McConnell on education and cultural mission

Published on Friday 16 September 2005 10:20

JACK McConnell today formally opened the new headquarters of the University of the Highlands and Islands Millennium Institute (UHIMI) in Inverness.

The First Minister is backing the long campaign to create Scotland's newest university.

The UHIMI is a partnership of colleges, research institutes and learning centres across the Highlands and Islands.

University of the Highlands and Islands is seeking full university status and an educational standards watchdog will decide today if it should have the right to award degrees. If the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) approves the application, it would be a major milestone towards success for the UHI.

"Over the last four years the UHIMI has made real progress and this new building will further enhance the excellent services on offer," McConnell said.

"No longer will the brightest and best need to leave their community to get on."

Set up in April 2001, it is currently the only higher education institution in the Highlands and aims to become the region's first fully fledged university.

Following the opening, the First Minister was taking part in the launch of a new book about the Scottish diaspora by former Highlands and Islands Enterprise chairman James Hunter.

The book, Scottish Exodus: Travels Among a Worldwide Clan, is the product of a four-year research effort which took Hunter to Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada, Ireland, Iceland, England, France, Poland and South Africa.

"In North Carolina, I spent time with Martha MacLeod who lives in the home built by her emigrant ancestor, a Skyeman called John MacLeod, who reached America before it gained its independence from Britain," Hunter noted, in one of his many stories from the book.

Over and over again, he spoke with people who have travelled half-way round the world in order to stand in spots – where there may nowadays be nothing but the ruins of croft houses emptied during the Highland Clearances – which were home to their great-great-great-grandparents.

The book is published by Mainstream Publishing.