in the West Midlands. In September 2009 it was awarded £24.3 million for knowledge transfer, bringing it to 2nd place nationally for the number of KTPs it runs. The university will lead a consortium of all 12 of the universities in its region to increase the number of partnerships from 70 to 210 over the next three years.
In June 2013, a university team won a Times Higher Education Leadership and Management Award (THELMA) in the category of Knowledge Exchange/Transfer Initiative of the Year for its "one-stop shop" approach to promoting services to businesses.
In May 2016, the university was awarded 'Business of the Year' at the Express & Star Business Awards, where its contribution to the region's economy was hailed as 'truly outstanding'.
=== Criticism ===
==== Staff issues ====
In 1998, Ian Connell left the university after being found guilty of academic misconduct. A few weeks later he committed suicide, apparently depressed by his situation.
In 2009 the university Executive announced that the university was in financial difficulties, needing to make savings of £8 million. This followed reports in the media that it had understated student non-completion rates to HEFCE. The university announced it was taking steps to reduce expenditure on staff pay and launched a voluntary redundancy exercise on 1 October 2009. This concluded with the loss of 150 posts through voluntary redundancy.
In 2015, despite 2014 REF successes, the Vice Chancellor announced that four areas of research would be cut back and some professors selected for compulsory redundancy while all professors would be subject to more rigorous annual appraisal which would lead to demotion to senior lecturer in three years if they failed to sustain their target levels of outputs, income and PhD students.
== Student life ==
=== Students' Union ===
The University of Wolverhampton Students' Union (UWSU) is a charity led by a team consisting of 4 full-time Officers (currently the positions are Union Affairs, Academic, Community and Diversity Officers) …
