Canterbury Christ Church University

Canterbury Christ Church University is a university in the city of Canterbury in the county of Kent in England in the UK.

It is the largest centre of higher education in Kent for the public services - notably teacher training, nursing, policing, health and social care - and a significant provider of programmes in a wide range of academic and professional areas. In total it offers over a thousand academic and professional study programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate level.

The University is well-known as one of the UK’s top providers of Teacher Education in the University sector. There is an interesting collaboration with Hibernia College in Ireland.

It is also well known as a significant provider of education and training in Health and Social Care. The extensive combined honours undergraduate programmes in the Faculties of Arts and Humanities; Business and Manangement and Sciences allow flexibility of study and there is a broad range of postgraduate level studies and continuing professional development.

The University has a student population of around 15,000. Mature students and those who study part-time make up an important part of the student community.

Its web site is http://www.canterbury.ac.uk/

There is also a useful Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canterbury_Christ_Church_University

History

Christ Church College was founded in 1962 by the Church of England. It was established to meet the needs of church schools at a time of teacher shortage. Classes were originally held in the Priory adjacent to St Martin's Church, a unique building which had been the private home of a recent Bishop of Dover.

The campus for Christ Church College was constructed on North Holmes Road, Canterbury, on land which had once been used for orchards and domestic buildings of the adjacent St Augustine's Abbey, part of Canterbury's World Heritage Site.

In the early 1970s, the first degree programme, the Bachelor of Education, was established. In 1977 the College began to offer joint honours degrees in other subjects. In the late 1980s the College was substantially enlarged by the addition of Health Studies.

In 1995, the College was awarded the power by the Privy Council to grant its own degrees for taught courses, which entitled the change of name to Canterbury Christ Church University College.

In 2000 the Broadstairs campus was opened and in 2004 the Medway campus was opened.

The award of University title in 2005 recognised both the successful delivery of high quality degree programmes and the achievements of students and staff, who underwent the same processes and assessments as those at other universities.

In September 2007 the University opened a campus in Folkestone (known as University Centre Folkestone) in collaboration with the University of Greenwich.

e-learning

The University has a long and successful tradition of opening up higher education to those groups which have traditionally been under represented. Many courses are flexible and part-time enabling people to take up higher education whatever their circumstances. Many of the students are mature, returning to study after some time or are already working.

It has been active in both the Benchmarking and Pathfinder programmes in the UK - see http://elearning.heacademy.ac.uk/wiki/index.php/Canterbury for details.

Its benchmarking and Pathfinder blog is at http://cccu.wordpress.com/

---

> United Kingdom