The merger will enlarge a great community of scholars which has close links with the City, the region and beyond - part of an international research and teaching community. Figures and statistics are impressive. Now the University has some 3,100 staff, 11,800 students, with a combined expenditure of some £125m per year. Teaching income is £56m and research income is £35m a year. Our combined staff bill amounts to over £75m; direct expenditure within the local economy is around £176m, and the combined financial impact on the local economy is over £250m per year - we are an important player within the region, within Scotland and beyond.

The merger between Northern College and the Universities of Aberdeen and Dundee marks the completion of a process of integration of teacher education into general higher education. Northern College is the last of Scotland's monotechnic colleges to be merged with an institution of higher education, following the mergers of St Andrew's College of Education with the University of Glasgow and that of Moray House College of Education with the University of Edinburgh within the last five years. In a sense, teacher education and professional development has come home - and has been integrated into Scotland's ancient universities.

This is, in my view, the right step to take at this time. Teacher education, and continuous professional development are vitally important for Scotland's continued prosperity and intellectual health and are better undertaken within the broad intellectual context of full spectrum universities. The recommendation by the Board of Governors of Northern College to investigate a possible merger between the College and the Universities of Aberdeen and Dundee came late in 1997. It was followed by a process of careful consideration of the benefits and disadvantages of such a proposal, consideration of alternative options for the College and the universities involved, due diligence and negotiation between all three merging parties.

But right from the beginning, there was a sense of excitement about the possibilities the proposed merger would open up, both for Northern College and for the University of Aberdeen. Aberdeen has always been a full spectrum university. For more than 500 years we have trained young talented people for the professions which helped to make this region prosperous and successful. We have sustained a community of scholars who have exchanged their ideas and views and findings with each other, and with other scholars and thinkers across the world. Lawyers, clerics and doctors from Aberdeen have gone to all corners of the globe to share their knowledge and to learn more. Many of them returned and used the knowledge and experience they gained to their own benefit, and to that of the City and the region. More recently, the University has produced engineers, accountants and land economists for its home area and beyond.

The University's links with the teaching profession in the region have always been strong. After all, the University was set up specifically to improve the 'rude and ignorant people' of the North and North-East of Scotland. Scores of graduates from the University entered the teaching profession then, and considerable numbers still do so to this day.

Formal teacher education has taken place in Aberdeen, in some form or other, since the late 19th century. As institutions concerned with the education and training of professionals within the region, Northern College and its predecessors and the University have maintained close links. Since the present College was formally opened by HRH Princess Alexandra in 1969, these links have produced collaborative programmes and validation agreements, to the mutual benefit of both institutions.

The merger will allow us to build on existing collaboration and use the momentum created by it to tackle creatively and in an innovative way the issues arising out of modern teacher education and the continuing professional development of teachers and related professions.

Academics and professionals thrive on intellectual exchange, particularly across academic disciplines. The merger with Northern College will not only complete the portfolio of our activities, and add to student and staff numbers. It adds huge opportunities in continuing professional development, and it adds access to a range of intellectual questions connected with pedagogy, cognition, and development which might otherwise be closed to us. We will be able to work across the disciplines to provide the education and professional development teachers need, and to further existing relationships with councils, schools and the Government. The new Faculty of Education will enable the whole University to forge new relationships with and move closer to teachers and to schools.

I welcome all of this wholeheartedly. All of us stand to gain from this merger. I know that all new staff and students will make a significant contribution to the University. I look forward to working with all of you.