Penryn Outlook: Gordon Kelly – News

“To see the campus open and the students there was a great moment. I could say I played a part in making that dream come true.”

Gordon Kelly

Gordon Kelly is the former convenor of the Combined Universities of Cornwall (CUC), whose five years in the post helped redefine the education landscape in the Duchy. A qualified surveyor, Gordon entered higher education as a lecturer at Birmingham Polytechnic – the institution that later became Birmingham City University. Rising through the ranks, he eventually moved into a role focused on commercialization and intellectual property and led numerous funding applications for major projects, including the £100m+ regeneration that created Millennium Point. This experience, particularly his knowledge of European and government funding, helped him secure his role at CUC in March 2001.

In this edition of Penryn Prospects, Gordon takes us back to year zero and a story of transformation – for the university and for himself. From “landlubber” to “sea shanty singer”.

“We had just finished the Millennium Point project, the second largest of its kind in the country. When that disappeared from my life, my wife told me “you’ve lost your luster, you’re bored” – and she was right. And it was at that point that this job came up in Cornwall as CUC Coordinator. We’ve only been to Cornwall once, camping with the kids – I was very much a Midlands earth-beater – but we decided to have one last big adventure. I applied for the role and I think it was the combination of being a quantity surveyor and knowing buildings and having experience in both higher education and European funding that helped me get the job.

“When we came to the scene on the first day, we couldn’t find anyone. There was a caretaker who let me into Tremough House, and my office was in the former Mother Superior’s office. In that room, there is a five-pointed star embedded in the paneling, which is the insignia of the US Air Force, which requisitioned the building during the war. And at the bottom of the road towards Penryn, in the woods on the right, is a star pool and a statue of the Madonna, also left by the USAF. There are so many strange pieces of history there.

“One of my first tasks was to resolve a problem related to the funding request. Although European funding was part of the Objective One program for Cornwall, there was no matching government contribution. The original plan reduced the amount of space allocated for buildings to reduce the cost of the project. Unfortunately, this meant that it fell below the space requirements required by HEFCE for certain subjects – and so would not have approved government funding.

“So in the first summer we replicated something we had done with the Jewelery School in Birmingham. We have designated specialist equipment used by Camborne School of Mines and Falmouth Design Center as available to industry. This enabled us to apply to the then Regional Development Agency for matching funding and with this secured we had the financial freedom to bring the space requirements back up to the level required by HEFCE. Once we got past this hurdle, trust among partners grew and the first phase began.

“CUC was not involved in the actual construction as that was the responsibility of the partners and their own contractors. But I was there, seeing the campus take shape day by day, and it was a fascinating experience. At the very beginning, the construction work had to stop because the county archaeologists found a development from the Bronze Age. Specialist teams arrived and carefully recovered the artefacts and I had an emotional moment when I got to hold an arrowhead knowing it was 3,500 years old. And although there was supposed to be an acceleration program towards the end, all contracts were delivered on time and on budget. The European Commission was so impressed that they labeled it a “model project” and invited us to Brussels to present it to the commissioner! And it wasn’t just Penryn, but developments in Rosewarne, Pool, Truro, Newquay, St Austell, Stoke Climsland and Saltash.

“At the time the campus opened, we were already preparing the documentation for phase 2, which effectively extended many of the facilities from phase 1. This went smoothly and led to phase 3, which we were working on until then. I retired in 2006. I handed in all the paperwork and left! But seeing the campus open and the students there was a great moment. When I came to Cornwall I left that huge project in Birmingham behind, and to this day I have never seen it in its completed state. But to know that I played a part in fulfilling the dream of a university education in Cornwall was brilliant.”

“I haven’t been to the Penryn campus for about ten years, but I know it has expanded far beyond our initial expectations. It exploded. We never had anything like this in our plans. And it was a wonderful thing – to plan my retirement, even when I went down for this last role, to have hit all the targets and then go.

“After I retired I worked as a consultant for six months but quickly realized that everything was getting in the way of my life, especially my golf and singing in the sea shack. I had become a member of the Falmouth Shanty Group and together with the Falmouth RNLI station set up what is now the Falmouth International Sea Shanty Festival and ran it for eight years.

“Long term, my wife Kath and I didn’t plan to stay, but in the first four years our two daughters got married and had four children between them. And they started coming down for a free vacation and have been doing it ever since. Now the oldest grandchild is 21 and the youngest is 18, and they will all be back this summer. They just love it. And that was partly what kept us here. But then my wife got more involved with the golf club and the kohale festival and started singing in a choir. There is so much life in Falmouth and we have grown to love the place so we are here for life now.”