The university doubled in size in four years, and has taken advantage of urban regeneration programmes in one of Britain’s newest cities to expand its facilities and create among the newest university campuses.

The main campus, in the city centre, now has a well-appointed science complex and a new design centre.

The Sir Tom Cowie campus at St Peter’s, an award-winning 24-acre site by the banks of the Wear, initially housed the business school and the informatics centre.

To these is being added a £20- million arts, design and media centre, the first phase of which opened in 2003. An £8.5-million redevelopment of the city campus is now complete, having added the Gateway, a one-stop shop for students bringing together a wide range of services.

Developments have been planned with an eye to history, for example incorporating a working heritage centre for the glass industry at the heart of the new campus, which is built around a 7th-century abbey described as one of Britain’s first universities.

Tradition

The glass and ceramics design degree carries on a Sunderland tradition – the National Glass Centre was one of the features of the new campus – while the courses in automotive design and manufacture serve the region’s new industrial base.

The large pharmacy department is another strength and the well-equipped School of Computing and Technology is one of the largest in the UK with over 3,000 students.

Teaching assessments improved after a poor start. The biosciences recorded the university’s only perfect scores, but nursing and anatomy and physiology came close to joining them.

The last research assessments were more impressive, registering a big improvement on 1996 and representing the best performance of any new university in terms of average grades per member of staff.

Although no subjects reached the top two grades, the 44 per cent of academics entered for assessment was the most in any former polytechnic, and art and design, English and history all managed grade 4. The successes made the university particularly resentful of the Government’s plans to concentrate research funding further.

Multinationals

Sunderland is making the most of the opportunity to link up with the multinational companies that have arrived on its doorstep. The Institute for Automotive and Manufacturing Advanced Practice has a team of 40 researchers and consultants working with local businesses, while nearby Nissan played an important role in designing a course in automotive product development.

The Sony media centre provides students with excellent television and video production facilities. The university has a determinedly local focus, aiming to double the number of students coming from an area which has little tradition of sending students to higher education.

Nearly four undergraduates in ten now come from “low participation neighbourhoods” – by far the largest proportion at any English university and more than twice the national average for the subjects on offer. A pioneering access scheme offers places to mature students without A levels, as long as they reach the required levels of literacy, numeracy and other basic skills.

Tasters

The Learning North East initiative, based on Sunderland’s successful pilot for the University for Industry, even offers free taster courses to take at home. Over 40 per cent of the undergraduates have a working-class background, and the projected dropout rate has dropped from more than a quarter to less than one in five in recent years.

Provision for disabled students is excellent, with award-winning information produced for those with disabilities, trained support staff in every academic school as well as in the libraries and special modules to help dyslexics. The campus also houses the North East Regional Access Centre, which assesses the learning support requirements of students with disabilities and specific learning difficulties. There is special provision among the 2,200 residential places.

Sunderland itself is fiercely proud of its identity and has the advantage of a coastal location but, despite the city title, with the exception of the impressive new football ground, it has the leisure facilities of a medium-sized town. Those in search of big cultural events or serious nightlife head for Newcastle, which is less than half an hour away by Metro.

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