Once again, I’m having trouble posting pictures to the blog. I’ve had absolutely no connection to the internet at home for a whole week now due to Virgin Broadband completely ignoring us and replying to our emails with the identical canned reply twice now. We;ve had no access to the DSL service for the last 8 days now, and spotty connection for the 4 days before that. Best thing is that we’ve only been a customer with Virgin Broadband for 3 weeks as of today.

With my mobile phone broken and landline not working (landline also provided by Virgin Media), I can’t call technical support and the people at the Virgin Store on Buchanan Street couldn’t help me either. Calling from a mobile costs about £20 for an hour. I know this because that’s how much I spent calling tech support without ever getting through to them. lack of access to the internet is also inhibiting my primary tasks, such as studying and essay writing as I can’t do any research online and I don’t have the time to sit at the library until 2am every day (which is what I’ve had to do a lot of recently). Who do I have to bribe or scream at to get access to a service I’m paying for?

Rant over, must run to my Archaeology tutorial in the Hunterian Museum!

I’ll return to regular posting as soon as I can, but the posts will be slow in catching up, hopefully starting tonight.

The Faculty of Education is the youngest faculty at Glasgow University, formed when the University merged with St Andrew’s College of Education in 1999. In 2003, the building in the photo above, the St Andrew’s Building was opened to house the Faculty of Education. The St Andrew’s Building is located just to the east of Gilmorehill, over the River Kelvin in the Woodlands area of Glasgow. (See Map) Within the umbrella of the Faculty of Education you can find the Department of Curriculum Studies, Department of Educational Studies, and the Department of Religious Education and the Department of Adult & Continuing Education. If you want more, the Faculty of Education website is at http://www.gla.ac.uk/education.

Although the building looks a bit gloomy in the photo right now, the large glass front of the building is typically lit up in the evenings during the week (Picture taken on a Saturday evening), in several different colours. I need to trek there one evening with a tripod, and get a day time shot too at some point.

The big sign prominent in the photo is a new addition, which is potentially unfortunate timing-wise as there is talk of a reshuffle of the nine faculties which exist today. The new plan, proposed by the new principal Anton Muscatelli, would combine the nine faculties into 4 Schools or Colleges. The Faculty of Education would cease to exist, becoming a part of the newly formed School of Law, Business, Social Sciences and Education (LBSSE). I can’t find the original article right now, but I will talk more about this when I hear more.

The eagle-eyed among you will notice that although ABC Sundae is a fortnightly theme day, it’s been three weeks since the letter D. In the Halloween rush I posted the wrong photo last Sunday. I’ll swap that one and this one around in a few days. Oops!

ABC Sundae is a fortnightly theme day, occurring every other Sunday, one letter of the alphabet at a time. Click here for more ABC Sundae.

[Poll #6: What is the UGLIEST BUILDING at Glasgow University?]
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© 2009 GlasgowUniPhoto.com

One of the walls at the western end of the cafeteria floor is adorned with a collage made up of views of the University campus. (I’ll get a photo of that one day.) The rest of the cafeteria of the Fraser Building is decorated with collages and mirrors on one side, and by natural light on the other side. This is to illustrate that the building is not only pretty on the outside, but a lot of effort has gone in to the decoration of the interior too. And yes, that’s a third type of chair found in the cafeteria. There’s at least one more kind of chair to be found on this floor, but you’re going to have to look for it yourself.

With that I end this week of featuring the winner of October’s poll on which is the nicest building at Glasgow University. The first full week of December will be spend celebrating the reluctant winner of November’s poll on finding the ugliest building at Glasgow University. If you haven’t cast your vote yet, you can do so on the right-hand panel of this blog, or by going here. You can find more posts about the Fraser Building here.

[Poll #6: What is the UGLIEST BUILDING at Glasgow University?]
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© 2009 GlasgowUniPhoto.com

As I said yesterday, the cafeteria on the third floor of the Fraser Building is often pretty full. If you look carefully you can see two kinds of chairs visible, the metallic white wireframe chairs and the black plastic round “chairs”. They’re actually surprisingly comfortable.

The room overlooking the dining area is the student conference rooms on the fourth floor.

You can find more posts about the Fraser Building here.

