UWA is the oldest university in Western Australia (WA) and the sixth-oldest in Australia. It is classed as one of the "sandstone universities", an informal designation given to the oldest university in each state.
UWA is a member of the Group of Eight, which consists of the eight most research-intensive and best-ranked Australian universities. UWA is also a member of the international Matariki Network of Universities.
UWA is ranked in the world's top 100 universities, according to several highly respected publications. Another defining characteristic of UWA is that it has retained its convocation as an integral part of its governance structure. All UWA graduates are automatically lifelong members of the university through convocation, which grants them the right to attend annual general meetings, elect two members of the university senate, and review any changes to university legislation.
Winthrop Hall, a prominent landmark on the main campus
The university was established in 1911 following the tabling of proposals by a royal commission in September 1910.[14] The original campus, which received its first students in March 1913, was on Irwin Street in the centre of Perth, and consisted of several buildings between Hay Street and St Georges Terrace. Irwin Street was also known as Tin Pan Alley, as many buildings had corrugated iron roofs. These buildings served as the university campus until 1932, when the campus relocated to its present-day site in Crawley.[15]
The founding chancellor, John Winthrop Hackett, died in 1916, and bequeathed property which, after being carefully managed for ten years, yielded £A425,000,[citation needed] equivalent to A$38.2million in 2022, to the university, a far larger sum than expected.[by whom?] This allowed the construction of the main buildings. Many university buildings and landmarks bear his name, including Winthrop Hall and Hackett Hall. In addition, his bequest funded many scholarships, because he did not wish eager students to be deterred from studying because they could not afford to do so.
During UWA's first decade there was controversy about whether the policy of free education was compatible with high expenditure on professorial chairs and faculties. An "old student" publicised his concern in 1921 that there were 13 faculties serving only 280 students.[16]
A remnant of the original buildings survives to this day in the form of the Irwin Street Building,[17] so called after its former location. In the 1930s it was transported to the new campus and served a number of uses until its 1987 restoration funded by convocation, after which it was moved across campus to James Oval. Since then, the northern end of the building has accommodated the convocation council meeting room while the remainder is used for change rooms and meeting rooms as part of the cricket pavilion. The building has been heritage-listed by both the National Trust and the Australian Heritage Council.
Architect Rodney Alsop won the 1932 bronze medal by the Royal Institute of British Architects for Winthrop Hall.[18] Those who knew him before his death, which occurred later that year, reported that Alsop had thought of little else but the Hackett Memorial buildings, including Winthrop Hall, for six years, and considered the buildings his life's greatest achievement.[19]
The university introduced the Doctorate of Philosophy degree in 1946 and made its first award in October 1950 to Warwick Bottomley for his research of the chemistry of native plants in Western Australia.[20]
UWA is one of the largest landowners in Perth as a result of government and private bequests, and is constantly expanding its infrastructure. Developments in the last two decades include the $22 million University Club, opened in June 2005, and the UWA Watersports Complex, opened in August 2005. In September 2005 UWA opened its $64 million Molecular and Chemical Sciences building. In 2008, a $31 million Business School building opened. In 2014, a $9 million new CO2 research facility was completed, providing modern facilities for carbon research. The Indian Ocean Marine Research Centre, a $62 million research facility on campus, was completed in 2016.[21][22]
Arts and cultural facilities
Limestone arches are a prominent feature along the older undercover walkways.
The Arts Faculty building (first occupied in 1964) encompasses the New Fortune Theatre.[24] This open-air venue was built to celebrate Shakespeare's 400th anniversary, at the time the only replica in the world of the original Elizabethan Fortune Theatre, and used for 1964 Perth Festival performances.[25] Since then it has hosted regular performances of Shakespeare's plays co-produced by the Graduate Dramatic Society.[26] and the University Dramatic Society.[27] The venue is also home to a family of peafowl donated to the university by the Perth Zoo in 1975 after a gift by Laurence Brodie-Hall.[28]
The university's cultural precinct[29] is in the northern part of the Crawley campus. Other performance venues include the Octagon and Dolphin Theatres and Somerville Auditorium, the Winthrop Hall, Sunken Garden, Undercroft and Tropical Grove, which play host to a range of theatre and musical performances, including during the Perth Festival.[30]
The UWA Conservatorium of Music hosts many concerts each year by students and visiting artists, including series of free lunchtime concerts.[31]
The Berndt Museum of Anthropology, in the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery (formerly on the ground floor of the Social Sciences Building), contains one of the most significant collections of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural material in the world. Its Asian and Melanesian collections are also of strong interest. It was established in 1976 by Ronald and Catherine Berndt.[32]
The University of Western Australia has five libraries on campus, including the architecturally recognised Reid Library building, the largest of the five.[33] The other libraries are the Barry J Marshall Library (Biological and Physical Sciences, Mathematics, Psychology and Geography); the J Robin Warren Library (Medical and Dental); the Beasley Law Library; and the Education, Fine Arts and Architecture Library.[33]
Residential colleges
Residential colleges and additional student residential buildings close to the campus include University Hall (formerly known as Currie Hall), St George's College, St Catherine's College, Trinity Residential College and St Thomas More College. St Catherine's College also offers short stays for non-student visitors.
