In reply to Henry Iddon:
MORE: Reproduced with permission
Let me quickly introduce myself, my name is Luke Connolly and I'm a 3rd
year Outdoor Studies student at Ambleside.
Having just read your news piece regarding the planned closure of our
campus I felt the need to contact you to help aid your research.
To put it bluntly, the students here both past and present are
completely disheartened that the university has taken such decisions and the
general consensus between everyone here is that we feel that the
university is no longer interested in providing an academic provision and is
much more interested in increasing its self within a corporate entity.
The students along with staff were first made aware of this firstly
through a meeting held on Tuesday 18th March with all the heads of
department on campus and later through a global email sent to all students and
staff members at our campus.
The basis of the email outlined that:
The University of Cumbria's Ambleside campus could transform into a
high quality postgraduate (PG) and specialist short course facility if new
estates proposals go ahead.
As well as providing a first class post graduate facility the proposals
include the creation of new state of the art conference facilities,
high quality student and delegate residential accommodation and provide
the opportunity for residential or leisure development to benefit the
local community.
The proposed areas identified for development are as follows:
1. Main campus to be developed into a high quality facility for PG and
specialist provision
2. Phased transfer of outdoor studies provision to Newton Rigg starting
20/11/12 and ending 2013/14
3. Phased transfer over three years of teacher education. Two-thirds of
teacher education to Carlisle and one-third to Lancaster from 20/12/13
4. Develop excellent conference facilities building on the outstanding
geographic location
5. Develop high quality student and delegate residential accommodation
6. Sell Kelsick, Hill Top and off campus halls of residence from 2015
for residential or leisure as part of a planned asset disposal
programme. The revenue from these asset sales will be used to augment the
funding solution to the University's estate programmes.
Hope this is of some major use to you. The university has now started
its consultation stage with both staff and students but again there
isn't much we feel we can do as the university has basically outlined the
end for us.
Please don't hesitate to contact me if you require any further
information.
Many Thanks
Luke Connolly
Disgruntled 3rd year Outdoor Studies Student
Ambleside Campus - University of Cumbria