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SRUC – Who We Are
Our Vision: Scotland’s Enterprise University at the heart of our sustainable natural economy.
Our Mission: Creating and mobilising knowledge and talent. Partnering locally and globally to benefit Scotland’s natural economy.
These reflect the importance of the work that we do in helping meet the global grand challenges, in responding to the climate emergency, and in collaborating on unprecedented levels to make the changes of which our sector is capable. Our Vision and Mission translate not only from the global, but to the national and local scales. Given that SRUC’s footprint reaches into many of the more remote and rural areas of Scotland, then our role as an anchor tertiary institution that understands deeply the communities and regions within which we sit, is critical.
Our specialism is the Natural Economy, with a focus on taking a systemic approach, on maintaining a customer focus, and embracing new ways of working.
The Natural Economy is defined as comprising six sub-sectors that either directly use, rely or contribute to conserving natural resources, namely:
- Tourism
- Food and drink
- Fishing and aquaculture
- Agriculture
- Energy (including renewables)
- Forestry, logging and manufacture of wood.
SRUC is home to approximately 2500 FE and HE students, 300 master’s students and 100 PhD student undertaking study over a number of courses in the domains of circular economy, planetary health and science society and business. In addition, SRUC delivered short course training to over 2000 individuals in the last year.
The research power of Agriculture, Food and Veterinary Sciences at SRUC and the University of Edinburgh has been ranked as number one in the UK based on the quality and breadth of work. Research ‘power’ is an overarching measure of research quality and volume. SRUC and the University have increased both the quality and size of the joint submission since the last REF in 2014, highlighting the scale and excellence of their combined research capabilities.
All 11 impact case studies submitted – eight of which involved SRUC research – were classified as ‘world leading’ (receiving the top 4* REF grading) or ‘internationally excellent’ (3*) in terms of their impact on wider society. All – 100 per cent – of the research environment was also classified as world class or internationally excellent, highlighting the outstanding quality, equipment and culture of the research base. A total of 87 per cent of overall research activity was ranked as 4* or 3*.
SRUC has an annual turnover of £90m and employs approximately 1,300 staff operating from 6 campuses, 8 farms, 25 consulting offices, 6 research centres and 8 veterinary surveillance centres located primarily across Scotland. SRUC’s main purpose is to advance education, science, research and environmental protection and improvement in the rural and land-based industries, both domestically and internationally. The commercial consultancy, and commercially-focused aspects of skills training and some research activities are undertaken through SAC Commercial Limited.
It is SRUC’s intention to become a fully-fledged university – a new and unique kind of university for the 21st century that is regional, accessible, market-focused and responsive to a diverse range of challenges in the emerging natural economy. We will remain a strong and unique anchor institution where research, skills and business converge. Such convergence will create new insights that deliver big strategic leaps and new propositions for business, society and government.
All of this activity is firmly rooted in our distinctive ethos of a Scotland-wide presence through regional centres of global excellence. Our objective is to deliver on shared goals with government, business and other partners to drive forward the natural economy through inclusive growth, job creation and generation of commercial opportunities. We will be a research-led organisation pushing on to fulfil higher, world leading goals aligned with the UN SDGs. We will maintain our regional presence in Scotland; essential to allow us to be responsive to local needs. The unique integration of our research, education and consulting specialisms are key to allowing SRUC to deliver an unparalleled service to our students and customers.
We are moving towards a business model comprising integrated regional specialisms/faculties, which maximise the potential of our people and expertise while creating new opportunities for partnerships, co-location, investment and growth.
Each faculty’s activities will have a strong focus on, but will not be limited to:
NORTH: Rural Land Use and Veterinary & Animal Science
CENTRAL: Natural Sciences, Policy and Enterprise & Business
SOUTH & WEST: Land Use, Pasture-based Agriculture and Forestry
The locations of all our campuses across Scotland can be found here – Study at SRUC | Campuses
Governance
SRUC is a company limited by guarantee (SC103046) and is a registered Scottish charity (SC003712). SAC Commercial Ltd (SC148684), a wholly owned subsidiary of SRUC, undertakes SRUC’s commercial activities in the areas of Consultancy, Education and Research.
SRUC’s learning activities are funded by the Scottish Funding Council (SFC). SRUC continues to receive a proportion of its funding for its research, veterinary and advisory activities directly from the Scottish Government.
Academic and government-funded not-for-profit business is conducted through SRUC, while commercial (for-profit) activities are conducted through SAC Commercial Limited.
The SRUC Board consists of at least one executive director (the Principal and Chief Executive) and up to 19 non-executive directors which includes the Chair, staff, union and student members.