Gown beyond Town: Considering the Satellite Campus

This workshop explores the role and challenges of the satellite campus through dialogue between scholars of UCL and USyd. The exchange is timely - UCL is now constructing a new campus, UCL East, on the site of the London 2012 Olympic Games and, in advance, has opened UCL Here East, while USyd plans to establish the new Paramatta-Westmead campus in western Sydney.

The establishment of a second campus in both cases speaks to institutional growth exceeding the capacity of a central campus anchored to a nineteenth-century core. It can be read as an invitation to reconceptualise disciplinary relationships and to recast the relationship of the university within its urban setting, while offering an opportunity to test new ways of teaching, research and engaging with the university’s publics.

The workshop will address issues including:

• Models of university expansion – from densification to local, national and international branch plants.
• How does the physical campus interact with the digital, virtual campus?
• How might a new campus strengthen research and innovation, especially in BioMed, BioTech, InfoTech, interdisciplinary and outward facing fields?
• How might it drive economic activity, and strengthen the university brand across new constituencies?
• How can it best serve local community needs for housing, social infrastructure, urban regeneration and sustainability?
• What lessons are offered by completed satellite campus projects?
• On what models of institutional change management can projects to establish new campus sites draw?
• How can academics and professionals best work together to co-design, understand and document the changes introduced by university satellites?

For further details and consideration for attendance please email: a.marmot@ucl.ac.uk