4:57pm Friday 12th March 2010
Like Margaret Brown (Letters, March 11), I too had a wonderful time at the University of Sussex. Coming to study at Sussex was a pivotal moment in my life, as it has been in the lives of thousands of students.
I am very privileged now to be the University’s chairman and I have to put Margaret, and a number of others, right on a few myths that have surfaced around the proposals currently under consultation with the staff.
Sussex will continue to teach a broad undergraduate programme in history from 1600 onwards. We have notable areas of research strength in Intellectual History, Modern British History, 20th Century European History and the History Of Science. All of this will continue unchanged by the proposal. At the same time, we have taken the opportunity to build up and introduce a major new research and teaching concentration in American History.
The proposal before the staff is about refocusing the university on its strengths.
These are not proposals dreamt up by a bunch of management consultants but developed by our leading academics at Sussex. We are strengthening the university by removing areas of weakness within disciplines where we can neither recruit enough undergraduates nor win enough funded research.
Frankly, we are proposing academic changes that should have been made several years ago and we hope to emerge from this process stronger, with Sussex’s values intact and its curiosity as vibrant as ever.
As a university, we want to change the world. We do this by recruiting and educating students so they can make a difference and funding research that affects both individuals and communities in positive ways.
There is bound to be vocal opposition to change from some. However, most of the university community, while recognising this is a painful process, know these decisions are long overdue.
Simon Fanshawe
Sussex Alumnus 1976-78 and Chair of The University Council
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