The colleges border each other and run along the main campus. Students of UWA refer to the location of the colleges, which run along a common road, as "college row".[citation needed] All the colleges are co-ed and host several inter-college events throughout the year, in which residents of the various hostels compete against one another in a selection of events.[citation needed] Notable inter-college events include lip dub,[34][35] in which the colleges compete against one another in a series of lip dub videos, and battle of the bands.[36]
Some of the residential colleges have their own mascots. St Catherine's mascot is a cat,[37] St George's a dragon[38] and St Thomas More's a rooster.[39]
Students along college row tend to have short names for each of the colleges, and nicknames for the hostels have become a part of the resident culture.[citation needed] St Catherine's College is known as St Cat's, St Thomas More College nicknamed Tommy More, St George's College George's, University Hall Uni Hall and Trinity Residential College Trin.
Offsite locations
UWA Centre Albany
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 programs 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 third-year medical students in Albany, Derby, Broome, Port Hedland, Karratha, Geraldton, Bunbury, Narrogin, Esperance, and Kalgoorlie; Western Australia. Additionally, the university is involved in the Combined Universities Centre for Rural Health in Geraldton.
The university has further facilities across Stirling Highway in Nedlands, linked by pedestrian underpasses beneath the highway, and paths in front of the residential colleges. Although not directly contiguous with the main Crawley site, the university owns almost every parcel of land between them and has long-term plans to expand the two sites towards each other. The university also has facilities in Claremont, purchased in 2005 from Edith Cowan University. The university prefers to call these facilities UWA Claremont rather than a campus because it wants to remain a single campus institution that is located on the main Crawley campus.[40] UWA Claremont is about 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) west of the main Crawley campus. Further west, the university has staff in central Claremont.
Overseas, the university has strategic partnerships with institutions in Malaysia and Singapore, where students study for UWA qualifications, but does not operate these foreign institutions directly.
The university has also developed a relationship with Australian Doctors for Africa with whom it sends academic staff to conduct medical student teaching in Somalia, Madagascar, and Ethiopia. There are two to four visits to each location per year.
Centre for Integrative Bee Research
Centre for Integrative Bee Research
The Centre for Integrative Bee Research (CIBER) is located on the Crawley campus in Perth. CIBER conducts basic scientific research into honeybee reproduction, immunity and ecology and aligns its work with the needs of industrial and governmental partners.[41][42]
Academia
Irwin Street building
The university's degree structure changed in 2012 to bring together the undergraduate and postgraduate degrees available. Justification for this new system is due to its simplicity and effectiveness in outsiders understanding the system. It is the first university in Western Australia to have this new system. Students entering the university at an undergraduate level must choose a three-year bachelor's degree. The university offers a Bachelor of Science (BSc), Bachelor of Commerce (BCom), Bachelor of Arts (BA) and Bachelor of Biomedical Science (BBiomedSc). As of 2017[update], Bachelor of Design (BDes) is no longer offered to non-first-year students.[43]
Bachelor of Philosophy
The university also offers the Bachelor of Philosophy (BPhil) course for high-achieving new students. This is a research intensive degree which takes four years because the honours year is an integral part of the degree (most other degrees last three years with the honours year as a separate degree). Students studying the course choose disciplines from any of the four bachelor's degrees. Places are very limited with on average only about 30 places offered to students each year. Thus there is a lot of competition for places and the cut-off admission rank is very high.[44]
Assured entry pathways
High school graduates with high academic achievement are able to apply for "assured pathways". This means they are assured a place in the postgraduate degree for their chosen discipline while they complete their undergraduate degree. Assured pathways are offered for studies in fields such as medicine, law, dentistry and engineering.[45] Prospective students may apply for an assured pathway through the Bachelor of Philosophy. The assured pathways to dentistry via the Bachelor of Philosophy is the most difficult undergraduate and postgraduate pathway to obtain from the university. Only one place is offered each year.
