Robert Gordon University events. The mace is a modern design in silver and black, designed and crafted in 1993 by Gordon Burnett (a member of staff at the university's Gray's School of Art), and paid for by the City of Aberdeen as a gift to the new university. It was presented to the university at a ceremony on 26 June that year during which the first chancellor of the university, Bob Reid, was installed. The mace is primarily jet-black, with wavy fins edged in silver that run vertically down the full length of the mace's head (reflecting the wavy black band in the
Robert Gordon University in 1974, and the first professorships were introduced in 1975. In 1981, the separation of the Board of Governors and administration staff from Robert Gordon's College was completed, although the school and Institute continued to share some buildings. Beginning in the 1970s, the Institute also began to provide extensive consultancy and training for the North Sea oil industry, particularly in engineering and offshore safety and survival. Following the reforms of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, the Institute was awarded university status as "The Robert Gordon University" on 12 June 1992. The new university inherited numerous small campuses, and