Keele University: Strengthening Our Community in Shropshire
Keele has been supporting communities in Shropshire since the University’s foundation in 1949. We’re proud to be the university of choice for thousands of students from across the county, helping them to achieve their career goals.
From working with the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust to explore the site’s heritage, to widening access to skills and education for local people through our partnerships with two of the biggest colleges in the county, we’re continually building on our long-standing roots in Shropshire and making a positive impact within the area. Currently, more than 500 students from Shropshire are studying at Keele.
Working with Shropshire schools and colleges
We’re proud to be partnered with Shrewsbury Colleges Group, and Telford College. The partnerships help bridge the gap between further education and higher education for students, with hundreds of applications for entry to Keele coming from the colleges each year.
The partnerships also create opportunities for staff who are looking towards their future. In 2023-24, Keele had more 100 interactions with 55 schools and colleges across Shropshire, including inviting students to visit Keele, or providing careers advice or subject-specific support in their settings.
Higher Horizons
Through Higher Horizons, hundreds of young people in secondary schools, sixth forms and colleges in Shropshire have been supported to make informed decisions about their future.
Higher Horizons is a government-funded programme based at Keele, which aims to widen participation in higher education among under-represented groups.
Working with seven education establishments across Shropshire, results have shown that young people who engage in the programme are twice as likely to apply to go to university.
Since 2017 the network has worked with more than 50,000 young people across Shropshire, Cheshire and Staffordshire, 60% of whom were from the most deprived areas.
Our Health Impact in Shropshire
At Keele, our healthcare academics don’t just prepare students for working in the NHS of tomorrow. With over 200 of our colleagues also working clinically in the NHS, some quite literally go from the lecture theatre to the operating theatre. From delivering babies to saving lives, the wealth of expertise at Keele has a positive impact not just on our students, but also on local people on a daily basis.
Keele partners with more than 50 per cent of GP surgeries across the whole of Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin, including a mix of urban and rural practices, allowing students from all years to experience clinical placements in general practice throughout their five-year curriculum.
From the lecture theatre to the NHS frontline - Professor William Parry-Smith
Professor William Parry-Smith is a clinical academic at Keele University and an Honorary Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist working in the NHS at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust. When he’s not teaching and supervising students at Keele, he is helping to care for pregnant women and unborn children and looking after women’s sexual and reproductive health in Shropshire.
At Keele, Professor Parry-Smith is the University’s lead for the NIHR Challenge Maternity Disparities Consortium, which will bring benefits to people across Shropshire and the Midlands by tackling inequalities in maternity outcomes.
Over the past two years, Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, in collaboration with Keele, have funded five academic research positions to develop chief investigators of the future and allow time for grant applications to be developed and submitted. As a result, three grant applications have now been successful and received funding from external sources, which will allow work and research to be carried out what will improve health outcomes for local residents.
Harper and Keele Vet School
The Harper and Keele Veterinary School launched in 2020 with its first cohort of students. Combining the extensive resources and excellence in teaching at Shropshire-based Harper and Keele universities, students study a five-year programme leading to a Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery degree.
A new veterinary building on each campus coupled with close relationships with veterinary practices and related businesses, has created an exceptionally rich and authentic environment for veterinary education and research.
Keele’s new veterinary school building was officially opened in March 2023 by Professor Lord Trees, former President of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. Featuring brand new anatomy and clinical skills laboratories, the building also boasts modern teaching facilities, a lecture theatre, and break-out areas for group study.
In the news – supporting the Shropshire community
Keele University has expanded its partnership with a leading further education college in Shropshire. Keele now has its own dedicated teaching space at Telford College’s Wellington campus, which will be used to teach college students and deliver online lessons, with a particular focus on training a new generation of health and social care workers.
Experts from Keele University are working with The Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust in a move that will develop student opportunities and open doors for new research into 300 years of industrialisation.
On a regional level, universities make a substantial economic contribution. This includes £18.8 billion in the West Midlands, highlighting the key role Higher Education plays in boosting growth and productivity across the entire country. A report by London Economics also highlighted the range of wider benefits, to both graduates and society, of a university education. These include increased work productivity for both the graduates and their co-workers, improved health outcomes and a lower chance they will be involved in crime.
Shropshire-based Keele Alumnus
Dr Steven Rogers has three degrees from Keele University. From Hodnet, near Market Drayton, Steven is a lecturer in Geology at Keele, having arrived at the University as an undergraduate student in 2005.
Keele lecturer receives his third Keele degree alongside his students
Three Counties Open Art Exhibition
Featuring artists from Shropshire, Cheshire and Staffordshire, we’re proud to host the long-standing Three Counties Open Art Exhibition with our partners. The event, held at the Burslem School of Art, is a celebration of contemporary local artists, from emerging to established practitioners. Several awards are handed out and in 2024 organisers received a record 268 individual submissions, which were short-listed to 98 artists for the exhibition.
Keele Region Applicants
Since our foundation in 1949, we’ve been deeply rooted in our region - Staffordshire, Shropshire and Cheshire. We are committed to our civic role and want to support applicants who choose to study locally - for whatever reason - and commuter students who have fewer local study options available. On that basis, applicants studying at a school or college in the defined ‘Keele Region’, or independent applicants living in the region, will receive an alternative offer.