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 students. In recent years, numbers of full-fee-paying foreign students, predominantly from south-east Asia, have grown as a proportion of the student population. In 2020, the university had 4,373 international student enrolments in a total student body of 18,717.[46]
The foyer of the Chemical and Molecular Sciences building, featuring the "double helix staircase"
Academic profile
The university recently attracted more competitive research funding than any other Western Australian university.[47] Annually the university receives in excess of $71 million of external research income, expends over $117 million on research and graduates over 300 higher degree by research students, mostly doctorates.[48]
The university has over 80 research institutes and centres, including the Oceans Institute, the Centre for Energy, the Energy and Minerals Institute and the Centre for Software Practice.[49] In 2008, it collaborated with two other universities in forming The Centre for Social Impact.
The Zadko Telescope is a one-metre modified Ritchey-Chrétien telescope (F/4 equatorially mounted flat field) used for astronomy research at UWA. The telescope is co-located with the UWA's Gravity Discovery Centre and Southern Cross Cosmos Centre 70 kilometres (43 mi) north of Perth on Wallingup Plain near the town of Gingin. Its operation is harmonised with detection of major supernova events by some of the European Union's satellites. A local businessman, James Zadko, and his family contributed funds for the telescope.[50]
The university also received[when?] funding from the Government of Western Australia for the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research. The centre is a multi-disciplinary research centre for science, engineering and data intensive astronomy.[51] UWA drove Australia's bid to be the site of the Square Kilometre Array, a very large internationally funded radio astronomy installation capable of seeing the early stages of the formation of galaxies, stars and planets.[52]
The QS World University rankings has consistently ranked UWA in the top 100 universities along with US News World University rankings. The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) has also consistently ranked UWA in the top 100 universities.
UWA ranked 85th in the world in 2022, according to the aggregate performance across QS, THE, and ARWU, as reported by Aggregate Ranking of Top Universities (ARTU).[63]
The Postgraduate Students' Association is the representative body for postgraduate students at UWA and is a department of the UWA Guild.
The Guild provides a variety of services from catering to financial counselling. There are also over 100 clubs and societies funded by and affiliated with the Guild. The Guild publishes the student newspaper, Pelican, as well as several other publications and is home to the Prosh charity event newspaper.[65]
UWA has had a publishing arm since 1935, when the university was the sole tertiary campus in Western Australia.[66] In 2009 it was renamed as UWA Publishing.
Outskirts
The journal Outskirts: feminisms along the edge is a feminist cultural studies journal which was published biannually, in May and November, from 1997 to 2020.[67] Formerly published by the Centre for Women's Studies,[68][69] it has most recently through the School of Humanities.[67]
Its stated aim was "to provide a space in which new and challenging critical material from a range of disciplinary perspectives and addressing a range of feminist topics and issues is brought together to discuss and contest contemporary and historical issues involving women and feminisms".[71]
Current staff of note include clinical psychologist David Indermaur (also a graduate of the university), 2009 Western Australian Scientist of the year Cheryl Praeger, former Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett and former Labor federal minister Stephen Smith.
^"DEATH OF MR. R. ALSOP". The West Australian. Vol. XLVIII, no. 9, 465. Western Australia. 27 October 1932. p. 16. Archived from the original on 22 August 2022. Retrieved 1 April 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
^"More than Honey blog". ciber.science.uwa.edu.au. Centre for Integrative Bee Research. 11 March 2013. Archived from the original on 11 March 2013. Retrieved 18 August 2022. blog
^"Handbook 2018". University of Western Australia. 2018. Archived from the original on 12 June 2018. Retrieved 7 June 2018.
^The University of Western Australia. "Zadko Telescope". www.zt.ems.uwa.edu.au. Archived from the original on 4 October 2021. Retrieved 4 October 2021.
Special University NumberWestern Mail, 21 April 1932, at Trove An extensive supplement commemorating the opening of the university's Crawley campus. See pages 3–23, 33-43 and 77 (back cover page)
