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Cranfield University

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Cranfield University

Cranfield University is a postgraduate-only public research university in the United Kingdom that specialises in science, engineering, design, technology and management. Cranfield was founded as the College of Aeronautics (CoA) in 1946. Through the 1950s and 1960s, the development of aircraft research led to growth and diversification into other areas such as manufacturing and management, and in 1967, to the founding of the Cranfield School of Management. In 1969, the College of Aeronautics was renamed the Cranfield Institute of Technology, was incorporated by royal charter, gained degree awarding powers, and became a university. In 1993, it adopted its current name.

Cranfield University has two campuses: the main campus is at Cranfield, Bedfordshire, and the second is at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom at Shrivenham, southwest Oxfordshire. The main campus is unique in the United Kingdom (and Europe) for having its own airport – Cranfield Airport – and its own aircraft, used for teaching and research.

Cranfield University was formed in 1946 as the College of Aeronautics, on the then Royal Air Force base of RAF Cranfield. A major role was played in the development of the college by Roxbee Cox, later Lord Kings Norton, who was appointed to be the first governor of the college in 1945 and then served as vice-chair and (from 1962) chair of the board. He led the drive for the college to diversify, with the Cranfield University School of Management being established in 1967, and petitioned successfully for a royal charter and degree awarding powers. When these were granted in 1969, he became the first chancellor of the Cranfield Institute of Technology, serving until 1997.

The Cranfield Institute of Technology was incorporated by royal charter in 1969, giving the institution its own degree-awarding powers and making it a full university in its own right.

In 1975 the National College of Agricultural Engineering, founded in 1963 at Silsoe, Bedfordshire, was merged with Cranfield and run as Silsoe College.

An academic partnership with the Royal Military College of Science (RMCS) at Shrivenham was formed in 1984. RMCS, whose roots can be traced back to 1772, is now a part of the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom and from 2009 has been known as "Cranfield Defence and Security". RMCS became wholly postgraduate c. 2007 with undergraduate courses moved elsewhere.

In 1993 the institution's royal charter was amended changing its name to Cranfield University. A decade later in 2003, Cranfield became wholly postgraduate and the Shrivenham site admitted its last undergraduates.

In 2007, the university's first international campus was opened by the Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, located in the Torrens Building in Adelaide, alongside the Carnegie Mellon University. It offered short-term postgraduate degrees in defence management and technology, in partnership with local institutions and using some distance learning courses. However South Australia's "defence boom" did not materialise and its failure to attract enough students caused the closure of the campus in 2010.

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