[Poll #6: What is the UGLIEST BUILDING at Glasgow University?]
Click on the photo above for a larger version. Please rate the photo below!
© 2009 GlasgowUniPhoto.com

The second important function of the Fraser Building is to serve as a central cafeteria for students on campus, one of many on campus. The Fraser Building’s ‘Food For Thought’ is open from 8.30am for breakfast and from 11.30am to 2.30pm for lunch. As for offerings:

The Chef’s Theatre will offer meals cooked to order from the wok station, baked potatoes and baguettes will be filled to order from the Natural Choice counter, and you can expect good value daily offers, including a vegan choice, from Core Cuisine. Soup Station will have a home-made vegan option to enjoy in the restaurant or to take away.

There’s also a takeaway food station aptly named ‘Food To Go’, open from 8am until 7.30pm from Monday to Thursday and Friday until 4.30pm. It might one of a number of places to eat on campus, as I mentioned above, but because of it’s central location (entrance directly opposite the library’s main doors), the 400 seats inside are often packed to capacity. Or at the very least it’s always full when I’m trying to find a seat.

You can find more posts about the Fraser Building here.

[Poll #6: What is the UGLIEST BUILDING at Glasgow University?]
Click on the photo above for a larger version. Please rate the photo below!
© 2009 GlasgowUniPhoto.com

The major function of the Fraser Building is to incorporate all the University’s student services under one roof, combining the Careers Services, the International & Postgraduate Service, Recruitment, Admissions & Participation Service, the Registry, and the Student Services Enquiry Team.

Yes, there may usually be a queue to the service desks, but thankfully the services area is manned with an information desk, and the most common requests and forms (council tax exemption, student status, transcript, etc…) can be found, filled and submitted without queuing at all.

The Student Services website is here, and you can find more posts about the Fraser Building here.

[Poll #6: What is the UGLIEST BUILDING at Glasgow University?]
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© 2009 GlasgowUniPhoto.com

The Fraser Building was a renovation of the original HUB Building, opened in the 1960s as a specimen of the architectural monstrosities of the era. Almost 50 years later, its one of the nicest buildings on campus (the nicest on campus if you believe the ultra scientific polling of this website’s poll for October), opened on January 13th 2009 by Sir William Kerr Fraser and Lady Marion Fraser.

Visitors to the building’s second floor are greeted with these characters from the University’s past, hiding behind them small meeting rooms for meeting with advisers. (If anyone can name them, you get extra credit.)

The Student Services website is here, and you can find more posts about the Fraser Building here.

[Poll #6: What is the UGLIEST BUILDING at Glasgow University?]
Click on the photo above for a larger version. Please rate the photo below!
© 2009 GlasgowUniPhoto.com

The winner of the University beauty pageant held last month will be the focus of this whole week, starting today. So welcome to the newest building at the University of Glasgow, opened to the the University populace back at the beginning of 2009. I introduced the building back in the inaugural week of this blog back in June of this year, but I haven’t really delved into the building too much, besides showing the Medical Centre and the John Smith’s Bookshop within. That’s what I’ll do this week, show you the two most important bits about the Fraser Building: the cafeteria and the services floor.

You can find more posts about the Fraser Building here.

[Poll #6: What is the UGLIEST BUILDING at Glasgow University?]
Click on the photo above for a larger version. Please rate the photo below!
© 2009 GlasgowUniPhoto.com

It’s November and we’re going to start this month on a light-hearted note, especially after a night of Halloween celebrations (hope you had a great Halloween!).

I found this little bit of graffiti in the staircase of the Library tower. I forgot which floor, but I think it was around floors 8 and 10. Compared to the graffiti scratched or drawn into the walls of the bathrooms downstairs, this is quite the opposite.

[Poll #6: What is the UGLIEST BUILDING at Glasgow University?]
Click on the photo above for a larger version. Please rate the photo below!
© 2009 GlasgowUniPhoto.com

Happy Halloween!

First things first, the results of October’s poll on the nicest building at Glasgow University. From the very beginning of the poll to the bitter end, the Boyd Orr Building led the way, until, at the very last moment, the brand new Fraser Building ran past to a glorious victory, deservedly so. Below you’ll find the Top Ten results of the poll. I personally assumed the Wolfson Medical School Building would have been higher on the list, but No. 7 isn’t too bad.

To celebrate the Fraser Building’s victory in the poll I will feature the building for all of next week, starting Monday. In waiting for that, you can go ahead and cast your vote in November’s poll on finding out which is the UGLIEST building at the University of Glasgow. Below are thumbnail links to all the photos from the month of October.