The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) was a university based in the centre of the city of Manchester in England. It specialised in technical and scientific subjects and was a major centre for research. On 1 October 2004, it amalgamated with the Victoria University of Manchester (commonly called the University of Manchester)[1] to produce a new entity called the University of Manchester.
UMIST gained its royal charter in 1956 and became a fully autonomous university in 1994. Previously its degrees were awarded by the Victoria University of Manchester. The UMIST motto was Scientia et Labore (By Knowledge and Work).
Manchester Mechanics' Institute (1824–1882)
Manchester Mechanics' Institute, Cooper Street in 1825
The foundation of UMIST can be traced to 1824 during the Industrial Revolution when a group of Manchester businessmen and industrialists met in a public house, the Bridgewater Arms, to establish the Mechanics' Institute in Manchester, where artisans could learn basic science, particularly mechanics and chemistry.[2] Hundreds of such institutions were founded in towns and cities throughout the country and while many of the fine Victorian buildings built to house them remain, Manchester's alone survived as an independent institution serving some of its original educational aims throughout the 20th century.[3]
The meeting, convened by George William Wood on 7 April 1824,[2][3][4] was attended by prominent members of the science and engineering community, including:
John Dalton, who became known as the "father of atomic theory" and was vice-president of the institute from 1839 to 1841[4][5]
Sir Benjamin Heywood, a prosperous banker, acted as president of the Mechanics' Institute from 1824 to 1841;[2] his son, Oliver subsequently became president.[4]
A committee was elected to realise the planned institution, including Wood, Fairbairn, Heywood, Roberts and John Davies and the institute opened in 1825 with Heywood as chairman.[2]
However, the institute's intentions were paternal and no democratic control by its students was intended. In 1829, radical Rowland Detrosier led a breakaway group to form the New Mechanics' Institution in Poole Street, a move that had a serious effect on the recruitment and finances of the original institute. Subscriptions and memberships in 1830 and 1831 were an all-time low and only the gradual opening of the board up to election by the members rectified the situation. Detrosier's break away ultimately rejoined the institute.[2]
By 1840, the institute was established with 1,000 subscribers and a library of some 5,500 books. However, the increased popularity had been somewhat at the cost of science education as more and more lectures on non-scientific subjects were occupying its programmes.[2]
In 1883 secretary of the institution John Henry Reynolds reorganised the institution as a technical school using the schemes and examinations of the City and Guilds of London Institute. A new building was begun in 1895 and opened by the Prime Minister Arthur Balfour in October 1902.[6] On the site previously had been cheap crowded inner-city housing occupied by Irish immigrants.[7]
This is the western end of the Sackville Street Building, until 2005 known as the UMIST Main Building, pictured above, a Grade II listed building by Spalding and Cross with Renaissance motifs of Burmantoftsterracotta.[8] By this time the institution was called the Manchester Municipal School of Technology or fondly known as the Tech.[9] As a project of the Manchester City Council it includes in the decoration many portrayals of the city's coat of arms.
As befits its roots in the early chemical industry of the region the Tech had pioneered chemical engineering as an academic subject in Britain, indeed the lectures by George E. Davis in 1888 were highly influential in defining the discipline. Similarly in the 1920s it pioneered academic training in management, with the formation of a Department of Industrial Administration funded by an endowment from asbestos magnate Sir Samuel Turner.[10]
In 1905, the Tech become the Faculty of Technology of the Victoria University of Manchester, allowing the award of BSc and MSc degrees. The principal of the School of Technology was now also dean of the faculty and an ex officio member of the university's senate.[11]
In 1918, the institution changed name again to Manchester Municipal College of Technology. By 1949 over 8500 students were enrolled, however most still studying non-degree courses. The appointment of B. V. Bowden (later Lord Bowden) in 1953 marked the beginning of a phase of expansion.
On 29 July 1955 the institute received its own Royal Charter incorporating it as a university college under the name Manchester College of Science and Technology, and became separately funded by the University Grants Committee. The process of independence from the city was completed on 1 August 1956 when the Manchester Corporation transferred the assets of the Manchester Municipal College of Technology to the new college, with the principal of the municipal college becoming the first principal of the university college on the same day.[11]
The UMIST emblem as used in the late 20th century (based on the arms of the institute, derived from the coat of arms of the lords of the manor of Manchester)
By 1966 all non-degree courses were moved to the Manchester School of Design which is now part of Manchester Metropolitan University, and in 1966 the name finally changed to the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology on the initiative of Acting Principal Frank Morton.[12] UMIST and the Victoria University of Manchester retained close ties for the second half of the 20th century, with UMIST students being awarded, or having the choice of, a University of Manchester degree until full autonomy.
