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Golden tribute to our University’s first leader

September 24, 2004

A one-time chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and first Vice-Chancellor of the University of New England, Sir Robert Madgwick, is to be the subject of a 50th Anniversary Lecture in his honour next Friday (October 1).
Associate Professor John Ryan, of UNE’s School of English, Communication and Theatre, will deliver this lecture - actually in the named series, the Madgwick Lectures, - in the Arts Lecture Theatre, UNE at 4.30pm.

In a fitting tribute to Sir Robert, (in this, UNE’s 50th anniversary year as an autonomous university) Associate Professor Ryan will outline the career of Sir Robert, the son of a tram driver, who became both a remarkable visionary for Australian education and the driving force behind the present world-wide expansion of his tiny University, initially one with only 200 students.
Robert Madgwick’s academic career was launched with a First Class Honours degree in Economics at the University of Sydney, he returning to his alma mater after a stint in the mid-1930s at Oxford, as a passionate adherent to the economic doctrines of liberal Economist John Maynard Keynes. It was at this time that he forged relationships with other like-minded academics, including H.C. ‘Nugget’ Coombs ( later Governor of the Reserve Bank) and Hermann Black, who would remain a lifelong friend.
Dr Madgwick then went on to play a key role in the democratising of the hitherto elitist Sydney University Extension Board Education and, during World War Two, in the establishment of the far-reaching Army Education Service.
As Sir Robert wrote then to our troops, "Education should be an adventure, something which we undertake because it is interesting as well as instructive …the only purpose of true education is to teach us to think straight".
By War’s end Madgwick had experienced “enormous organisational success in education,” according to Associate Professor Ryan, and so it was fitting that he be appointed in 1946 as the Warden of the then University College and, in 1954, first Vice-Chancellor of UNE.
Under his influence, the university’s Faculties of Rural Science and Agricultural Economics were established, along with the crucial Departments of External Studies and of Adult Education and the now internationally staffed University became largely residential, first with and Mary White College (for women) and Wright College (for men). Its expansion in the 1960s was dramatic.
After leaving UNE, he was knighted and appointed chairman of the ABC, where in 1970 he stood up against the then Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser when he tried to appropriate the Corporation’s funding. He retained his passionate commitment to a free press.
Sir Robert died in 1979 and the inaugural Madgwick lecture was delivered in 1984 by his old friend, the University of Sydney Chancellor,.Sir Hermann Black.

For more information phone Lydia Roberts on 6773 2779 or Association Professor Ryan on 6773 2601.

Posted by Lydia Roberts at September 24, 2004 05:09 PM