Shackleton University is location in Vekllei.
| Shackleton University | |
|---|---|
| Public University | |
| Employees | 1,100 |
| Location | Falklands |
| Parent | Bureau of Public Education |
| Students | 3,500 |
Shackleton University is the primary university of the Antarctic Region, with its main campus in Stanley, the capital of the Falklands. The university is named for the explorer Ernest Shackleton, who died at Grytviken on the island of Georgia in 1922 and is buried there. It was founded in 1968, and with about 3,500 students it is the smallest of the Commonwealth’s constituent universities.
The Antarctic Region has vast internal distances between sparse and isolated island republics, and so most of the university is not in Stanley. It has field stations at the weather and scientific station on Thule Island in Sude and on Gough Island in Santes, and a campus on Ascension near the World Astroport. About half of its students are enrolled by correspondence through the Bureau of Associate Education, and some of them sit their units by radio from the sheep stations.
Constituent Colleges
- Stanley College – Marine sciences
- Goose Green College – Agriculture and wool
- Godthul College – Polar biology
- Plover College – Botany
- Adara College – Astronomy and geophysics
- Glass Town College – Island medicine
Each college keeps the work of its own island, and is often the largest building there. Like the colleges of CUWI, they control their own admissions and teaching but do not award degrees, and students graduate with the seal of the university. Stanley College is the largest, and Glass Town College in Santes is the smallest, with a few dozen students and a hospital of its own.
Academic Divisions & Schools
- School of Marine Sciences
- Sude Campus ( Commonwealth Laboratories)
- School of Polar Sciences
- Thule Island Station ( Bureau of Meteorology)
- Gough Island Station ( Bureau of Meteorology)
- School of Agriculture
- Falklands Sheep Station
- School of Natural Sciences
- Helena Herbarium
- School of Astronomy
- Ascension Tracking Station ( ASRE)
Despite its physical isolation, the university is well-connected to the research establishments of the Commonwealth, and most of its field stations are shared with them. Standards of fieldwork are high – perhaps the highest in the country – and every student spends at least one term at a station that can only be reached by ship.
Shackleton is best known for its polar and marine sciences. Its school of agriculture is also one of the few in the country to teach the keeping of sheep for meat, since Falklanders eat much more non-synthesised meat than the people of other republics.