In 1994 UMIST finally achieved the status of an independent university with its own degree-awarding powers with the principal, Harold Hankins, becoming the principal and vice-chancellor.[11][13]
Until this time UMIST was the Faculty of Technology of the Victoria University of Manchester, an interesting situation because the University of Manchester also had its own science and engineering courses. Although academically part of the university, UMIST was financially and administratively independent.
Congregation ceremonies were held at the University of Manchester on Oxford Road, but in 1991 the first congregation ceremony was held in the Great Hall at UMIST itself in the Sackville Street Building.
UMIST students were entitled to use the facilities of the Victoria University, including the John Rylands University Library at the Oxford Road site and sports facilities and social clubs organised by the students' unions. In fact, first year UMIST undergraduates were often placed into Manchester University halls of residence and vice versa.
Student life
In the late 20th century, student life at UMIST centred on the Barnes Wallis Building, which was the home of the Students' Union (later known as the Students' Association), the main refectory and Harry's Bar. The main redbrick building contained a student self-service café, known as the Readers' Digest.
A prominent feature of the student calendar from the 1960s onwards was the Bogle Stroll. This was a 55-mile-long (89km) sponsored walk for charity which was held annually during Rag Week. Each year, hundreds of students followed the circular route which started and finished at the UMIST campus. The tradition continues at the University of Manchester.[14]
Sports facilities included a gymnasium in the main building, the large assembly hall, the MUTECH playing fields and the Sugden Sports Centre (jointly owned by UMIST and the Metropolitan University and opened in 1998). The director of sport administered the facilities, recreation classes and inter-departmental competitions. The athletic union was responsible for administering the grant-aided clubs and inter-varsity teams.[15]
Achievements and evolution
During the last quarter of the 20th century UMIST established a reputation as a major research-based university, performing well in the government's Research Assessment Exercise in 2001, and was well placed in various league tables. UMIST has won four Queen's Prizes for Higher and Further Education, two Prince of Wales' Awards for Innovation and two Queen's Award for Export Achievement.
Other notable alumni include Margaret Beckett, a politician who in 2006 became Foreign Secretary.
The later 20th century saw UMIST diminishing its formal connections with Manchester University. In 1994 most of the remaining institutional ties with the Victoria University of Manchester were severed, as new legislation allowed UMIST to become a fully autonomous university with powers to award its own degrees.[16]
The end of UMIST, 2004
The 2004 plaque "commemorating 180 years of educational excellence"
The merged university undertook a massive expansion and a £350million capital investment programme in new buildings. Some, such as the Alan Turing Building, house merged departments such as the School of Mathematics. The estates plan, published in 2007, indicates an intention to sell a number of former UMIST teaching buildings, including the Moffat Building, the Maths and Social Sciences Tower, the Morton Building and the Fairbairn Building, as well as formerly UMIST-owned halls of residence including Hardy Farm, Chandos Hall, Wright-Robinson Hall and Weston Hall.[17] The original UMIST Main Building is not included in this list. Covenants restrict it to educational use. No plans have been announced for the sale of any former Victoria University of Manchester buildings. Unions and some ex-UMIST staff and students have reacted angrily to the potential sales.[18]
In the estates strategy for 2010–2020 for the University of Manchester[19] it is stated that essentially all of the former UMIST campus, described as the "area north of the Mancunian Way", is to be disposed of. Only the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, which was built in 2006, is exempted, whilst the fate of the former UMIST Main Building is left vague. The Faraday Building will be replaced by student accommodation and it is envisaged that the Engineering Schools will eventually be relocated to new buildings on the site of the present halls of residence in the Grosvenor Place area. This plan will, therefore, encompass the destruction of almost all of UMIST's physical legacy.
In March 2007, the press claimed that the merger had created a debt of £30million, about 5% of the university's annual turnover, and that the university was aiming to tackle this debt by implementing 400 voluntary redundancies.[20][21] The University and College Union accused the university of mismanagement and called for a halt to recruitment.[22] Critics use these statistics to support the claim that it was not a merger of equals, that it was effectively a takeover of UMIST by Manchester University and that this was not in UMIST's best interests.[23]
Alumni groups
Until the late 1980s, UMIST's official alumni organisation was called the Manchester Technology Association, a name which was a relic of UMIST's past incarnation as 'The Tech'. The organisation's name was then updated to become the UMIST Association. It published a glossy magazine for UMIST graduates called Mainstream.
In 2004, at the time of the university merger, the UMIST Association also merged with its equivalent organisation at the Victoria University of Manchester. This step was taken after minimal consultation with its membership. From that point on, there was no official association specifically for past UMIST students or staff. However, the growth of social networking websites has allowed the development of a number of unofficial UMIST alumni groups in cyberspace, particularly on Facebook. The UMIST alumni group on LinkedIn [citation needed][24] has over 6,500 members and has a sub-group for each of UMIST's academic departments.
UMIST Campus
UMIST's Mathematics and Social Sciences building seen from the Mancunian Way with original UMIST logo
UMIST moved to its present location just south of Manchester city centre at the end of the 19th century. The Main Building[8] (now called the Sackville Street Building) was purpose-built between 1895 and 1902 by Spalding and Cross. Starting in 1927, plans were drawn up by the architects Bradshaw Gass & Hope for an extension which would approximately double the size of the original building. However, construction was delayed by the war and other factors, so that the extension was not fully completed until 1957.
In the 1960s the institution expanded rapidly to the south, growing from a single large building to an entire campus. Around a dozen modern buildings were constructed on the other side of the railway viaduct from the Main Building. The new edifices were designed by leading Manchester architects and were all built out of concrete. They included the George Begg Building (Mechanical Engineering), the Maths and Social Sciences Tower, the Faraday Building, the Renold Building, and the Barnes Wallis Building, the last two of which faced each other across a bowling green, which later became a landscaped garden.
Three small apple trees, said to have been grown from cuttings taken from the apple trees in Sir Isaac Newton's garden, are planted by the archway containing a statue of Archimedes in his bath by Thompson Dagnall. Archimedes Statue
The popular fruit cordial Vimto was formulated in a shed located in the space that UMIST eventually came to cover – around 1991–92 students and others were asked to give their opinions and perhaps vote on a memorial to this invention – the winner was a huge wooden carving of a Vimto bottle surrounded by representations of fruit, the juices of which are used in the product.
UMIST is on land which used to be home to a large number of dyers' factories by the River Medlock, which now runs through underground culverts beneath the site. UMIST in 1942 showing the factories on land which later became part of the campus. An original bend in the river can be traced by observing the angles of two of the arches of the railway viaduct alongside UMIST.[6] These were built slanted to accommodate the winding river.
↑ Curaj, A, Georghiou, L., Harper, J.C. and Egron-Polak, E. (2015) Mergers and Alliances in Higher Education: International Practice and Emerging Opportunities, Springer, p205.
1 2 3 Wrigley, Julia (1982). "The Division between Mental and Manual Labor: Artisan Education in Science in Nineteenth-Century Britain". The American Journal of Sociology. 88: S31–S51. doi:10.1086/649251. JSTOR3083238. S2CID144431298.
↑ Geoffrey Tweedale, Philip Hansen, Magic Mineral to Killer Dust: Turner & Newall and the asbestos hazard, Oxford University Press, 2000, ISBN0-19-829690-8, p. 7
↑ UMIST Student Guide 1999/2000. Manchester: UNIST, 1999; pp. 38-39
↑ Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity: Portraits from our Past – not dated, c. 2013 – Booklet designed by the Division of Communications and Marketing, University of Manchester, Published by the University of Manchester, p. 5.
Cardwell, D. S. L. (ed.) (1974) Artisan to Graduate: Essays to Commemorate the Foundation in 1824 of the Manchester Mechanics' Institution, Manchester: Manchester University Press, ISBN0-7190-1272-4
UMIST website versions from 1997 onwards, preserved in the Internet Archive
Higher Education Policy Institute report based on interviews with those involved in several university mergers including UMIST's. Interviewees stressed the importance of a short timescale for mergers which "limited the time for opposition to gain momentum".
Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) is located in the centre of Manchester, England. The university has over 40,000 students and over 4,000 members of staff. It is home to four faculties and is one of the largest universities in the UK, measured by the size of its student population in 2020/21.
The Victoria University of Manchester, usually referred to as simply the University of Manchester, was a university in Manchester, England. It was founded in 1851 as Owens College. In 1880, the college joined the federal Victoria University. After the demerger of the Victoria University, it gained an independent university charter in 1904 as the Victoria University of Manchester.
The University of Manchester is a public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester City Centre on Oxford Road. The university owns and operates major cultural assets such as the Manchester Museum, The Whitworth art gallery, the John Rylands Library, the Tabley House Collection and the Jodrell Bank Observatory – a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The University of Manchester is considered a red brick university, a product of the civic university movement of the late 19th century. The current University of Manchester was formed in 2004 following the merger of the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) and the Victoria University of Manchester. This followed a century of the two institutions working closely with one another.
A red brick university was originally one of the nine civic universities founded in the major industrial cities of England in the 19th century.
