Last week, Imperial at Wye was reorganised in what is being seen as the first step in the dismantling of the Royal School of Mines into Imperial's new faculties. The sections of the TH Huxley School and Biology Department that are based at Wye have been regrouped as the Department of Agricultural Sciences. The new department is part of the Life Sciences faculty and essentially re-unifies the adminstration of Wye College after the break-up that followed the merger with Imperial.
ICU President, Hamish Common, stated that the Rector is likely to continue to break-up the Huxley School. It is understood that the Rector believes the Huxley School is an "administrative monstrosity of unrelated departments that should never have been created". The recent redundancies of teaching staff in Geology, have been blamed on the management and organisation of the Huxley School.
The Wye reorganisation has also raised a question mark over the future of the Associateships. The Biology students at Wye received the Associateship of the Royal College of Science (ARCS), while the Huxley School is part of the Royal School of Mines. Mr Common suggested that students of the new department would most probably receive the ARCS. A spokesperson for the registry confirmed that no decision has yet been made, but added that the whole system of Associateships was "under review".
In a bizare twist on previous speculation C&GCU President, Dinesh Ganesarajah predicited that the Life Sciences faculty would be the Royal School of Mines.
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