The University of Cumbria is a public university in Cumbria, with its headquarters in Carlisle[4][5] and other major campuses in Lancaster, Ambleside, and London. It has roots extending back to the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts, established in 1822, and the teacher training college established by Charlotte Mason in the 1890s. It opened its doors in 2007 as a university.[6][7]
The university is based upon the findings of a report by Sir Martin Harris.[8] This plan envisaged a university based upon a "distributed learning network", so that teaching will take place both at the university's main campuses, and at colleges of further education around the county. This solved a problem for remote areas that did not previously have direct access to higher education.
The headquarters of the university are in Carlisle. Its other major campuses are at Ambleside, Lancaster (formerly St Martin's College) and it has classrooms and open workspace in the "Energus" facility in Blackwood Road, Lillyhall, Workington. The university previously also had sites in Penrith (formerly University of Central Lancashire in Cumbria and before that Newton Rigg Agricultural College) and London. Newton Rigg has since been transferred to Askham Bryan College and the Tower Hamlets provision has moved to East India Dock Road. Furness College in Barrow-in-Furness has developed close links with the university and they share some facilities.
The Brampton Road campus was formerly the Cumbria Institute of the Arts, founded in October 1822 as the "Society for the Encouragement of the Arts", later Carlisle Art College and College of Art and Design.
The Brampton Road campus is now home to the university's Institute of the Arts, with over 1000 full-time arts students.
Ambleside
The Ambleside campus occupies the site of Charlotte Mason College, established after Mason's death in 1923, continuing the work of the "House of Education" she founded there in 1891. It operated independently as a teacher training college until the 1990s when it moved between Cumbria education authority, Lancaster University, and St Martin's College.[14]
On 1 December 2009, it was announced that the Ambleside campus would be "mothballed" at the end of July 2010, and would no longer take new undergraduate students. This was in spite of support pledged from Tim Farron MP for the campus and its students. A protest was held on 1 December 2009 by the student body.[5] The timing of the closure had led many to believe that the decision had been made some time ago.[15][16][17]
In July 2011, the university announced a plan to reopen the campus and increase student numbers at the Ambleside campus and this began in 2014.[18] Ambleside continues to host courses in outdoor studies, forestry, conservation business, leadership and sustainability.
From the start, the college planned to teach degrees as well as Certificates of Education and pioneered the four year BA Hons with qualified teacher status. By 1966 the college was teaching PGCE students.
The college then developed courses in nursing and later radiography, occupational health, social work and continuing professional development courses for health professionals. Strong relationships were forged with NHS trust training departments.
The college developed further courses in humanities, arts and sport, and a mini building boom ensued in the late 1990s with the development of the Sports Centre, Humanities building, Hugh Pollard Lecture Theatre, as well as student accommodation.
Penrith
Newton Rigg College was an agricultural college near Penrith, Cumbria, England, founded in 1896 as the Cumberland and Westmorland Farm School.[20] After joining the University of Cumbria, degree programmes including Forestry, Conservation, Outdoor Studies, Outdoor Leadership and Applied Sciences were taught there.[21] The National School of Forestry was set up here in the 1960s and has a long history of educating forest managers, which continues to the present day. Programmes moved to their new home in Ambleside in 2013 (Outdoors programmes) and 2014 (Forestry, Conservation, and Applied Sciences).
Further education provision and assets of the Newton Rigg campus were transferred to Askham Bryan College in March 2011, but the university continued to run higher education courses there for three years.[22]
Workington
The university has space at the "Energus" facility in Blackwood Road, Lillyhall, Workington. The facility opened in June 2009 and was the university's first presence in West Cumbria.[23]
At one stage the university had debts totalling £13,000,000 and in March 2010, it received a cash advance from HEFCE to enable it to pay staff.[29][30] It has since pulled itself out of debt and is profitable.[31]
In 2022 the Manchester Employment Tribunal found the university to have unfairly dismissed and discriminated against a pregnant employee during the COVID-19 pandemic. The HR department was described by the tribunal as disorganised and described the failure to conduct a consultation during the redundancy situation as a wholesale failure.[32] The employee was awarded £130,000 compensation.[33]
The university has five specialist departmental areas that offer a range of flexible, multidisciplinary courses:
Institute of Business, Industry and Leadership
Institute of Health
Institute of the Arts
Institute of Education
Institute of Science, Natural Resources and Outdoor Studies
The University of Cumbria provides education in Medical Imaging, Sports Development, Arts, Law, Education, Leadership and Economic Development, Conservation, Forestry, and the Uplands, and Mental Health and Wellbeing, among other subject areas.[37]
Student life
The majority of University of Cumbria campuses have sports teams which represent them in the British Universities and Colleges Sport leagues. Teams include: Cricket, Netball, Football, Hockey, Rugby League, Rugby Union, Badminton and Pool. All teams play their home games on Wednesdays afternoons at various University's sport venues.
^Humphries, Andrew (2015). "Newton Rigg College"(PDF). Cumbria Vernacular Buildings Group Newsletter: 3–6. Archived(PDF) from the original on 15 January 2021. Retrieved 13 January 2021.
