Present
Selly Oak Colleges was a group of educational institutions which occupied a substantial campus in Selly Oak, a suburb in the south-west of Birmingham, England. The early initiative was from a group of members of the Society of Friends (Quakers), led by George Cadbury, but other Protestant Christian denominations quickly became involved. From 1922 the colleges were loosely coordinated through a Federation, which from 1960 was headed by a President. However in 2001 the largest college (Westhill College) passed into the hands of the University of Birmingham, and in the following years most of the remaining colleges closed, leaving two colleges which continue today, Woodbrooke, a study and conference centre for the Society of Friends, and Fircroft, a small adult education college with residential provision.
Read more about this topic: Selly Oak Colleges
Famous quotes containing the word present:
“Public morning diversions were the last dissipating habit she obtained; but when that was accomplished, her time was squandered away, the power of reflection was lost, [and] her ideas were all centered in dress, drums, routs, operas, masquerades, and every kind of public diversion. Visionary schemes of pleasure were continually present to her imagination, and her brain was whirled about by such a dizziness that she might properly be said to labor under the distemper called the vertigo.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“Oh! what a poor thing is human life in its best enjoyments!—subjected to imaginary evils when it has no real ones to disturb it! and that can be made as effectually unhappy by its apprehensions of remote contingencies as if it was struggling with the pains of a present distress!”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“I will venture to affirm, that the three seasons wherein our corn has miscarried did no more contribute to our present misery, than one spoonful of water thrown upon a rat already drowned would contribute to his death; and that the present plentiful harvest, although it should be followed by a dozen ensuing, would no more restore us, than it would the rat aforesaid to put him near the fire, which might indeed warm his fur-coat, but never bring him back to life.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)