Students and staff from JMU Journalism got the chance to meet the author of the Leveson Report as they attended the first LJMU Chancellor reception in London this week.
The event, which was held in the historic Middle Temple Hall in the capital’s legal quarter, aimed to engage students with the university and its future developments, as course representatives met and spoke with LJMU Chancellor, Sir Brian Leveson, and Vice-Chancellor, Professor Nigel Weatherill.
Sir Brian told JMU Journalism: “I think today, I hope, has been a really positive experience for students of LJMU to see a different environment, where different aspirations have been in play to those which you all have – not better, but different and it will help you all strive to achieve what you want to achieve. That’s not just through your university career at LJMU but in life beyond.”
It was Sir Brian’s idea for students to be invited to London and experience the great hall, and Professor Weatherill told the gathering in his welcome speech: “This evening is about you, it’s about Liverpool John Moores University and it’s about what we are as a university.
“I wouldn’t hesitate to go head-to-head in a competition with the history of Middle Temple and this hall with Liverpool John Moores University.”
The next stage of growth for LJMU in Liverpool is to connect its current 37 university buildings in a bid to make it a ‘village’ within the city centre, with its heart on Copperas Hill, on the redeveloped site of the former Royal Mail Sorting Office near Lime Street Station.
LJMU says it has undertaken a major repositioning as a modern civic university and has a strategic plan in place running up to 2017 in order to make changes and improvements to the student experience.
Professor Weatherill told JMU Journalism: “To be able to lead an institution which is educating the next generation of graduates is a great privilege. It gives me the opportunity to use the office of vice-chancellor to provide students at JMU opportunities that I would like them to engage with to develop as individuals.
“Few have the greatness to make history but everybody should be given the opportunity to as students. I hope as vice-chancellor I give them the opportunity, through the institution and all our hard-working staff, to make history.”