The Royal Agricultural University (RAU) is celebrating its 180th anniversary this year. Established in 1845, it was the first agricultural college in the English-speaking world.
Originally established as the Royal Agricultural College with just 25 students, the institution became a university in 2013.
It now has more than 1,100 students studying subjects from agriculture, land management, and equine science, to business and entrepreneurship, and cultural heritage, at its Cirencester campus.
The university also has more than 3,000 students studying worldwide through its international partners.
To celebrate the milestone, the university has a calendar of events taking place throughout the year including a special public lecture series.
There will also be an unveiling of a new sculpture and the opening of the university’s new £5.8m land laboratories.
Professor Peter McCaffery, who became vice-chancellor of the RAU in 2021, said: “As we celebrate our 180th anniversary this year, we can reflect that our university, the very first agricultural college in the English-speaking world, is as relevant today as it always has been.”
Other events taking place this year including the RAU’s annual Bledisloe Lecture, taking place in May.
The Friends of the RAU lunch will take place in July and the graduation and matriculation ceremonies in September.
RAU alumnus Will Carr, who left the university in 2015 with a graduate diploma in agriculture and who works as a self-taught sculptor alongside running his family farm in Hereford, has been commissioned to make a special sculpture for the anniversary.
The new sculpture comprises of a ram’s head, made from an old metal plough and machinery parts, to resemble the two rams in the RAU’s logo, and will be unveiled later in the year.
The rams will join the existing barley sculpture, made for the university’s 170th anniversary in 2015, on the Bathurst Lawn at the university’s historic Cirencester campus.
Professor McCaffery added: “Our influence and impact continue to be felt locally, nationally, and globally, and we fully intend to continue to punch above our weight in the future as we have done for the past 180 years.”
