Singular or plural

Companies, brands and institutions – including the university – are always singular:

The University of Nottingham has teamed up with Energy for Business to help fund energy projects.

The Students' Union has opened a new shop.

Use singular verbs to describe faculties, teams and groups:

The faculty has voted to keep the building open.

But when talking about individual members who make up a group, use “the members of” or “each member of”, and plural or singular verbs as appropriate:

The members of the faculty have voted to keep the building open.

Each member of the research team has made substantial progress.

When you have compound words formed by nouns, adjectives and/or prepositions, make the noun (or the most important noun if there are two) plural:

passers-by

medical doctors

brothers-in-law

And if there's more than one of a proper name ending in "–y", don't change it to "–ies":

There were three Marys at the meeting.

See Latin and Greek words for more on how to write certain archaic words in plural.