Teaching-PEur

John Venables: Physics with European Studies

Introduction and Summary

In October 1977, Valerie Scholes arrived in Sussex to study a new degree: Physics with European Studies (PEur).

This was to be a 4-year degree, with the third year spent abroad, studying her subject (Physics) in her chosen language (German). Thus the Science and European Studies program had it's first student.

As of 1987-1988, we had more than 130 students in similar 4-year courses in Chemistry (CEur, from 1978 with David Walton), Mathematics, and Mathematics with Statistics (MEur and MSEur, from 1979, with James Hirschfeld) and Biology (BEur, from 1979 with several faculty). Engineering was added later. At the same time, we had 43 exchange science students from continental Europe studying at Sussex, making a total of 173 students involved. This was not counting the long-running Swedish exchange scheme started and run by Dennis Hamilton.

This important development came about in an interesting way, and I plan to write about this topic based on articles and internal Sussex Reports [1, 2] that I wrote with David Walton, David Smith (Chemistry) and James Hirschfeld (Mathematics) in the late 1980's. In my Professorial Lecture [3], I was able to highlight both my Electron Microscopy group research and the Science and European Studies program. These two topics are much more connected than might at first appear, and were a perfect example of the interaction between research and teaching, involving Exchange schemes with European Universities where Sussex faculty were well-known through research collaboration.  

It will be excellent if early PEur students in particular can describe their experiences and recollections of an exciting period in their lives, and I look forward to being in contact, and to reading anything they wish to contribute.

References

1. Scientists and Good Europeans, in University of Sussex Annual Report 1988, pages 14-15 (John Venables)

2. The First ten years of BScEur. Internal University of Sussex Report (1988) 1-25 (J.A. Venables, J.D. Smith and J.W.P. Hirschfeld).

3. Internationalism in Science. Professorial Lecture, University of Sussex (22nd June 1992) 1-22 (J.A. Venables)

Origins and Early Days

In 1975, there was a Referendum on continued British membership of the European Community. My wife Delia and I were heavily involved on the "Yes" side. As you may recall, the Great British Public did indeed say yes, rather more out of inertia that we were already in the EEC than of conviction that we should be there, an ambivalence that continues to this day. As a minor bye-product of this event, I wrote an open letter to my Sussex colleagues, dated 11 February 1975. I suggested that since we were likely to be involved with Europe somewhat more than we had been, I would like to make some suitable initiatives, had talked to relevant Deans, was setting up a small working party, etc, and asked the Science Faculty for suggestions and help.

In the event, two of my four suggestions came good, namely 2) to 'set up schemes with specific European Universities for Sussex to take European students in science to do one year of their studies here, either of an exchange or one-way basis' and 3) to 'institute a 4-year degree in Science with European Studies at Sussex in which the 3rd year would be spent at a European University, as in the year abroad scheme in the School of European Studies'.

I went on to suggest that the necessary exchanges should be pursued with those universities where we had strong research links, and that as we travelled for research purposes, which universities were interested in principle. As I remarked only half in jest, a key element of success in the university system is getting your agenda onto someone else's budget. What was involved was merely to stay an extra day to explore possibilities with the local administration. Since we already knew, via research, some of their best people on first name terms, the rest was easy.

The above remarks were made in 1992 [all taken from reference 3]. Of course, I don't know whether we could get away with such informal arrangements in 2011, and I'll leave that for others to comment. My own contacts that we used for PEur initially were with the Ruhr Universität in Bochum, Germany and Université Aix-Marseille II (Luminy Campus) in Marseille, France.

The first group of students are shown in the attached figure [1], along with their German tutor, Ulrike Meinhof (3rd from left), who now holds a (Research) Chair of Cultural Studies in the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Bradford. Our first PEur graduate, Valerie Scholes (1981) is seen 3rd from the right, and two of the others, Karen Applegate (left of picture) and Roger Hutton (next to Ulrike) graduated in the following year (1982). The picture must have been taken in the Autumn of 1980, when Valerie returned from her year abroad in Bochum, and the other students were in their 2nd year (but maybe someone else knows for sure).   

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Program Growth 1977-1992

The various options grew fairly rapidly, and before long outgrew the first PEur cohort, and indicated in the bar chart, taken from reference [3], which was up to date as of 1992. By this time the program ahd reached almost 350 students, and had been extended to COGS (Computer Science) and Engineering. As can be seen, the largest groups are in Mathematics and Biology, with Physics and Chemistry fairly static. By 1992 the numbers of Exchange visitors was just shy of 100 each year. This, I believe is close to the maximum, but I don' t have data beyond this point.

We soon had a network of Universities over several subjects and countries as illustrated in the attached Map, up to date as of 1987-88 [1] and distributed in the correponding course leaflet (#16), covering Science & Engineering with European Studies by the late 1980's.

A rather complete account of the period 1977-1987 is given in reference [2], but that feels too detailed for this Wiki account. Of more interest would be students' personal accounts and their own experiences, which we request them to flesh out the next section. After this period the baton was passed to others in turn: David Walton, James Hirschfeld, David Smith, Greg Lawden, Jonathan Bacon and Michael Hardiman amongst others, and I would welcome them adding a section or commenting on the pressures faced by the program.

My own impression was that the external environment had become much more competitive, as other Universities introduced rather similar programs. Then the question became tied to Research ratings and so on: we might have the best SciEur program, but what about the Science?

Having started in the sixties myself, this type of question, all too real on the ground, made me realise that the next generation needed to have go, and I needed to move on. But I remain very proud of being involved in starting and running this program for 10 years; as I put it in reference [1], and was highlighted by the editor " I am proud to have catalysed a development which is   

Alumni and their Recollections

This section is for future contributions from PEur Alumni and other interested parties.