Institution | Royal College of Science |
---|---|
Location | South Kensington, London, England, United Kingdom |
Established | 1881 |
President | Trinity Stenhouse |
Vice presidents | Roy Wang, Julia Purrinos de Oliveira, Anthea MacIntosh-LaRoque, Runtian Wu |
Honorary secretary | Amir Rahman |
Treasurer | Sorina Andrei |
Members | c. 3,000 |
Affiliations | Constituent Union of Imperial College Union |
Colours | |
Website | rcsu.org.uk |
The Royal College of Science Union (RCSU) is a student union and science outreach organisation at Imperial College London which represents over 3,000 students in the university's Faculty of Natural Sciences. It manages the student societies for the departments of Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biochemistry, and Biology. The RCSU runs Science Challenge, a national science communication competition, and publishes the Broadsheet science magazine.
The RCSU was founded in 1881, following the creation of the Royal College of Science in the same year. The RCS was established to support training of the non-Earth Sciences within the Royal School of Mines which had been founded in 1853 following the merger of the Royal College of Chemistry with the Government School of Mines and Science Applied to the Arts in 1853. [1]
The RCSU was briefly disbanded for a few years in the early 2000s following the College's decision to split up the Sciences Faculty into separate Faculties of Physical and Life Sciences, with the RCSU at the time deciding to follow suit, splitting into the Physical Sciences Union and the Life Sciences Union. In 2006 however, following the College's decision to re-merge the faculties, [2] the presidents of the two constituent unions, Kilian Frensch and Mariko Tavernier, proposed to re-merge the two student unions, with the new union named the Royal College of Science Union following a popular vote. The re-merged RCSU was first led jointly by Kilian Frensch and Mariko Tavernier for the remainder of the college year, before Jad Marrouche became its first sole president the following year, and is currently led by Stefano Fiocca.
The RCSU Science Challenge is a scientific writing competition created in 2006 by the presidents of the newly-reformed RCSU, Kilian Frensch and Mariko Tavernier. It was run by Jad Marrouche, who became RCSU president the following year. Initially only for students of Imperial College, from its second year it was expanded and made open to schools students from across the country. [3] The competition invites notable science communicators to judge the entries, with recent judges including BBC New science correspondent Pallab Ghosh, physicist John Pendry and climatologist Brian Hoskins. The Science Challenge Ambassador is Lord Robert Winston who has judged the overall winner of the competition since its inception. The current Science Challenge chair is Vanessa Madu.
The RCSU has a number of traditions, including the chanting of the kangela at bar nights and the sport of mascotry, guarding a college mascot called Theta. Theta takes the form of a thermometer, chosen as an instrument used by all scientific disciplines. Theta has had a number of incarnations, with the current mascot, Theta Mk.IV being a seven-foot steel thermometer weighing over 100 pounds (45 kg). [4]
The RCSU also keeps an 'inviolate mascot' (i.e. it cannot be stolen), which is a Dennis N-Type fire engine known as Jezebel. Built in 1916, 'Jez' was donated to the college in 1955 when she finished her working life, and is equipped with 9-litre engine capable of pumping around 500 gallons of water per minute. [5] There is a dedicated RCS Motor Club which maintains and takes care of Jezebel. She is involved with charity work and appears at various motor shows.
The Kangela is reputed to be an ancient Swahili Fertility Chant [Royal College of Science Handbook, 1973] first adopted by the RCSU in the middle 1950s as a War Cry on the occasion of Morphy Day.
The words are as follows:
Kangela Armadola Kangela Armadola Kangela Armadola Teia, Teia, Teia, Pakamisso, Pakamisso, Inkangala, Kubinala, Watsi, R.C.S.
The word kangela means "to watch" in Zulu. [6]
Imperial College London is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cultural area that included the Royal Albert Hall, Victoria & Albert Museum, Natural History Museum and royal colleges. In 1907, Imperial College was established by a royal charter, which unified the Royal College of Science, Royal School of Mines, and City and Guilds of London Institute. In 1988, the Imperial College School of Medicine was formed by merging with St Mary's Hospital Medical School. In 2004, Queen Elizabeth II opened the Imperial College Business School.
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The Royal College of Science was a higher education institution located in South Kensington; it was a constituent college of Imperial College London from 1907 until it was wholly absorbed by Imperial in 2002. Still to this day, graduates from the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Imperial College London receive an Associateship to the Royal College of Science. Organisations linked with the college include the Royal College of Science Union and the Royal College of Science Association.
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Imperial College Union is the students' union of Imperial College London. It is host to many and varied societies, and has student bars situated around Albertopolis. The Union is based in the north wing of the Beit Quadrangle on Prince Consort Road.
Imperial College School of Medicine (ICSM) is the undergraduate medical school of Imperial College London in England, and one of the United Hospitals. It is part of the college's Faculty of Medicine, and was formed by the merger of several historic medical schools, with core campuses at South Kensington, St Mary's, Charing Cross, Hammersmith and Chelsea and Westminster. The school ranked 3rd in the world for medicine in the 2022 Times Higher Education World University Rankings.
Westminster College is a private college in Fulton, Missouri. It was established in 1851 as Fulton College. America's National Churchill Museum is a national historic site located on campus. The school enrolled 609 students in 2020.
Imperial Valley College is a public community college in Imperial County, California. It was founded in 1962 and enrolls around 7,000 students per year. In April 2022, Lennor M. Johnson, Ed.D., was appointed president of the college. The main campus is located on a 160-acre (0.65 km2) site in the city of Imperial with extended campuses in El Centro and Brawley.
The Royal College of Science Motor Club was set up in 1955 to maintain "Jezebel", a 1916 Dennis N-Type fire engine and a mascot of the students of the Royal College of Science, one of the founding three colleges of Imperial College London, in South Kensington.
The City and Guilds College Union represents students who are undertaking courses from the departments of Aeronautical, Chemical, Civil, Design, Electrical, and Mechanical Engineering, together with Bioengineering and Computing at the college. Other students within the faculty are represented by the Royal School of Mines Students' Union. These follow the names of two of the three former 'Constituent Colleges' that formed Imperial in the early 20th century. The City and Guilds Union's name derives from the original City and Guilds College from which the faculty was formed. The union hosts an annual welcome dinner, and members of the union are traditionally known as Guildsmen and Guildswomen. The students' union brings together the 8 departmental societies, and organises events throughout the year, and to welcome new students.
The Faculty of Engineering is the engineering school of Imperial College London, and one of the three main faculties the college. It was formed in 2001 from the former City and Guilds College and the Royal School of Mines—two of the three original constituent colleges of Imperial College when the latter was formed in 1907. The faculty is located at Imperial's main South Kensington campus, where teaching and research take place.
The Faculty of Natural Sciences is one of the three main faculties of Imperial College London in London, England. It was formed in 2001 from the former Royal College of Science, a constituent college of Imperial College which dated back to 1848, and the faculty largely consists of the original departments of the College. Undergraduate teaching occurs for all departments at the South Kensington campus, with research being split between South Kensington and the new innovation campus at White City.
Imperial College School of Medicine Students' Union (ICSMSU) is the students' union of the Imperial College School of Medicine. It is charged with representing and advocating for the educational, pastoral, social and extracurricular needs of all the undergraduate students within the Faculty of Medicine of Imperial College London, and is a constituent union of Imperial College Union.
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The history of Imperial College London can be traced back to the founding of the Royal College of Chemistry in 1845 in London, with some ancestral medical schools dating back to 1823. The college was formed in 1907 out of the Royal Colleges in South Kensington, and throughout the 20th century became central to the national strategy for technical education and research. It existed for most of its life as part of the University of London, only becoming independent in 2007.
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: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)Coordinates: 51°29′55.5″N0°10′35.5″W / 51.498750°N 0.176528°W