Leeds Metropolitan University is situated in Leeds, West Yorkshire, with campuses in the city centre and in the suburb of Headingley. It gained university status in 1992; prior to this date it was known as Leeds Polytechnic. The number of students is listed by the HESA 2008/09 data as the 15th largest in Britain.
The current Vice Chancellor, Professor Susan Price, joined in January 2010 and three new deputy Vice Chancellors have been appointed to lead the areas of strategic development, research and enterprise, and student experience.
The university’s origins can be traced back to 1824, with the foundation of the Leeds Mechanics Institute. Leeds Polytechnic was formed in 1970 and was a constituent part of the Leeds Local Education Authority until it became an independent Higher Education Corporation on 1 April 1989. In 1992 the institution was given University status.
Lord Woolmer of Leeds is Chair of the Board at Leeds Metropolitan. Lord Woolmer has been a member of the House of Lords since 1999. He was Chairman of the House of Lords Selection Committee on European Internal Market Policies for four years and is currently a member of the Select Committee on European Economic and International Trade Policies.
In November 2006, the University won the award for "outstanding contribution to the local community" at the annual higher education awards ceremony hosted by The Times Higher Education Supplement. It also came second in the main category, "the University of the Year", which was won by the University of Nottingham. In this category, the University was highly commended for its "low-charging, high impact" strategy.
In June 2007, Leeds Met received recognition of its environmentally friendly attitude by being ranked number one in the UK in the Green League 2007: a ranking of sustainability in the higher education sector, compiled by People & Planet.
Read more about Leeds Metropolitan University: History, Accommodation, Leeds Met Repository, Partner Colleges, Partnerships, The Student Wiki, Students' Union
Famous quotes containing the words metropolitan and/or university:
“In metropolitan cases, the love of the most single-eyed lover, almost invariably, is nothing more than the ultimate settling of innumerable wandering glances upon some one specific object.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“In bourgeois society, the French and the industrial revolution transformed the authorization of political space. The political revolution put an end to the formalized hierarchy of the ancien regimé.... Concurrently, the industrial revolution subverted the social hierarchy upon which the old political space was based. It transformed the experience of society from one of vertical hierarchy to one of horizontal class stratification.”
—Donald M. Lowe, U.S. historian, educator. History of Bourgeois Perception, ch. 4, University of Chicago Press (1982)