Suffolk College Past, Present & Future - Ipswich Angle, February 2004

In the four decades since the first student came through the door of the then Civic College, there has been an enormous increase in not only the breadth and depth of the courses but also in the many contributions that Suffolk College makes to the community.

With the widest range of education and training programmes in the county on offer, there must be few people in Ipswich who haven’t had some contact with the College. What is perhaps less well known is the indirect support that comes from very important but less visible areas such as research.

As an accredited college of the University of East Anglia, there is naturally a culture of healthy curiosity that inspires both staff and students to pursue learning and use that knowledge to raise academic standards.

There are also dedicated centres of research within the College that have very practical goals and applications. One such is CREATE – the Centre for Research into the Educational Applications of Telematics – a self-funding unit dedicated to the development, delivery and evaluation of technology-supported learning. CREATE is located on the Suffolk College campus and has a presence at BT’s Adastral Park. It works with a range of national and European partners in an energetic ‘research by doing’ style.

Outcomes from this work include, for example, the development of a range of e-learning programmes for small businesses that were refined in line with the needs of the user and are now delivered through the Suffolk Institute of Technology (SIT). CREATE also provides consultancy services, including a recently completed e-learning strategy for Suffolk on behalf of the Learning & Skills Council.

Last year the College was delighted to open the Dominic Barker Research Centre. The Dominic Barker Trust was set up in memory of Dominic Barker. Founded in 1998 originally as a five-year project, the response from the community and the value of the findings about stammering convinced the Trust to commit further resources and funding to establish a research centre under the College’s School of Health. As well as the initial research project with adults, the two researchers at the Centre are investigating the relationship between play and fluency in pre-school children. Suffolk College is, of course, very well placed to disseminate this valuable information where it will do the most good – both through the School of Health and the Care & Early Years curriculum centre.

With the exciting developments being planned for the expansion of university provision, the profile of Ipswich in the field of research and development can only get stronger.

For information on the full range of courses at Suffolk College you can telephone the Information Centre on 01473 296606 or visit the website www.suffolk.ac.uk, where you will also find links to the research centres.