The Fellowship of Morgrave

Structure

To meet the level of its competitors, the university hierarchy has been steeped in history and tradition and is suitably unmoving, convoluted and archaic for such a noble seat of learning. However, a general description of the tiers within the Fellowship of the university is laid out below:

Chancellor

• The Chancellor by law is the highest authority in the University and the chair of the university council. It is by tradition an inherited position and has been passed down the Morgrave line since the University founding. However, similarly since its founding, the Morgrave’s have had little interest in the actual running of the University and the Chancellor position has become largely honorific in the grand scheme of things.

Vice Chancellor

• With the Chancellor’s of Morgrave being largely absent and uninterested for generations, the actual running of the University has been left to the Vice Chancellor for generations, and each have left their mark on its history. The Vice Chancellor holds the second seat on the University Council and chairs it in the absence of the Chancellor enabling them to choose the direction for the University. Due to needing to know how the sometimes maddening intricacies of Morgrave are run, the Vice Chancellor is normally chosen from within the University staff as the academic go-between between faculty, Chancellor and University’s many rich Benefactors.

Dean

• There are five Deans within the University, one for each of the five towers and each the master of their tower. A new Dean is chosen from the Department Chairs within their tower by popular vote amongst themselves, and still technically holds the position of Chair with the position of Dean. Each Dean has a seat on the University Council, representing their tower’s interests and act as the voice of the University's academics and student body. Interestingly, while it seems to be the norm for the Deans to be divided by faculty politics and contrasting interests, the five of them do make a sizable block of the ten members of the University Council and when united have forced a number of key decisions in the University’s history. Each Dean is ultimately responsible for the administration and running of their tower, including the hiring and promotion of staff, student entrance and funding allocation, meaning that each area tends to vary wildly between towers at any one time.

Chair

• The Chair is the position given to the head of a Department within a tower. All Chairs answer to their tower’s Dean and new Chairs are chosen by the Dean. However, with the size of departments varying so much through the faculty the actual authority of a Chair is very dependent on the size and importance of their department. Therefore the Chairs of the eight schools of magic hold great power not only within Aundaire Tower, but beyond, while the Chair of Ancient Xendritian Horticulture has an almost negligible voice outside of their own department (of perhaps one). Chairs are responsible for both the organisation of the research within their departments, and ensuring the quality (or occasional lack thereof) of the teaching and students within it.

Professor

• The title of Professor is awarded to senior Scholars within departments. To become a Professor a Scholar must have written an accepted doctoral thesis in their field and have defended it by either debate or combat in the Fellow’s Hall. Professor’s are generally the leads of research groups with more junior Scholars and research students reporting to them. Senior Professor’s rarely lecture themselves, choosing to delegate the task or only teach choice students specialist topics, and the seniority of a Professor is measured by the number of lectures on their timetable. The number of Professors a Department can have at any one time is purely a matter of budget, due to the ancient traditions of pay increase, and so often represent the prevalence of the department itself. Notably, in smaller departments already saturated with Professorships, the acknowledgement of a new Professor on the Fellow’s floor often results in a period of tension and waspishness within the intellectual hive until either an aged Professor is displaced by disgruntled resignation, or the new Professor strikes off by themselves to seek other alumni with more resources and perhaps a medical plan. For all those interested, this subject can be studied in the Department of Social Biology.

Scholar

• The title of Scholar is the lowest within the Fellowship of Morgrave, but is still a noted title within the city and, to a possibly lesser extent, the academic world. Morgrave Scholar’s can be divided into two categories: Researchers and Lecturers. The former works under Professors in research teams, herding and organising research students, while the later conducts the actual education of the university through seminar, tutorials and live ammo demonstration. Both the authority and wage of a Scholar is dependent on their Seniority, and all strive for the most sought after of goals: professorship and the team of new Scholars to perform all these tasks they currently have to endure.

Verum illic

Founding Date

738 YK

Type

Educational, University

Demonym

Fellows