Would the real Dr Rodney Eastwood please step forward...

Well, Planning and Management Information Services is a new part of university administration, responsible for liaison with funding charities and the Higher Education Funding Council for England, HEFCE, and therefore for roughly 50 million pounds worth of grant that we get every year, and making sure that we maximise it. I am also in charge of running the resource allocations planning round, where each department is asked to supply their financial and resource requirements for the coming year. This is also a way of managing student numbers, because we are limited there. I should also mention the management information side, which is concerned with running the main administrative computer systems: finance, payroll, registry. We are also responsible for providing information at a high level for departments. We are developing a system whereby you could look at all the information held on a student from all the administrative departments or all the details about a particular department, group or even sub-group. For example, where their funding comes from, whether charities or research councils or industry, or the nationality of students and who pays their fees. Any student could see what we hold on them, though it would be fairly boring.

How would you say that your job impacted on students?

Well, I’m not involved with any of the students on a personal level, sadly, though I enjoy meeting students. I tend to get involved on populations of students, and the number of students in each department and the relationship between undergraduates and postgraduates.

How long have you been at IC in your current position?

I joined the College nine years ago, and became planning and information in August when I took on the information side.

What was your first job, how much were you paid and how long did you hold it?

My first ever job was computer programmer at the Natural History Museum. I’ve been in SW7 for all my working life. I remember exactly how much I was paid, it was all the twos, Ł2,222. I was at the Natural History Museum for thirteen years in various jobs. I ended up as assistant to the director of the museum. This was at the time when they first introduced admission charges. We can trace your hand in that can we? Yes, though I was fairly junior and wasn’t a prime mover, but I was responsible for writing it down, trying to make it look as attractive as possible in the short term.

You must have seen some significant changes on the SW7 site during your time, could you yourself describe some?

The greatest ones are still to come! Apart from all that going on out there the museums have development plans, and the Albert Hall has its Millennium redevelopment plan and the V&A have got its boiler house or whatever it’s called now. It will be a bit of a building site until the millennium, and of course the Albert Memorial will lose its plastic coat. But going back, the most significant thing that I can recall happened just before I got here when the Natural History Museum had a face lift. It was filthy dirty and you couldn’t see the facade and now you can see this wonderful Waterhouse building with animals running up the columns.

Building work aside, what image does the present College environment give you?

I was involved in raising the money for that , so its nice to see it going ahead. However, the campus is not the most inspiring of places, though one would hope that people would be coming here because of the standard of its education, not its architecture. The walkway is really grim, grim and windy. The whole design of the place is actually flawed, east-west orientated buildings like the Sherfield building suffer from being a solar trap. If you are on the south side you fry in summer and freeze in winter, it hopeless. You get a huge solar gradient across the building which means that the north side and the walkway are freezing and generate a huge wind, the chill factor must be quite high.

Do you foresee any other mergers or acquisitions?

Not in the immediate future. I mean one of the remaining independent medical institutions might, that is the Institute of Cancer Research, but they don’t wish to at the moment, and we’re not pushing them on it. However, we do now have a grade five History department, so we are therefore a normal university. A few years ago we did have some discussions on the subject of expanding, and before my time we were having discussions with Royal Holloway, but it didn’t come to anything. A couple of years ago there was talk of Imperial withdrawing from the University of London and awarding our own degrees, what has come of this? You know we are having a new charter because of the medical mergers - the old one can’t cope and that will give us the power to award our own degrees. We have no intention to at the moment, but the last charter lasted ninety years, who knows what’s going to happen in nine years time let alone ninety years time? It is, if you look at it, rather ludicrous that the University of Westminster can award its own degrees but Imperial College, an institution of world-wide standing, cannot.

Where were you born and brought up?

Well, I was born in Croydon, south London, then in Surrey, and I lived there until I went to university, when I was 18. So would you class yourself as a ‘Londoner’ perhaps? I suppose so, though for seven years I lived in Newcastle where I went to university, and enjoyed it very much.

What do you do in your spare time?

I play music. Keyboard and Organ, cello at school and the viol which is a form of violin, and I sing.

Could you describe an anecdote typical of you time as a student.

It’s not very typical, but when I was on a marine biology field course, (I study zoology at university), on the North Sea in March. The engine of the boat I was in stopped, and I was quite unwell for some time. The educational content of that particular field course was lost on me, and plenty of my colleagues I might add. My future field trips took in the beach side of things.

Were you involved in any student clubs or societies?

I was secretary of the biology club, and a lot of music, choir and so on.

Succinctly as possible, how would you describe today’s students?

Um.. The ones at Imperial College are very interesting, and make a valuable contribution to the life of the College and will go on to make a very big contribution to society in general