News Release:
A year of celebrations for UNE's golden jubilee
| 16/2/04 030/04 Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ingrid Moses, will start the ball rolling by hosting a cocktail party on campus in March to officially observe the formal proclamation of the University's autonomy on February 1, 1954. During the year several inaugural lectures and functions for staff, students and alumni have been organised to culminate in the launch of the first official history of the University by Dr Matthew Jordan in December. "It is quite salutary to think that there were only 242 students enrolled at the New England University College in 1953," Professor Moses said. "There were no professors and very few facilities. This year we are celebrating not only our golden jubilee but the rolling out of the greatest broadband capacity of any regional university in Australia and the benefits for our students, staff and the broader community are considerable. "The foresight of those who fought so hard for autonomy, virtually from the time the College was established in 1938, has been well and truly justified." Professor Moses paid tribute to a predecessor, the first UNE Vice-Chancellor, Sir Robert Madgwick, and the Advisory council which took on the daunting challenge of creating a department of external studies as a condition of gaining its independence from the University of Sydney.
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"It proved to be a wise decision as the UNE external studies model soon achieved international recognition and the number of external students now enrolled far outstrips internal students and has become a backbone of the University," she said. From the start UNE embarked on a winning formula to offer the same courses and examinations to internal and external students with compulsory residential schools for the externals. At the end of March, 1955, enrolments at UNE, including external students, had jumped to 575, the majority in the Faculty of Arts. The following year 617 external students were enrolled, 80 per cent of them were men. Between 1960-64 the number of externals grew to around 1,800. Last year the number of internal students at UNE was more than 3000 and externals numbered more than 15,000. In 1954, the administrators of the new university lost no time in achieving one of their most important aims by appointing the first professors, filling eight chairs in Botany, Economics, English, French, Geology, Philosophy, Physics and Psychology between September and October with three more the following year. Two new faculties, Rural Science and Agricultural Economics were also established during the flurry of activity that first year. However, it was not until the recommendations of the Murray Commission, appointed by Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, were implemented in 1958 that UNE received an initial grant of £900,000 towards its building program and the great adventure of transforming the campus into a modern university could begin. Media contact: Lydia Clifford Public Relations, UNE (02) 6773 2779 |
