Dear Visitor

Welcome to the University of Leicester's website.  I hope you will enjoy your time browsing through our web pages where you will learn about some of our major achievements.  Here I will highlight just a few: 

• We are a dynamic 21st century university that provides high quality research and teaching alongside meeting widening participation benchmarks and providing an excellent student experience.  It is these features that lead to a positive institutional ethos.
• The University has been awarded the Times Higher Education's Award for University of the Year (2008/09), Outstanding Student Support (2009/10), Leadership and Management Award for Museum Studies' outstanding departmental administration (2010). 
• This year Leicester has been ranked 17th in the national league tables.  We were also delighted to receive highly acclaimed international ratings, coming within the top 2% of universities in the world.  
• This positive view was also shared by our students who completed the National Student Survey which showed Leicester with an average score amongst mainstream universities teaching full-time students of 4.17, second only behind Oxford and Cambridge, both at 4.28.  
• Demand for undergraduate places was up by 16% in 2010/11.  
• Our average score for teaching is 4.17, again behind Oxford and Cambridge, and our research impact is within the UK top 10 at 68 citations per academic (QS world ranking September 2011).  
• We offer the Leicester Award - a free-standing qualification for students who work to develop their employability skills in team work, project planning and problem solving to help our students improve their employability.
• We have strengthened our links with a number of primary and secondary schools as well as a school for children with special needs, in particular through student volunteering.  
• We have increased our annual research income over the past 10 years by 54% to £48m and have created plans for new research, new teaching programmes and new community links.  These include the setting up of 3 new Research Centres in Spatial Ecohydrology, Medical Humanities and Developing an Engineering Approach to Neuroscience. 
• We have developed a range of new Masters courses including Banking and Actuarial Science, Urban Conservation, and Media and Public Relations.  
• We are also investing heavily in our Estate.  In 2008 Her Majesty The Queen opened our new David Wilson Library which incorporates a state-of-the-art 500-seat lecture theatre, coffee shop and bookshop, excellent IT and reader facilities alongside more traditional library material.  The Library has won many awards including the SCONUL Library Design Award and an accolade for Customer Service Excellence in the Library.  In September 2010 we opened the £17m refurbished Percy Gee Students' Union Building which has already won several awards.  We have also completed a new £16.0m medical sciences research building.  In September 2011 we opened 281 new en-suite study bedrooms at Nixon Court.  In addition, we have started to build a new £5m sports hall and swimming pool at Oadby which will be available for alumni to use.  We are awaiting planning approval to build a new £33m Medical Building and have plans approved for a University Conference Centre as well as having many other ambitious plans for campus development that are highlighted in our new Development Framework Plan.

Finally, if you are in any doubt about the achievements of the University of Leicester do come and visit us; I am confident that you will be impressed by our staff, students and facilities.

Sir Bob Burgess

Vice-Chancellor