The University of Leeds is a public research university in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It was established in 1874 as the Yorkshire College of Science. In 1884 it merged with the Leeds School of Medicine and was renamed Yorkshire College. It became part of the federal Victoria University in 1887, joining Owens College and University College Liverpool. In 1904 a royal charter was granted to the University of Leeds by King Edward VII.
The University of Salford is a public research university in Salford, Greater Manchester, England, 1 mile west of Manchester city centre. The Royal Technical Institute, Salford, which opened in 1896, became a College of Advanced Technology in 1956 and gained university status in 1967, following the Robbins Report into higher education.
The University of Bradford is a public research university located in the city of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. A plate glass university, it received its royal charter in 1966, making it the 40th university to be created in Britain, but can trace its origins back to the establishment of the industrial West Yorkshire town's Mechanics Institute in 1832.
The University of Bolton, Bolton University or UoB is a public university in Bolton, Greater Manchester, England. The University is commonly referred to as a 'post-92' institution, which is a reference to the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. It has approximately 11,000 students and more than 900 academic and professional staff.
John Henry Reynolds was a British educationist and administrator, particularly associated with the development of the Manchester educational institution that was to go on to become UMIST.
Alliance Manchester Business School is the business school of the University of Manchester in Manchester, England. It is one of the oldest business schools in the UK, and provides education to undergraduates, postgraduates and executives.
The Department of Mathematics at the University of Manchester is one of the largest unified mathematics departments in the United Kingdom, with over 90 academic staff and an undergraduate intake of roughly 400 students per year and approximately 200 postgraduate students in total. The School of Mathematics was formed in 2004 by the merger of the mathematics departments of University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) and the Victoria University of Manchester (VUM). In July 2007 the department moved into a purpose-designed building─the first three floors of the Alan Turing Building─on Upper Brook Street. In a Faculty restructure in 2019 the School of Mathematics reverted to the Department of Mathematics. It is one of five Departments that make up the School of Natural Sciences, which together with the School of Engineering now constitutes the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Manchester.
The Barnes Wallis Building/Wright Robinson Hall is a university building in central Manchester. It forms part of the campus of the former University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, which merged in 2004 with the nearby Victoria University of Manchester.
Frank Morton MScTech, PhD, AMCT, DSc, FRIC, was a noted professor of chemical engineering, instrumental in the creation of UMIST and commemorated by Frank Morton Sports Day and a medal named after him.
The Department of Materials, at the University of Manchester is an academic and research department specialising in Materials Science and Engineering and Fashion Business and Technology. It is the largest materials science and engineering department in Europe. This is reflected by an annual research income of around £7m, 60 academic staff, and a population of 150 research students and 60 postdoctoral research staff. The Department of Materials was formerly known as the School of Materials until a faculty-wide restructuring in 2019.
The Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE) is one of the three faculties that comprise the University of Manchester in northern England. Established in October 2004, the faculty was originally called the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences. It was renamed in 2016, following the abolition of the Faculty of Life Science and the incorporation of some aspects of life sciences into the departments of Chemistry and Earth and Environmental Sciences. It is organised into 2 schools and 9 departments: Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science; Chemistry; Computer Science; Earth and Environmental Sciences; Physics and Astronomy; Electrical & Electronic Engineering; Materials; Mathematics; and Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering.
The Department of Mechanical, Aerospace & Civil Engineering at the University of Manchester was formed from three departments in the 2004 merger between the Victoria University of Manchester (VUM) and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). The merged departments were the Department of Civil and Construction Engineering which was joint between both universities, the Department of Mechanical Aerospace and Manufacturing Engineering at UMIST and the Manchester School of Engineering at VUM.
The Sackville Street Building is a building on Sackville Street in Manchester, England. The University of Manchester occupies the building which, before the merger with UMIST in 2004, was UMIST's "Main Building". Construction of the building for the Manchester School of Technology began in 1895 on a site formerly occupied by Sir Joseph Whitworth's engineering works; it was opened in 1902 by the then Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour. The School of Technology became the Manchester Municipal College of Technology in 1918.
The Mechanics' Institute, located at 103 Princess Street, Manchester, England, is notable as the building in which three significant British institutions were founded: the Trades Union Congress (TUC), the Co-operative Insurance Society (CIS) and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). In the 1960s it was occupied by the Manchester College of Commerce. It has been a Grade II* listed building since 10 May 1972.
Frederick Michael Burdekin is a British civil engineer, and emeritus professor at University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology and the University of Manchester.
The University of Manchester Library is the library system and information service of the University of Manchester. The main library is on the Oxford Road campus of the university, with its entrance on Burlington Street. There are also ten other library sites, eight spread out across the university's campus, plus The John Rylands Library on Deansgate and the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre situated inside Manchester Central Library.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
