I think Bradford has always been a technology University
I the modern world that means,
making a difference because of knowledge and understanding in many different ways
through technical, detailed understanding.
"Today you've all come up here to receive your degree..."
So I did my eleven plus at 10, and then the school I went to, Manchester Grammar School
accelerated people by a year older so i ended up doing everything two years young.
So I completed my O Levels, as it was then, at 14 and did my A Levels at 16.
When most people would do their O Levels or GCSEs as it is now.
And then they said "You're too yound to go to University" so I
left and then I saw another job which was a harder job in a warehouse at the
Corn Flakes factory just stacking boxes all day, on shift work which was about £20 a week
with a £10 bonus if you are prepared to do an extra shift if someone
didn't turn up for the one after you. I was working in the city centre of
Manchester and enjoy myself. I was born quite close to the city centre, going out
in the evenings and drinking the money away. It was a very good pay in those days.
£20 a week was the limit any Footballer could get. George Best was on the same on the same
salary as me, maybe actually less probably. £20 a week was all he got, I got a £20 plus a
£10 bonus! But I was an inner city lad, not many,
I was the first one in my family to go to University. So it was rare and Cambridge
was a complete world apart, I'd never seen anything like it. I always joke that I grew
up not very far from the river Irwell and there was the Cam at Cambridge with
beautiful green fields, punting, things which were in picture books if anything!
So I was exposed to an intellectual world which, although Manchester Grammar School's
a very good school, it was it was a world apart really and I met people
with, you know, enormous understanding. I was exposed to the world of art, the world of
theatre, to discussions about philosophy even though i was studying science. I loved all that
it was fantastic, and so I think it opened me up to an awful lot of things.
I was working on how you control the arrangement of atoms and molecules and
electrons within a solid material when you form it. We were working on some very unusual
structures which had never been found before, people found unusual structures
believe it or not. In the end that kind of captured my imagination I
suppose and I was quite good at doing it and I'd begun to be quite successful, I'd got a PHD
and went to work as a Researcher, I began to bring in research grants to do more.
There's a lot of interesting stuff
becoming electron microscopist which is quite challenging skill terms,
building experiments. I became a Scientist who wants to do science which has an impact
I was there for 11 years, and in that period we doubled the size of the University the, physical size.
We got into the world top hundred, we had no international presence,
no major international presence as a University in 2002, and we got into the world top hundred about
halfway through my period after 5 or 6 years. We got into the
Russell Group we won 4 'Queen's Awards for Excellence' . The University had 5 when i left,
1 from just before i arrived, and the other 4 while I was there.
We were University of the Year twice during my period, once for the Sunday Times and once
for the Times Higher; I had a whale of a time. It was fantastic I loved it!
We'd like to make a difference on people's lives, that's what it means we
like to use on Knowledge on the side to make a difference on people's lives whether
it's our graduated who get jobs and then go make a difference on other people's
lives or whether its our research which gets implemented. When we do stuff we
implement it, we create engineer and health care products we actually go as
far as making the products with the companies. We work out how to organise
healthcare; things like Bradford Dementia Care Mapping. We work out how to run businesses
and we get people who actually go and run businesses. We like to go right to what
I call delivery, we're a delivery University, a Technology University, we
make impact we change people's lives.
"Today you all graduate, having learnt
many things here at the University of Bradford and you leave to build your own
future. But you know, your link with Bradford does not end today, you're now
one of the University Alumni; you are and you always will be a member of Team Bradford".