Chancellor Sanjeev Bhaskar Pro-Vice-Chancellor International Prof Chris Marlin

• Gardner Centre will be reopened following refurbishment and renamed the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts. Sally Jane Norman is to be the first Director of the new centre
• Sussex is 19th in the National Student Survey: 86 per cent of students expressed satisfaction with their learning experience
• The new Doctoral School wins a national innovation award. There are plans to create a mentoring scheme to develop the skills of early-career research staff
• Victoria Wood and Rory Bremner visit the Mass Observation archive as part of a TV series called Dear Diary for BBC 4
• Sussex physicists participate in the Hadron Collider experiment at CERN
• Sussex ecologist Professor Sue Hartley receives rave reviews for her Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on the 300-million-year conflict between plants and animals and how it has shaped the world. Sue is only the fourth women to deliver lectures since 1825
• Work begins on the refurbishment of the Library, which will be completed in 2011
• Applications to the new Business School increase from 295 to 488, a 65 per cent rise. Economics is also up, by 57.3 per cent, although nationally there was a slight decrease
• New teaching building is to be opened in Summer 2010 and named Fulton after the first VC
• EDB is renamed Silverstone after the first Media and Communication Professor Roger Silverstone
• Engineering 1 is renamed Shawcross after the first Chancellor Lord Shawcross; Engineering 2 is renamed Richmond after the second Chancellor the Duke of Richmond and Gordon; Engineering 3 is renamed after John Clifford West, a pioneer of the applied science department
• Twelve new school Heads are appointed for the 12 new schools: 11 men and one woman
• Sussex student Julian Philips's opera The Yellow Sofa is premiered at Glyndebourne
• Sussex in partnership with V&A celebrates its 20th anniversary with a reception at the Museum of London
• University restructuring means that 115 members of staff face redundancy in the face of Government cuts to university funding
• Applications to Sussex increase by 32 per cent
• More student accommodation is planned: 777 en-suite study bedrooms will be built in Northfield
• Sussex is awarded first-stage accreditation for Environmental Management
• Overseas PG students increase by 56 per cent from 343 to 536. UG students increase by 11 per cent

Statistics

THES rankings

6th in UK for teaching and learning

Sunday Times University guide ranking

Sussex 22nd

Guardian University guide ranking

Sussex is 18th, up 15 places

Top subjects: Chemistry (first); Sociology (fifth); American Studies (seventh); Biosciences (seventh)

Students by domicile

Home 83 per cent: overseas 17 per cent

Students by degree

Undergraduate 71 per cent: postgraduate 29 per cent

Gender ratio

Women 56 per cent: men 44 per cent