In order to achieve the ambition to be the Ultimate Campus University for the 21St Century Keele is thinking about the role that Universities will play in the middle of the 21st Century and how we need to plan now to successfully meet future challenges.
Keele has the opportunity to lead the way in this new concept of a University, if we get our approach right. Keele was a highly innovative University at its foundation in the middle of the 20th century – the innovation being in a radical approach to education. To make Keele an innovative, thriving University in the middle of the 21st century will mean something different, because the role of Universities is already very much broader than the mid-20th century concept of delivering education to undergraduates. Keele could become the template which shows how the 21st century concept of a University can be developed in a campus setting.
The key to embracing all the activities that this will involve is to redefine what it means to be ‘a campus University’, including the following aspects:
- boundaries between work and other parts of life are blurred
- developments are sustainable and respect the environment
- the University faces outwards not inwards
- the definition of who ‘belongs’ to the University is fluid as facilities are shared with a wide range of users
- the University shares its resources (intellectual and physical) with a wide range of organizations and people who can benefit from them
- people of all ages and with different types of relationships to the University live in this community
- the University is concerned with the quality of life in its community, not just with the work people do
All these features are already present in different ways at Keele and we are working to bring them to the surface, articulate them more clearly and make them central to this development.
PROFESSOR JANET FINCH CBE, DL
VICE-CHANCELLOR, KEELE UNIVERSITY