Oxford Brookes gets a new look for the 21st century

Just over a year ago, when Janet Beer took over the job of running Oxford Brookes University, she moved into the vice-chancellor's office, which at the time was in Headington Hill Hall, the splendid Italianate mansion with views over the dreaming spires. This was where the infamous Robert Maxwell lived with his family while he ran Pergamon Press, calling it "the best council house in the country".

Professor Beer liked the aspect but did not take to being set apart from the rest of the university. "We were at the end of a cul-de-sac," she says. "Nobody ever walked past casually."

So she decided to move the vice-chancellor's office back into the main campus, a hotchpotch of modern buildings, across the London Road in Headington, where she can rub shoulders with students and feel part of the action. The move was popular. "I literally was stopped in the street by a dozen people individually who said I am so glad you are coming back," she says.

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The move reflects the kind of regime she is after. "I want to be in the middle of staff and students," she says. And that's where she is – in a tiny glass box at the end of an open-plan office off the reception area of the Gipsy Lane campus. She has some privacy in that she has a door she can open and shut. But otherwise hers must be one of the most unflashy management styles espoused by the boss of a British university – collegiate, open and not at all stand-offish.

The £150m physical development now taking place at this highly-rated modern university also reflects her approach. She can look out on to the space that is going to turn Oxford Brookes from a sprawl of buildings to one that puts students at the heart of the business. A futuristic glass-fronted student centre will be the centrepiece of the redevelopment, housing a new lecture theatre, students' union, library, computing facilities and study space.

"We're shifting the focus, as the National Union of Students nationally is suggesting, towards student representation rather than running nightclubs and bars," she says. According to the recent NUS Student Experience Survey, only 29 per cent of students now say that the main reason for wanting to go to university is "for the experience". The main reason is to get a good degree, and by implication a job. A similar percentage want to have their social life off-campus and to be working when on campus.

In the past buildings were simply plonked down where there was space. This time, after tearing down a 1950s engineering block put up for what was then the Oxford "tech", the university has taken the opportunity to rethink the whole feel of the place. The Gipsy Lane campus will be a series of courtyards opening out finally on to the main London Road. For the first time Oxford Brookes will have a grand entrance on the main road, making it much more welcoming to the general public.

"We've been rather laggardly in upgrading our campus," says Beer. "It's been apparent for the last four or five years that we can no longer conduct our business at the level that our students expect."

What she means is that it can be difficult for students to get a seat in the library and that there is very little social learning space on the main campus. These are areas equipped with the latest computer networking technology in which students can work and eat and drink at the same time. All universities have been falling over one another to build such spaces because students want them. "If they can eat, drink and study at Starbucks, why shouldn't they expect to do that in a university?" she asks.

The whole thing has been the subject of exhaustive consultation. And the other two campuses at Wheatley and Harcourt Hill have not been neglected either. New halls of residence are going up. Professor Beer is hoping that the reinvention of Oxford Brookes physically will burnish its growing reputation academically, particularly in its work with the third sector, non-governmental organisations and charities. The university has an award-winning Masters in development and emergency planning and its hospitality and catering school give high priority to the ethical sourcing products. For a while now Oxford Brookes has been the new university that all new universities want to be. Now it will have the buildings for others to emulate as well.