The 600th Anniversary Campaign

We are so thankful to everybody who has helped with the 600th anniversary campaign. Your contributions are changing student lives, are enhancing the fabric of the university, and are enabling us to plan confidently for our future.

Right from the start of the 600th anniversary campaign, we wanted to make scholarships a very important part of the campaign; right at the heart of it.

Because students, are after all, so important to us at St Andrews.

As is widening access for students who come from modest backgrounds.

So right from the very beginning we were looking for donations to scholarships, and one of the wonderful things is that that strand of the campaign really developed and gathered momentum as it went on so that now we have a very wide variety of people contributing to it. and, correspondingly, a wide variety of students taking up the scholarships.

As a result of your engagement, St Andrews is welcoming more students from more diverse backgrounds than ever before.

Our researchers and lecturers are working with state of the art equipment and facilities, in ways that place us at the cutting edge of discovery.

We're developing the next generation of microscopes and tools that will allow scientists to look at diseases that affect the mind such as dementia, Parkinson's, Huntington's without damaging the tissue in any way in a beautiful gentle way with no contact whatsoever.

With appropriate resource and careful planning, St Andrews can really make a continued strong impact in this century in that area.

The iconic St Salvator's Quadrangle has been refurbished, providing a stunning location for University events.

The construction of a new Scottish Oceans Institute at the East Sands is well underway.

The Scottish Oceans Institute started in 1896.

You can imagine how the requirements in modern science change over more than a hundred year period and so it was very timely to renew the facilities that we have.

The new building will have two main parts.

One is a new aquarium.

This is an aquarium that will be state of the art.

The other part is more office space.

We are working with so many different marine scientists that currently they are distributed across town and bringing everyone into one building is going be very important for us.

And then, last but not least, for teaching as well we are building new teaching spaces and these teaching spaces integrate very well with the researchers and with the lab and also with the aquarium.

We've transformed the former Martyr's Kirk into a postgraduate research library and reading room.

The Richardson Research Library at Martyr's Kirk has been one of the most significant developments in the library's history and in the University's history for decades.

It has transformed the way in which research is done at St Andrews' library and it's transformed the offer to our postgraduates and researchers both on staff and to visitors as well so it's a really great asset and it's enabled a feeling of a genuine research hub right in the heart of St Andrews.

We've redeveloped the Students' Association building.

We have completely refurbished Students' Association building which has changed dramatically from what many of our alumni will remember, but in a way that is, we hope, really positive.

Students are really proud of the building.

They enjoy it.

It is a building that serves our students, but, which also, attracts many people from our community.

And that sense that our students are part of the wider St Andrews community is really enhanced by the new Students' Association building.

We've also enhanced our students' lives through the big refurbishment and changes that we've been able to make in the new sports centre.

The feedback from our students and clubs, local schools, local clubs, local community, has been phenomenal.

People are incredibly happy with what we've done.

We now have three full-size sports halls.

We have a brand new dance studio.

We have a top of the range gym.

A top of the range performance suite.

As well as, four indoor tennis courts.

As a representative of St Andrews when you put your kit on you feel like you're representing the Uni, so, now being able to take a team in that you're competing against into these brand new facilities it really gives you a sense of pride for what you're representing.

We know that we will also be able to enhance our community's lives and their sense of pleasure in St Andrews by our new Laidlaw Music Centre which is being so generously supported by members and supporters of the University.

Music has been booming at the University over the last ten years.

We've had more and more students playing, singing, more and more groups starting up and the Younger Hall is bursting at the seams.

It's a good concert hall, but the other rooms in it weren't designed for music practice or rehearsal and they are not sound-proofed.

So we decided that we needed a new building in which all of the activities that are now taking place could flourish and could happen alongside each other.

The new building will have rooms that are suitable for all of the types of music that we do, and indeed, want to do in the future.

The building was sited at the heart of the town. so that it's a building that the community feels genuinely belongs to them.

So many of the projects that have been enhanced by the campaign and enabled by the campaign, contribute vastly to what our students experience at St Andrews and what our academic and professional services staff also experience and enjoy, but they also greatly enhance the character and quality of the town itself.

One of the most important functions of a University museum is in many ways its community outreach, its engagement work with the local community, but also with schools.

So we have an award winning schools programme, we have wonderful schemes, like the MUSA Young Artist of the Year award.

But what this extension will enable more topical and better engagement with some of the big exhibition themes that we have and allow us to tailor more carefully what we're offering to our local community in Fife and beyond.

I would like to say thank you to those donors who've enabled the extension to MUSA to go ahead.

It's an absolutely fantastic asset which allows us to use the space as a platform for much wider conversations across the University.

We hope that it inspires generations of students to think about collections and to think about objects and art as a way of understanding the past, and the present, and the future in more ambitious and creative ways.

Your support is integral to the Campaign's lasting effect on our people, their ambitions, and the common good.

To go on being successful, we cannot stand still.

Our plans for the future include a new college at the recently acquired Madras site on South Street for teaching and research in the social sciences; the development of a new STEM hub on the North Haugh for Mathematics and Statistics, Biology, and Computer Science; and the refurbishment of the Younger Hall, so that we can celebrate the high points of the academic year together.

Please continue to be part of our quest.