Cornwall graduates celebrate degree success

A total of 536 students of Biology, Cornish Studies, English, Geography, Geology, History, Law, Mining Engineering, Politics and Renewable Energy were awarded with degrees. The University of Exeter also bestowed honorary degrees on local artist Neil Canning and Chair of the General Medical Council Professor Sir Peter Rubin, who grew up in Cornwall.

University of Exeter Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Mark Overton said: “I would like to congratulate all of this year’s graduates who have worked so hard to obtain their degrees. This is a marvellous day for them and their families and a proud day for us. We celebrate with them as they enter the next stage of their lives with a degree from one of the country’s top 10 universities.”

Professor Sir Peter Rubin attended Redruth Grammar School and, the first of his family to go to university, graduated in medicine from Cambridge and the Oxford Clinical School. He was an American Heart Association Fellow at Stanford and a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow in Glasgow. He has been Professor of Therapeutics at the University of Nottingham since 1987 and still practises as a doctor. His main interests have been in the treatment of high blood pressure, particularly in pregnancy. He has been a member or chairman of several Medical Research Council committees, published many research papers and is the author of several books on clinical pharmacology. He has been Chair of the General Medical Council since 2009.

Neil Canning lives and works at Relubbus near Penzance and is a leading British artist with a career spanning 30 years. His vibrant, dynamic, paintings and prints appear in numerous private, public and corporate collections including United Nations New York, Ashmolean Museum Oxford, British Embassy Venezuela and the Bank of England.

His connection with landscape has been a constant source of inspiration, particularly after he moved to Cornwall in 1997. In 2007 his work was included in an exhibition at Tate, St Ives, recognising his contribution to the St Ives tradition. He has recently completed major commissions for John Lewis Partnership and the newly built Central Library in Cardiff. In 2010 he launched his first group of sculpture in conjunction with paintings. His latest series of prints was also exhibited in New York.

Neil Canning’s oil painting Sperys Dasserhy is on display on the Cornwall Campus.

Video webcasts of the ceremonies, held at 10.00, 13.15 and 15.45, are available to view on the Graduation website.

In an arrangement that is unique in the UK, the Cornwall campuses is owned and jointly managed as the Tremough Campus with University College Falmouth. 

The University of Exeter and University College Falmouth are founding partners in the Combined Universities in Cornwall (CUC), a unique collaboration between six universities and colleges to promote regional economic regeneration through Higher Education, funded mainly by the European Union (Objective One and Convergence), the South West Regional Development Agency and the Higher Education Funding Council for England, with support from Cornwall Council.