ON Saturday, it will be exactly 50 years to the day since University of Essex’s first vice-chancellor, Sir Albert Sloman, spoke to the nation on the BBC about his new job.

In the first of his Reith lectures, entitled a University in the Making, he set out his vision for the institution he would lead.

It would, he said, be a university which would challenge convention and be at the cutting edge, with fresh approaches to study, research and teaching.

It’s now almost half a century since the first students came to the emerging campus at Wivenhoe Park.

Do the ambitions and principles set out by Sir Albert still resonate across the campus?

Professor Joan Busfield thinks so.

Prof Busfield studied for a degree in psychology and economics at St Andrew’s University, Dundee, and went on to train as a clinical psychologist.

At that stage, she decided not to follow that path, instead joining Essex University in 1965 as one of its first research assistants.

She said “I came to Essex because there was a job. I didn’t know much about it.

“The interview was in some huts behind Wivenhoe House. There was some construction under way on the main campus, but the university was essentially based at Wivenhoe House.”

Wivenhoe House is still a seat of learning. These days it’s a pioneering hospitality and catering college, run in the environs of commercial hotel, while the main campus has expanded hugely and continues to grow.

A new £26million project is about to start, to extend the library and create a new study centre.

That, says Prof Busfield, is very much the way Sir Albert envisaged
things going.

She explains: “Sloman talked about a ‘university town’, about the university being a town in itself. I suppose we are getting closer to that.”

Sir Albert went to Oxford, but was determined his new university should challenge existing conventions and break the mould.

He always looked far beyond the UK’s boundaries – the diversity of the
university’s 2013 student base can trace its roots back to those early
days.

Another fundamental principle, still in evidence at Wivenhoe Park today was the belief in the value of research.

Prof Busfield began studying for a master’s degree in sociology in 1966
while working as a research assistant.

She then got a job, teaching social psychology in the sociology department.

She said: “Sloman was concerned about research-led teaching. He did
not think you could be a good academic unless you did good research.”

The philosophy of the university might as well have been set in the foundations of its iconic buildings.

Its economics, government and sociology departments remain among the best in Europe, while Essex ranks as the UK’s leading university for social sciences.

Sir Albert, who died in 2012, also believed in creating a few strong
departments, rather than trying to offer degrees in a huge range of subjects, which is why the sociology department grew so rapidly.

Prof Busfield said: “You had to have a decent-sized department if it
was to be good. That was one of the fundamental arguments.”

The university very quickly set its stamp on the academic world, known
for being challenging, confrontational and unconventional.

In the late Sixties and early Seventies, it also gained a reputation as a
hotbed of political agitation.

In 1968, with much of Europe facing student uprisings, Essex undergraduates occupied the campus, lighting bonfires in the main piazza.

In 1974, a group of students – one of them future Labour peer Lord Triesman – were arrested after a protest.

Prof Busfield said: “The whole philosophy of the university was to
encourage students to think for themselves. That’s still an important
feature of academic life.

“There was quite a lot of political activity and certainly there were sympathetic staff at the time.”

In her almost 50 years at the university, Prof Busfield has taught
thousands of students, while her research has made her an authority
on psychiatry and mental disorders.

Her challenging paper, A Pill for Every Ill, which blamed part of society’s
pill dependency on the pharmaceutical industry, caused an especially
big stir.

She speaks of her pride in the university, explaining: “Sloman always
talked about intellectual rigour and that has always been an important
concern. I think he would have been pleased with how the university
is today.”