Teesside University

With roots going back to 1929, Teesside University has a proud tradition of meeting the needs of key industrial sectors such as engineering, petrochemicals and, more recently, the digital sector. Today it is one of the UK’s leading employer-facing universities, with its business start-up programme launching over 300 new enterprises in the last decade. It is also a national leader in promoting R&D-focused Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs) and its innovative DigitalCity Fellowship scheme has helped graduates launch over 100 new digital enterprises.

The University is highly regarded for its specialist courses in areas such as digital media, animation and computer games design; criminology, policing, forensics, fraud management and crime scene science; health and social care; engineering; and leadership & management. Its niche provision is designed to meet specific employer needs, with many professionally accredited programmes encouraging a real-world problem-solving approach.

Student numbers have grown rapidly in the last decade and the campus has been transformed with showpiece new buildings. Today it has a community of nearly 30,000 scholars and is increasingly popular with international students. In the 2010 International Student Barometer (ISB), overseas students gave Teesside a score of 89% for overall satisfaction amongst the 44 UK universities taking part and gave it a top two placing in the UK for overall average satisfaction with Learning, Living and Support in the ISB.

Teesside has five research institutes which are building on the positive outcome in the last Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) and preparing for the Research Excellence Framework (REF) by focusing on key areas of research strength at Teesside. The University’s strongest areas in the last RAE were computing and history, which had half their work classified as internationally excellent, including 10% rated as world leading.

Teesside was the winner of the Times Higher Education’s University of the Year Award in 2009/10 with judges singling out its commitment to working with communities and businesses, making it ‘the public benefactor par excellence’.

As well as University of the Year, Teesside won the Times Higher’s Outstanding Employer Engagement Initiative Award 2009/10 for its Leadership and Management programme designed, developed and delivered in partnership with the North East Chamber of Commerce.

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