Royal College of Science Union
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| Institution | Royal College of Science |
|---|---|
| Location | South Kensington, London, England, United Kingdom |
| Established | 1881 |
| President | Michael Edwards |
| Vice president |
Ayush Dharap, Rebecca Neil |
| Honorary secretary | Michael Suarez Vasquez |
| Treasurer | Michael McGill |
| Members | c. 3,000 |
| Affiliations | Constituent Union of Imperial College Union |
| Colours | |
| Website | rcsu.org.uk |
Ayush Dharap,
The Royal College of Science Union (RCSU) is a student union and science outreach organisation at Imperial College London which represents over 3,000 students in the university's Faculty of Natural Sciences. It manages the student societies for the departments of Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biochemistry, and Biology. The RCSU runs Science Challenge, a national science communication competition, and publishes the Broadsheet science magazine.
The RCSU was founded in 1881, following the creation of the Royal College of Science in the same year. The RCS was established to support training of the non-Earth Sciences within the Royal School of Mines which had been founded in 1853 following the merger of the Royal College of Chemistry with the Government School of Mines and Science Applied to the Arts in 1853.
The RCSU was briefly disbanded for a few years in the early 2000s following the College's decision to split up the Sciences Faculty into separate Faculties of Physical and Life Sciences, with the RCSU at the time deciding to follow suit, splitting into the Physical Sciences Union and the Life Sciences Union. In 2006 however, following the College's decision to re-merge the faculties, it was decided to also re-merge the two student unions, with the new union named the Royal College of Science Union following a popular vote. The re-merged RCSU was first led by Jad Marrouche and is currently led by Michael Edwards.
The RCSU Science Challenge is a scientific writing competition first organised in 2007 by then-president Jad Marrouche to celebrate the college's centenary. Initially only for students of Imperial College, from its second year it was expanded and made open to schools students from across the country. The competition invites notable science communicators to judge the entries, with recent judges including BBC New science correspondent Pallab Ghosh, physicist John Pendry and climatologist Brian Hoskins. The Science Challenge Ambassador is Lord Robert Winston who has judged the overall winner of the competition since its inception.
The RCSU has a number of traditions, including the chanting of the kangela at bar nights and the sport of mascotry, guarding a college mascot called Theta. Theta takes the form of a thermometer, chosen as an instrument used by all scientific disciplines. Theta has had a number of incarnations, with the current mascot, Theta Mk.IV being a seven-foot steel thermometer weighing over 100 pounds (45 kg).
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