. The university leads two national teaching centres, one for fostering employability and the other promoting autonomous learning. It is also a partner in a third, led by Coventry University, on e-learning in the professions.

Online learning

A “virtual campus” offers students e-mail accounts and cheap equipment to access the growing volume of online courses, assignments and discussion groups provided by the university, even when they are at home or on work placements. A third of undergraduates come from working-class homes and almost one in five from areas that send few students to higher education.

The projected dropout rate of almost 13 per cent is among the lowest in the new universities and is significantly better than the national average for the subjects offered and the students’ entry qualifications. Such is Sheffield Hallam’s size that it is not possible to guarantee all first years university-owned accommodation, although the large local intake means that many live at home.

Sports facilities are supplemented by those provided by the city for the World Student Games. The impressive swimming complex, for example, is on the university’s doorstep.

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