SAMS celebrates birth of University of the Highlands and Islands

(Updated below) The Scottish Association of Marine Science at Dunstaffnage was en fete tonight (2 February 2011), hosting a reception to mark the historic birth of the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) of which SAMS is a constituent.

An imaginative note was the presence of Jack Matthews among the speakers invited to address the audience to mark the occasion. Dr Matthews was Director of the Dunstaffnage Marine Laboratory at the point when the adventure that took shape tonight was born – all of eighteen years ago.

The current Director, Professor Laurence Mee was genuinely inspirational in speaking of an institution where new ideas, young minds, research, achievements and solutions would put the stamp if the Highlands and Islands on much that would be taken notice of by a wide audience.

He reminded his audience that this university would create opportunities for people to stay and study in Argyll and in the Highlands and Islands, with a greater proportion of this crucial sector of the population increasingly able to stay on to work.

The ‘knowledge transfer’ initiative at SAMS has all the potential to be a key driver of the specialist economic growth Argyll needs and the development of the linked Dunstaffnage Marine Science Park beside SAMS is the means to that end.

Professor Mee had a few surprises up his sleeve. His audience heard a scientist speak eloquently of the rich contribution of writing, poetry, music, song and dance to the cultural life of the region and to the lives of those who live here.

He hoped that the very presence of the constituent parts of UHI, whether or not people were studying courses in the arts, wold act both as a focal point and a stimulus for the flourishing of the creative and expressive talents a balanced and confident society needs.

This part of his address brought to the forefront the presence as part of UHI, Ballet West, also in Argyll, at Taynuilt, delivering UHI degree courses and teaching performance, with productions touring as far afield as China.

With their first graduates completing earlier this year, on courses taken in a unique collaboration with North Highland College, another UHI constituent, Ballet West had BA Programme Manager, Mike Rowell and his assistant, Lee Stewart  – from Oban via Paris – representing it tonight.

Professor Mee said that all day today the principals of the various colleges in UHI had been sending each other ‘back-slapping emails’ saying things like: ‘So what will you be doing?’ ‘Are you having a party or a ceilidh’. ‘Will you be flying the flag?’

And an email arrived from the college in Shetland: ‘We’ll be flying no flag. There’s a Force 8 gale up here today’.

And that – as the SAMS Director said, two and a half years into his job and attuned to the nature of the place he has chosen to come to – is what UHI is. It is a University like no other in the UK, in a place like  no other in the UK and it now has the opportunity to make its mark like no other on the UK.

From all those who spoke there was a sense of pride in the university status now confirmed, in the extent to which the work and achievements at SAMS graces that status.

Professor Axel Miller, Head of Education and Academic Development, driving the teaching wing at SAMS, chaired the session, speaking himself about the value of a university whose concept brings it to and keeps it in touch with people where they live in the great outflung of the highlands and islands.

He proved his point by introducing Karen Alexander, a PhD student, who delivered a passionate declaration of loyalty to a place she celebrates and respects. As an Oban girl, SAMS has made it possible for her to study locally the subject she loves, to this advanced level. She said she would not choose to study anywhere else.

There has always been the sense of genuine excellence, a smell of success here and to come,  in the air at SAMS. ‘Excellence’ is a word bandied almost profanely by bureaucrats, who least understand it.

To be excellent, you have to want to be the best and to work and to overcome until you are. ‘Excellence’ is not not just a badge you’re handed to pin on, as when politicians declare virgin institutions ‘centres of excellence’. Few are. But SAMS is.

SAMS believes in itself, as does Ballet West – and both are determined to carve their own mercat cross in the most important world of all – the one where high level academic research and commerce meet and hold hands.

Wilma Campbell, Chair of the Board of Argyll College spoke of the value of University status to the many students across Argyll and the islands, taking courses at the various centres of Argyll College, often delivered by electronic technology to their own places.

Argyll College’s solution to meeting the educational needs of an area so vast and complex and with so dispersed a population as Argyll has, as Wilma Campbell said, been responsive to that situation.

It has something like fifteen centres spread across Argyll and the Isles.

What it needs now is the injection of first rate academic leadership, driven by innovation and the same focus on a hard wired link between the excellent and the economic development Argyll so badly needs – and as SAMS has pioneered here.

The university status conferred today also has the potency to encourage constituents to grow to fill it.

The pain of a £60 fine and three points on a driving licence for speeding provided a momentary loss of concentration and we missed the name of the representative who spoke next. He was from Highlands and Islands Enterprise, a long term supporter of the development of UHI and was greeted by the audience as a friend.

If one word had to be chosen to sum up the mood at the SAMS reception for UHI tonight, for the staff from SAMS. Ballet West and Argyll College, for the students listening to the speeches and grinning at each other and for local councillors – that word was pride.

And an indicative footnote – in a smoothly synchronised operation today, all of the constituent colleges of UHI now fly the flag of the visual identity of UHI on their websites.

Responses from politicians

Jim Mather, Argyll & Bute’s MSP, says: This has been a long road to travel and it is important to recognise that everyone across the political spectrum has worked very hard over the years to create and sustain the concept of the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI).

‘Many individual elected members have pressed over the years for the granting of full title and I am delighted to see now that the Privy Council has finally agreed on this.

‘The Highlands and Islands is now home to Scotland’s 15th University and this is a truly unique establishment, centered in Inverness but serving as it does a huge area of the country – from Shetland to Argyll and from Elgin to Tiree.

‘It is vitally important that UHI has now acquired full university status and that young, and not so young, highlanders and islanders are able to study a wide range of courses designed to meet the needs of those who by birthright or choice live and work here.

‘I see this as a positive resource that will help sustain the local economy across the Highlands and Islands. I would like to send my sincere congratulations to the students, staff and many sympathisers who have supported and contributed and worked towards this achievement’.

Jamie McGrigor, Highlands and Islands MSP, lodged a motion  at the Scottish Parliament on 8th February 2011 on Oban becoming a University town:

S3M-07921 Jamie McGrigor (Highlands and Islands) (Con): ‘That the Parliament welcomes the news that Oban has officially become a university town for the first time following the confirmation that the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) Millennium Institute has gained university status; believes that the town’s Argyll College Oban campus and the Scottish Association for Marine Science Scottish Marine Institute are key parts of the UHI infrastructure and offer a very high quality of education to students, with excellent staff and a diverse range of courses; further believes that university status will boost the academic standing of the UHI and attract more students from across Scotland and further afield, and wishes all current and future students and staff in Oban and all other parts of the UHI network every success in the future’.

The photographs accompanying this article show, from the top:

• Part of one of the buildings on the expanding SAMS campus sat Dunstaffnage, taken tonight (2nd February 2011)
• The new Shauna Marshall building for SAMS, currently in construction;
• Dr Jack Matthews (left) and Professor Axel Miller (right)
• Professor Laurence Mee, who chose to stand with the audience, caught in reflective mood before he spoke.
• Some of the audience in SAMS  Ocean Voyager building where the reception to mark the formal birth of UHI was held.