Aston University
Overview
Aston University has a great reputation for the quality of its teaching, and is home to a well-respected business school. It is located in Birmingham, one of the UK’s largest and most exciting cities.
Established in 1895 as the Birmingham Municipal Technical School, The university is situated on a 60-acre campus at Gosta Green, in the city centre of Birmingham, England. As well as being home to over 3,000 students, the Aston University campus has the following amenities available: sports centres, swimming pool, 120 station gym, library, cafés, restaurants, pubs, shops, travel centre, hairdresser, health centre, dentist, places of worship, opticians, a bank, automated teller machines and plenty of outside space.
Aston University Library is on four floors and contains over 250,000 books, 800 current printed periodicals and has over 700 reader places. It provides online access to over 40 electronic databases and more than 3,400 electronic journals. The Library is open 24 hours a day to Aston students and staff during exam time, and on average, around 12 hours a day during term time.
Around the campus there are also various open-access IT suites, offering computer and internet access 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They offer access to a range of software packages, database systems and computer-aided learning materials.
The university’s arms were granted on 18 March 1955 by Garter, Clarenceux and Norroy and Ulster Kings of Arms to the Birmingham Corporation, for use by the former College of Technology. They were designed to show the College’s connection with the City and with the teaching of technology. The arms consist of a shield and crest. The shield has two sections – the field (the main background) which is coloured blue and a chief (the broad band across the top of the shield) of silver. On the field is a diagonal line of five gold diamonds joined one to the other, similar to the first quarter of the Arms of the City of Birmingham and incorporated in the Arms of the College to show its connection with the City. This was adopted by the family of Birmingham which derived its name from the then hamlet of Birmingham, and provided the Lords of the Manor from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. On the chief is depicted an open book bound in red placed between two black hammers, showing the connection of the University with technology, the book representing learning and the hammers engineering and allied trades.
Faculties and departments
All of the Aston University’s faculties are based on one campus. They are organised into the following five schools:
- School of Engineering and Applied Science
- Applied Physics
- Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry
- Computer Science
- Electronic Engineering
- Engineering Systems and Management
- Mathematics
- Mechanical Engineering and Design
- School of Life and Health Sciences
- Audiology
- Biology
- Biomedical Science
- Optometry
- Pharmacy
- Psychology
- School of Languages and Social Sciences
- Modern languages & translation studies
- International relations, politics & European studies
- English language
- English literature
- History
- Sociology & public policy
- Aston Business School
- Aston Law
- Economics and Strategy
- Finance and Accounting
- Marketing Group
- Operations and Information Management Group
- Work and Organisational Psychology
- Aston Medical School