According to Times Higher Education, we are a dynamic, ambitious and world-class institution among the newly-emerging ‘modern global elite’. We are the first post-1992 university to launch our own medical school, the only modern university to be inside the top 300 in the world (278th in the Times Higher World University Rankings 2014) and in 2013 became the first university globally to be awarded the Social Enterprise Mark – the only independent accreditation for those organisations who are putting people and planet alongside profit.
Plymouth’s mission to advance knowledge and transform lives through education and research has continued to deliver profound results. From running the Devon Branch of the Children’s University to leading innovative national government projects to connect children with the natural environment for learning, we have maintained a deep commitment to our communities despite the continuing dynamic and challenging state of the higher education sector and financial pressures.
At Plymouth, our enterprise mission allows us to respond to change, take risks, innovate and generate and implement new ideas and new ways of doing things. We recognise the University’s role as an innovation catalyst, and we see our people – staff, students and community partners – as facilitators of change and growth. We are committed to diversifying our income streams to achieve financial sustainability while investing in key areas of life-changing research, research-informed teaching and cutting-edge facilities.
Our academics are national and international leaders in teaching and learning, distinguished by their commitment to enriching the curriculum through an emphasis on discovery and innovation. We have had more Higher Education Academy Teaching Fellows than any other institution in the country, testament to ingrained and sustained excellence in pedagogic practice and scholarship.
Our research reputation continues to grow, and in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, we were once again ranked in the top 50 universities in the country. Around two-thirds of our submission was rated as either world-leading or internationally excellent, and in clinical medicine, we were the highest-rated institution in the country for research output. We have a number of recognised world-class research institutes, including one of the largest communities of marine and maritime researchers in Europe; a multi-million pound translational and stratified medicine institute; and others in sustainability, cognition, health and community, and pedagogy.
We are one of the greenest universities in the country, and in 2015 we topped the People and Planet Green League for a second time in four years – retaining our position as the overall best-performing university and winning a remarkable three National Green Gown Awards the previous year.
The Faculty of Health and Human Science is one of the UK’s largest providers of the workforce for health and social care, the faculty’s trans-disciplinary focus on research and praxis presents a unique environment in which to address a whole system, multi-agency approach to health and social wellbeing, whilst promoting discipline specific world-leading expertise through our three component schools.
The School of Nursing and Midwifery embeds sustainability in the nursing and midwifery curriculum using innovative approaches to teaching and learning and based on our own health and sustainability research.
In developing our sustainability teaching and research, we work closely with the Centre for Sustainable Futures and the Institute for Sustainability Solutions Research.
Email: nursus@plymouth.ac.uk