Welsh Journals

CONFERMENT OF DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF THE UN/VERS/TY ON PROFESSOR R.W. STEEL A T THE OPEN UNIVERSITY. Extracts of Presentation Speech given by W.T.R. Pryce Professor R.W. Steel, geographer, Principal of University College of Swansea from 1974 to 1982 and Vice Chancellor of the University of Wales from 1979 to 1981, was nade an Honorary Doctor (D.Univ.) of the Open University at their Degree Congregation held on Saturday May 2nd 1987 in St David's Hall, Cardiff. Professor Steel was presented by Dr W.T.R.Pryce, Senior Lecturer in Geography and Staff Tutor in Social Sciences for Wales. Below we print parts of the presentation speech (prepared by Dr Pryce and Dr H. Harford Williams, Welsh Director) and the reply by Professor Steel. The Chancellor of the Cpen University, The Right Honourable The Lord Briggs of Lewes, presided. It is very appropriate that Professor Steel's latest book 'British Geography 1918-1945 is reviewed in this issue of Cambria. Presentation Speech (given by Dr W.T.R.Pryce) My Lord and Chancellor, the study of gepography began many centuries ago, but it was not until the early twentieth century that the discipline becarre fully established as a field for rigorous study and academic research. Its development in Britain depended on a small number of pioneering universities Oxford, London, Liverpool, the University College of Wales at Aberystwyth, Cambridge and Manchester. Graduates from each of these distinguished schools all of international standing went out and established geography as a major discipline in colleges and universities elsewhere, including many universities overseas. Professor Robert Steel, who is to receive our Honorary Doctorate today, is one of the first graduates of the Honour School of Geography at Oxford. After research in West Africa for his higher degree, he became Fellow and Tutor in Geography at Jesus College and University Senior Lecturer in African and Commonwealth Geography. In 1957 he was appointed the John Rankin Professor of Geography at the University of Liverpool. There, he inherited a well-established department. Under his leadership, in the 1960s this was to grow, becoming famous as one of the fir.est centres for geographical research and scholarship in the Western World especially in relation to the geographical problems of developing countries. In 1974, following service in Liverpool first as their Dean of Arts, and then as University Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Professor Steel was appointed Principal of the University College of Swansea bringing to that important position a very wide range of scholarship and administrative experience. Professor Steel was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Wales from 1979 to 1981 a post with considerable responsibilities because, along with ourselves and London, it is one of Britain's three largest universities, with a widely dispersed oollegiate structure, a total of 21,000 students, and a tradition of having special relations with the ordinary people of Wales. Although Professor Steel retired as Principal of Swansea in 1982, his scholarship, his experience, and his established reputation for 'getting things done in a gentle way' remained in great derrand. This was publicly recognised when the Secretary of State for Wales invited him to become the