Good News from the Academic Year 2010/2011

• Established three academic flagship areas - health and rehabilitation, sustainable business, and culture and creativity - as a focus for future investment and development.

• Establishment of the CASL (Clinical Audiology, Speech and Language) Research Centre.

• In the Student Barometer 2010 (autumn wave), EU and international students ranked QMU number 1 in the UK for ‘overall living experience’ and number 1, in both the UK and amongst all 203 universities participating worldwide, for their satisfaction with the ‘overall student support’.

• Ranked as the top university in Scotland for improving students’ communication skills in the National Student Survey (NSS).

• Over £1 million secured from the Department for International Development to undertake research into rebuilding the delivery of health services after conflict or social disruption.

• Iin excess of £0.5m anonymous donation received for research into osteoporosis.

• Significant funding received from research councils and other sources to undertake research in speech (including interventions for children with Down’s Syndrome and autism), on the causes and impact of osteoporosis, and into the effects of the changes in Scottish Government policy on alcohol on individuals with alcohol-related problems.

• Achieved student numbers and tuition fee income targets.

• Expansion of a suite of international agreements, including existing partnerships in Singapore, India, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Greece.

• Became the first university in the UK to offer a UK degree delivered face-to-face in Nepal.

• Winner in the e-Government Awards 2010; highly commended in the Green Gown Awards and Green Business Awards 2011, a warded Fair Trade status.

• The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2012 ranked QMU 14th out of 125 institutions for ‘most competition for places’. In addition, they ranked QMU 40th out of 125 universities in terms of the percentage of international students, making us the fourth in Scotland after Edinburgh, St Andrews and Edinburgh Napier.

• Delivered a surplus of just under £0.8 million in the 2010/11 financial accounts.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER INFORMATION

2. http://www.qmu.ac.uk/marketing/press_releases/CASL.htm

3. http://www.qmu.ac.uk/facebook/

4. http://www.qmu.ac.uk/feedback/nationalstudentsurvey.htm

5. http://www.qmu.ac.uk/marketing/press_releases/IIHDresearch.htm

6. http://www.qmu.ac.uk/marketing/press_releases/osteoporosis.htm

7. Research and knowledge exchange contracts include:

• The CASL (Clinical Audiology, Speech and Language) Research Centre has won grant funding of £185,000 from the ESRC for an investigation of the transmission of articulatory variance using ultrasound tongue imaging.
• £ 304k won from CSO to investigate the effects of changes in Government alcohol policy (http://www.qmu.ac.uk/marketing/press_releases/QMU-to-research-effects-of-alcohol-pricing.htm).
• £88,000 from DFID for work on removing financial barriers to accessing reproductive, maternal and new-born health services.
• Speech and Hearing Sciences has been successful in securing a research grant from the Nuffield Foundation totalling £147k for a project involving the roll-out of EPG interventions in schools for children with Down’s syndrome.
• The Firefly research team, with NHS Lothian, has secured £234k to partly deliver the Scottish Government’s strategy for autism, through work focused on understanding waiting times for children and adults with autism.
• QMU spin out company Articulate Instruments Ltd has been awarded Carnegie funding as part of a collaborative research project involving four other Scottish universities (http://www.qmu.ac.uk/marketing/press_releases/ultrasound.htm).
• Evaluation of ‘Support from the Start’, East Lothian Council’s health inequalities project.
• Royal College of Nursing (RCN) commissioned research examining likely future scenarios of the supply of nurses to the NHS.
• Our speech and language therapists have contributed to a Government commissioned educational web-based facility (on autism and Down’s syndrome).
• Firefly’s re-design of a Mental Health Vocational Rehabilitation Service was a finalist in the Best Service Redesign category in the 2011 NHS Lothian Celebrating Success Awards.
• DietPhone™ was selected as one of the ten finalists for the BioQuarter Innovation Competition 2011.
• Industry funding secured from McSween’s, Genius Gluten Free, Flavours of Galloway and EASA Training, Whitmuir Organics.

10. http://www.qmu.ac.uk/marketing/press_releases/Nepal.htm

11. http://www.qmu.ac.uk/marketing/press_releases/greengown_nov11.htm
      http://www.qmu.ac.uk/sustainability/fairTrade.htm
      http://www.qmu.ac.uk/marketing/press_releases/egov.htm

12. http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/University_Guide/

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