Plans to accommodate hundreds of additional graduate students to meet new University targets will be realised when Green and Templeton Colleges merge next year.
The new college, to open in October 2008, will be based at the Radcliffe Observatory site where Green College is currently located. Templeton College will cease to be situated at the Egrove Park campus in Kennington, south of Oxford.
Green Templeton will contain around 450 students and 80 fellows. The merger is designed to combine Green College’s focus on medical and life sciences with Templeton College’s strengths in management and business studies.
The Warden of Green College, Professor Mike Bundy, said that the move was part of the University’s plan to increase provision for graduates.
"The main benefit to Green College is that the new College will have greater capacity. In particular, it will be more able to respond effectively to the University’s new policy emphasising graduate studies and requiring higher levels of support for graduates," he said.
Green College, founded in 1979, contains 300 students and 50 fellows. Templeton College, originally ‘the Oxford Centre for Management Studies’, became a graduate college in 1995 and has 130 graduates and 30 fellows.
The new college will continue Templeton’s emphasis on management and maintain links with Oxford’s Said Business School. Anuj Jhunjhunwala, Templeton’s GCR President, said that these links would benefit graduates. "Green Templeton College would specialize in management and medicine and thus the students with an interest in management would continue to be a part of SBS.
"The Green College students would be benefiting by getting a chance to interact with more and more management professionals," she said.
Extensive consultation with students took place at both colleges throughout 2006, with authorities holding both formal and informal meetings for staff and students.
The merger was approved by the University Council and Vice-Chancellor John Hood.Professor Michael Earl, Dean of Templeton College, said in a press release, "Green Templeton will be well equipped to explore policy and define agendas in its professional specialisms. It will continue to bring practitioners, graduates and academics together, and to explore the interrelations between its major academic areas."
