Gloucestershire College of Art and Design

Gloucestershire College is a successful college of further and higher education in the UK, offering a wide range of education and training programmes, including A Levels and GCSEs, vocational qualifications, work-based learning, basic skills courses, higher education, short courses for business, part-time day and evening courses and English for overseas students.

The College has three main sites in Cheltenham, Gloucester and the Royal Forest of Dean, as well as a number of satellite sites such as our Construction School in Kingsditch and Do I.T. Centres in Cheltenham, Gloucester and at the Tewkesbury Launchpad Centre.

Gloucestershire College abbreviated GC (formerly known as Gloucestershire College of Arts and Technology, abbreviated GLOSCAT) is a college of further education in the county of Gloucestershire, United Kingdom. It has its main campuses at large purpose-built facilities in Cheltenham and Gloucester, and also several smaller sites around the county including the Construction School in Kingsditch and Do I.T. Centres in Cheltenham, Gloucester and at the Tewkesbury Launchpad Centre. The college campus at Gloucester relocated the former campus to a brownfield site within Gloucester Docks. The building won the Civic Trust Award for Best Climate Friendly Scheme July 2008. In early 2011 it merged with the former Royal Forest of Dean College and thus acquired the sites of that college to safeguard the provision of Higher Education in that region.

Catering mainly for the 16–18 age group. It also offers higher education up to and including HND, HNC and Foundation Degree levels. In the 2005/06 academic year, Gloucestershire College had 21,777 students enrolled, of which 416 were engaged in higher education.

The University of Gloucestershire has pursued an environmental sustainability strategy since 1993, and was the first UK university to meet the ISO 14001 environmental management standard. In the People & Planet Green League 2008 published by the Times Higher Education (THE), it was ranked as the greenest university in the UK.

The University of Gloucestershire is also an active participant of the ERASMUS programme and the only UK university to be part of the BCA Programme offering semester abroad, most notably with the USA.

The university is the recent successor of a large number of merged and name-changed institutions of further and higher education. Its history began with the Mechanics' Institute founded in 1834. From 1992, Cheltenham & Gloucester College of Higher Education (CGCHE) was permitted to award first and postgraduate degrees and 1998 it achieved Research degree awarding powers. However, it was only in 2001 that the University of Gloucestershire was awarded university status. Its history spans nearly two centuries.


References:
http://www.gloscol.ac.uk/Zenntrix.aspx?a_id=6048
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloucestershire_College
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gloucestershire-College-of-Art-and-Design/114856968526206