IMPRESSIVE women, past and present, who have played an important part in Glasgow’s history, have been honoured by a city university.
Professor Mary Dunn, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Jackie Kay will all have areas of Strathclyde University’s new £60m Learning and Teaching Building named in their honour.
Dunn was the university’s first female professor and head of department. She led the Department of Secretarial Studies at the Scottish College of Commerce, one of the University of Strathclyde’s antecedent institutions, in 1962, and was appointed Professor in 1975.
Born in Moffat in 1912, she had studied at the University of Glasgow as a mature student, gaining a degree in Economics and graduating MA 1955. She greatly developed the department, including introducing a post-graduate Diploma in Secretarial Studies and producing highly skilled students, sought after by organisations such as The Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence and the BBC.
In her private life, Dunn, known to her friends as Maisie, was heavily involved in the Girl Guide Association. She died in December 1992. The former Architecture building will be renamed The Professor Mary Dunn Wing.
Renowned astrophysicist Dame Jocelyn’s groundbreaking discovery was pulsars - rapidly rotating neutron stars. She graduated from the University of Glasgow and moved to Cambridge to continue her research. She is the first woman president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and of the Institute of Physics, and honorary graduate of Strathclyde.
The former Colville building will be named the Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell Wing. Both wings are connected by a central outdoor events and gatherings space which will be named the Professor Jackie Kay Plaza, in honour of the celebrated poet, novelist and Strathclyde honorary graduate.
Jackie Kay was born in Edinburgh to a Scottish mother and a Nigerian father, and grew up in Bishopbriggs, with her adoptive parents, John - who worked full time for the Communist Party of Great Britain - and Helen, the Scottish secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Her unconventional upbringing features in her poetry, and her autobiographical account of the search for her birth parents, Red Dust Road.
A consultation and vote on naming the wings was held by the University in May with more than 4400 votes cast.
Professor Sir Jim McDonald, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Strathclyde, said: “The new Learning and Teaching building will be a wonderful place for our University community to meet again in September.
READ MORE: Glasgow holiday memories: 'We didn't call them staycations back then'
“It’s fitting that this important building will be named after inspirational people who have made a fantastic impact on the world around them – and I hope it will inspire our future leaders in engineering, science, business, humanities and social sciences, to do the same, whatever career path they choose to follow.”
The aspect of the building will be improved further through the forthcoming Heart of the Campus Project, which will see the pedestrianisation of North Portland Street and re-landscaping of Rottenrow Gardens to enhance greenspace, improve diversity and improve health and wellbeing.
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here