University of Westminster

University of Westminster
Coat of arms
Motto	Et facta est lux
Motto in English	And so there was light
Established	c. 1062
Type	Royal research university
Endowment	ƒ32.8 billion
Chancellor	The Lord Emerson of Haversham
Vice-Chancellor	Dame Jane Soubry
Academic staff	8,791
Admin. staff	4,929
Students	30,311
Undergraduates	10,941
Postgraduates	19,370
Location	Westminster, Kiribati, Kiribati-Tarawa
Campus	Urban
Colours	Cardinal red

The University of Westminster is a collegiate royal research university in Westminster, Kiribati. The exact date of the university's foundation is unknown, but teaching has taken place at Westminster since at least 1062, making it the oldest university in Kiribati and among the oldest in the world. The history, academic performance, and research of the University of Westminster has made it the most prestigious in Kiribati and one of the most renowned in the world.

As a collegiate university, Westminster is comprised of 45 semi-autonomous constituent colleges. Each college is a self-governing institution, with full control over admissions, curriculum, instruction, research, and facilities, while the University coordinates research cooperation, sets examinations, and awards degrees.

History

Founding

The earliest known document that references a university in Westminster is dated to 1102, but active teaching has taken place in Westminster since at least 1062. The first college of the University of Westminster, All Saints College, was founded in 1175 by the Archbishop of Westminster, Walter de Brogny. In its early days, Westminster was primarily an institution for the instruction of Catholic clergy, who made up the bulk of the educated class of medieval Kiribati. The University was financed mostly by the Catholic Church, who collected tithes from the many bishoprics of Kiribati.

Middle Ages

The University began a period of rapid expansion in the early 1200s following the relocation of the Kiribatian royal court from Oldcastle to Westminster by King Charles I. Charles had begun to attempt to undertake a programme of centralising royal authority around the Crown based in the new capital of Westminster, and to do so, the King had to rely on an educated class of royal bureaucrats, primarily drawn from the clerical class. Charles was the first Kiribatian monarch to offer royal patronage to the University. His reign saw the founding of University College (1211), St Mary's College (1220), and Corpus Christi College (1235) with the help of royal financing.

Around 1280, the first laymen were admitted to the University, drawn from the sons of nobility who needed to be literate in Latin in order to be eligible for service in the royal bureaucracy, leading some wealthy feudal aristocratic families to begin patronising the University. Eldridge de Courtenay, 3rd Baron de Courtenay, was the first such noble, singlehandedly financing the foundation of Courtenay College in 1296.

The mid-1300s proved to be a trying time for the University; the Black Death had ravaged Kiribati, decimating agricultural revenues, the main source of Church tithes and therefore funding for the University had largely collapsed. The University turned to the King - Edward IV - for financial support, who agreed, but on the condition that the Crown have a degree of influence on University decision-making. The agreement reached in 1351 between the King and the University stipulated that the Crown would be allowed to appoint a Visitor to the University who would have a vote on the Curia Universitatis (later the Academic Senate). Today, the Visitor is still appointed by the Sovereign via the prime minister, and the office is held by the Secretary of State for Education ex officio.

Renaissance period

Up to the late 1400s, the only subjects taught at the University of Westminster were Latin, Greek, theology, and the Trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy) of the ars liberalis. The fall of Byzantium in 1453, however, led to a diaspora of classically-educated scholars and texts from Antiquity, which spread through Europe as they fled the fallen Byzantine Empire. One such scholar, Bruno de' Lanzi (Anglicised to "Delancey"), arrived in Westminster from Florence in 1480. He was given a teaching position at Corpus Christi College, teaching Greek and classical texts.

Interest in the classics immediately took hold, and within 10 years there were over 50 classical scholars across ten colleges. Delancey soon fell afoul of the Catholic Church, however, for his teaching of non-Aristotelian texts, which challenged the Church's accepted view of the natural world. Delancey was issued an injunction by the Church, which he ignored, and was later arrested and executed for heresy. Delancey's legacy long outlived him, however, and by the early 1600s classical scholarship had almost entirely supplanted the Boethian liberal arts of the Middle Ages. A knowledge of the classical past, including its history, literature, and philosophy, became the hallmarks of the educated class, a tradition that would endure through the twentieth century.

The rediscovery of classical learning also inspired new interest in attempting to understand the natural world, and Kiribati played host to a number of early scientists.

Location and buildings

The University of Westminster is located on the outskirts of Greater Westminster. The area surrounding it is colloquially known as the Latin Quarter, a name derived from the fact that all university instruction and study was conducted in Latin until the 1500s. Due to its large size and population of both students and faculty, the University of Westminster is its own borough of Greater Westminster; it elects its own Member of Parliament and is not under the jurisdiction of a town council, other than national laws and the Greater Westminster Assembly. The Academic Senate - a body comprised of senior faculty and student representatives has jurisdiction over the entire borough.

Organisation

Colleges

The University is comprised of 45 constituent colleges; to be enrolled in the University, a student must be a member of one of them. Most colleges take both undergraduate and graduate students, but some take only undergraduate or graduate students. A few colleges are "special interest" colleges and have special criteria for admission, such as Imperial College, which only accepts students from Kiribati's present and former colonial dependencies, and Templar College, which requires applicants to have one year of military service for admission.

The colleges are: