University of Western Australia

The University of Western Australia (UWA) is Western Australia's oldest university, established in February 1911, and is the only West Australian university to be a member of the Group of Eight lobby group for tertiary institutions. The University was established under and is governed by the University of Western Australia Act 1911. The Act provides for the control and management of the University to be the responsibility of the Senate, and gives it the authority, amongst other things, to make statutes, regulations and by-laws, details of which are contained in the University Calendar.

History

The original campus was located on Irwin Street in the centre of Perth, and consisted of several buildings situated between Hay Street and St George's Terrace. Irwin Street was also known as "Tin Pan Alley" as many buildings featured a corrugated iron roof. These buildings served as the university campus up until 1932, when the campus relocated to its present-day location in Crawley ().

In the 1930s the founding Chancellor, Sir John Winthrop Hackett, bequeathed a large sum of more than £425,000 to the University which allowed the construction of its magnificent main buildings at the present-day campus. Many buildings and landmarks within the University bear his name, including Winthrop Hall and Hackett Hall.

A remnant of the original buildings survives to this day in the form of the "Irwin Street Building", so-called due to its former location. In the 1930s it was transported to the new campus and served a number of uses up until its restoration in 1987, which saw the original architecture restored and the building moved across campus to James Oval. Recently, the building served as the Senate meeting room and is currently in use as a cricket pavilion and storage space for the University Archives. The building has been heritage-listed by both the National Trust and the Australian Heritage Commission.

Faculties

The University consists of the nine Faculties of:

Campus

UWA is one of the largest landowners in Perth as a result of government and private bequests, and is constantly expanding its infrastructure. Recent examples include the $22 million University Club, opened in June 2005, and the UWA Watersports Complex, opened in August 2005. In addition, in September 2005 UWA opened its $64 million Molecular and Chemical Sciences building as part of a commitment to nurturing and developing high quality research and development.

Attractions

The main Crawley campus, situated adjacent to the Swan River, is one of Perth's premier tourist attractions. Many of the buildings are constructed from limestone, including the enormous and iconic Winthrop Hall with its Romanesque architecture. These buildings are dotted amongst expansive lawns and thickets of trees such as the Sunken Garden and the tropical Grove. The beauty of the grounds and rich history of the campus make it a popular spot for weddings.

The Arts Faculty building encompasses the New Fortune Theatre. The venue is a replica of the original Elizabethan Fortune Theatre and the only replica of its kind in the southern hemisphere. Since 1995 the open air venue has hosted regular performances of Shakespeare's plays co-produced by the Graduate Dramatic Society and the University Dramatic Society. The venue is also home to a family of peafowl donated to the University by the Perth Zoo. They survive to this day and have recently started producing completely white chicks.

Cultural attractions for visitors include the Berndt Museum of Anthropology, the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery and The Edward de Courcy Clarke Earth Science Museum. The Berndt Museum holds extensive collections of Australian Aboriginal art and Aboriginal cultural materials, as well as collections from Melanesia, Asia and South-East Asia. The Lawrence Wilson Gallery is acknowledged as one of the finest university galleries in Australia, featuring the University's extensive art collection, contemporary art, and innovative touring shows. The Edward de Courcy Clarke Earth Science Museum is a part of the School of Earth & Geographical Sciences at the university and its collections consist mostly of palaeontological material. It is open to the public and caters particularly well to school visits, but also acts as an important academic research tool for postgraduate students.

Libraries

The University of Western Australia features seven main subject libraries on campus, including the architecturally applauded Reid Library. Five of the libraries are located on campus, with the other two being located within walking distance. The seven main libraries are:

Biological Sciences Library
Education, Fine Arts & Architecture Library
Law Library
Mathematical and Physical Sciences Library
Medical and Dental Library
Music Library
Reid Library (contains the Business Library and Humanities & Social Sciences Library. It also features a map collection, the Scholars' Centre and a popular café)

In addition, several other libraries exist on campus, for example the Undergraduates Physical Science Library which is used by engineering, computing and science students.

Residential colleges

Several residential colleges are located close to the campus, including Currie Hall, St George's College, St Catherine's College, Trinity College and St Thomas More College.

Offsite campuses

The University established a UWA Albany Centre in 1999 to meet rural education needs. In 2005, Curtin University of Technology joined UWA in Albany to provide additional course offerings to the local rural community. UWA Albany offers postgraduate coursework and research programmes through the Institute for Regional Development and the Centre of Excellence in Natural Resource Management. The UWA Rural Clinical School provides year-long rural placements for fifth-year medical students in Albany, and also has facilities in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. Additionally, The University is involved in the Combined Universities Centre for Rural Health in Geraldton.

The University additionally has facilities across Stirling Hwy in Nedlands, linked by tunnels under the highway, and paths in front of the residential colleges. Whilst not directly contiguous to the main Crawley buildings, The University does own almost every parcel of land between them and has long term plans to expand the two campuses towards each other. The University also has facilities in Claremont, purchased in 2005 from Edith Cowan University. The University prefers to refer to these facilities as "UWA Claremont" and not as a campus. UWA Claremont is approximately 5kms west of the main Crawley campus. Further west still, The University also has staff in downtown Claremont. The University also owns a large parcel of land in Shenton Park, which it uses for various agricultural research and services support functions, such as a print shop, storage facility and woodwork shop for The University. The University owns or leases fibre capacity sufficient to operate a metropolitan area network to service its larger facilities in metropolitan Perth at either 100 megabit or 1 Gigabit speeds.

Overseas, The University has strategic partnerships with institutions in Malaysia and Singapore, where students study for University of Western Australia qualifications, but does not operate these foreign institutions directly.

Students

UWA's student body is generally dominated by school-leavers from within Western Australia, mostly from the Perth metropolitan area. There are comparatively smaller numbers of mature-age graduates. In recent years, full-fee paying foreign students, generally from south-east Asia, have grown as a proportion of the student population. In 2003, the University had 2,785 international students, part of a total student body of 16,341^*.

On a per-capita basis, indigenous students are under-represented on campus - a situation that has existed since the inception of the Unversity. The UWA Senate has acknowledged this, and is making efforts to increase indigenous student numbers, as well as working to better inform students and staff on issues relating to equity, diversity and racial tolerance.

Internationalisation

The University of Western Australia is strongly committed to internationalisation of all aspects of its activities. UWA has formal agreements with 44 international institutions, promoting staff and student exchanges, collaborative research and exchange of teaching materials and methods. The University also teaches several of its programmes offshore, in Singapore, Indonesia and Hong Kong. Trans-national programmes facilitate the development of UWA as a genuinely international university.

Research strength

As a result of its strong research culture, the University recently attracted more competitive research funding - on a per capita basis of staff involved in research - than any other Australian university. Annually the University receives in excess of $71 million of external research income, expends over $117 million on research and graduates over 250 higher degree by research students, mostly doctorates.

The University has over 80 research centres, including the Crime Research Centre, the Centre for Forensic Science, the Centre for Water Research and the Centre for Oil and Gas Engineering ^*.

A recently announced project is the Zadko Telescope. A local businessman, James Zadko, and his family contributed funds for the purchase of a robotically controlled 1-metre modified Ritchey-Chrétien telescope (F/4 equatorially mounted flat field). The telescope will be co-located with the UWA's Gravity Discovery Centre and Southern Cross Cosmos Centre 70km north of Perth on Wallingup Plain near the town of Gingin. Its operation will be harmonised with detection of major supernova events by some of the European Union's satellites.

Student Guild

The UWA Student Guild is the premier student representative body on campus and had a membership of more than 13,000 students when membership was automatic. It is a member organisation of the National Union of Students. The vision of the UWA Student Guild is to be inclusive and representative of the student community and to provide relevant, high quality services to its members, whilst remaining environmentally and socially conscious.

The Guild provides a variety of services from catering to financial counselling. There are also over 80 clubs and societies funded by and affiliated to the Guild, including the Science Union and University Engineers' Club. The Guild publishes the student newspaper: Pelican, as well as several other publications.

Guild Council is the overall governing body of the Guild and consists of 20 voting members democratically elected at the annual guild elections. The current Guild President is Mathew Chuk. Former guild presidents include notable figures such as Bob Hawke, Kim Beazley and Jim McGinty.

Currently, the UWA Guild and many other student unions around Australia are facing the challenge of Voluntary Student Unionism, or VSU, a legislation proposed by the Howard Government that will see student union membership become voluntary. Under this legislation, the Amenities and Services Fee charged by the guild will no longer be compulsory. VSU is strongly opposed by the Guild, as financial support for services such as student representation and financial assistance may be impacted without the funds generated by the compulsory fee.

University events

UWA is renowned around Perth and among other Australian universities for its highly active students social calendar. The highlight of the social year is widely considered to be Prosh, a day early in the university year where students dress up in costume and parade through the streets of the city selling risque newspapers for various charities. Many social events have become infamous with venues outside of the campus grounds due to the hard partying students, exemplified by the lifetime bans enacted upon the students' science faculty society (Science Union) by both AQWA and Scitech. A popular anecdote also states that wherever the notorious student "Toga Party" is held will also result in a lifetime ban.

The biennial Indian Rim Asian University Games was held from 28 November to 4 December 2005 at Challenge Stadium and UWA Sports Park, with more than 100 teams representing 23 universities from eight countries. Nine sports were contested at the week-long competition: Badminton, Cricket, Field Hockey, Judo, Tae Kwon Do, Soccer, Volleyball, Tennis and Water Polo. More than 35 countries from the Indian Ocean Rim and Asia were invited to attend the 2005 Games. UWA Vice-Chancellor Professor Alan Robson committed funds to assist university teams from Tsunami affected areas, as well as to promote women’s sport in the region^*.

Notable alumni

UWA has a proud collection of notable alumni, particularly in the area of politics and government. The list includes, but is not limited to, many premiers of Western Australia including Geoff Gallop and Richard Court, former Deputy Prime Minister and former Whitlam Cabinet minister respectively Kim Beazley and his father Kim Edward Beazley, and 23rd Prime Minister of Australia Bob Hawke.

The University also features many notable science and medicine alumni, including Nobel prize winners Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, the Australian of the Year for 2003 Fiona Stanley and the Australian of the Year for 2005 Fiona Wood.

Gallery

Image:UWASocrates_gobeirne.jpg|Socrates bust Image:UWAMotorolaSoftwareCentre_gobeirne.jpg|Motorola Software Centre, UWA Image:UWAFiveLamps_gobeirne.jpg|Great gate mosaic Image:UWABalcony_gobeirne.jpg|Clock tower balcony Image:Reidlibraryuwa.jpg|Reid Library at night Image:UWA CMS building.jpg|View down from 4th floor of CMS building Image:UWA Admin Arch.jpg|Administration building Image:UWA Winthrophall.jpg|Winthrop Hall foyer Image:UWA Geology.jpg|North entrance to the Geology building Image:UWA Geology Grove.jpg|The Geology building seen through The Grove Image:UWA Sundail.jpg|Sundial near the Sunken Garden Image:Whitepeacock.jpg|Adult white peacock, New Fortune Theatre

External links

universities in Western Australia | Education in Perth

University of Western Australia | 西オーストラリア大学 | 西澳大学

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