Cranfield University

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Cranfield University is a British postgraduate and research-based university with two campuses. The main campus is here at Cranfield, Bedfordshire and the second is the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom at Shrivenham, Oxfordshire. The main campus is unique in the United Kingdom for having an operational airport (Cranfield Airport) next to the main campus. The airport facilities are used by Cranfield University's own aircraft in the course of aerospace teaching and research. The university has connections in India and Australia.

The university was formed in 1946 as the College of Aeronautics on the former Royal Air Force base of RAF Cranfield which opened in 1937. Between 1955 and 1969 a period of diversification took place. In 1967 the college presented the Privy Council with a petition for the grant of a Royal Charter along with a draft charter for a new institution to be called Cranfield Institute of Technology. The Cranfield Institute of Technology was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1969, giving the institution its own degree-awarding powers.

Since then the former National College of Agricultural Engineering established at Silsoe near Luton, Bedfordshire, in the 1960s, was incorporated. This was relocated to the Cranfield campus and closed for teaching in 2007. 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 now forms the Defence College of Management and Technology, known as 'DCMT' and from 2009 as "Cranfield Defence and Security". In 1993 a Royal Charter changed the institution's name to Cranfield University.

In 2003, the then RMCS site admitted its last undergraduates. In 2006, it was decided that activities on the Silsoe site would be relocated to the main campus at Cranfield. As a result, a substantial building program was undertaken on Cranfield campus, including the provision of departmental buildings and additional accommodation (Stringfellow and Chilver Halls), and Silsoe-based staff were transferred to Cranfield.

www.cranfield.ac.uk/