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Wednesday, 4 December 2013

For my last column in our University's centenary year, I'd like to thank all of you for your hard work in 2013. Many of you put in extra hours to ensure that our celebratory events - and our bumper Open Day - were the highly successful events they were.

From the spectacular launch of our centenary with LUMINOUSnight - when the power of two million candles transformed Winthrop Hall into a panoramic spectacle of light and sound - to our wonderful UWA Gives Back visits to regional WA, this has been a magnificent year for our University.

Thanks to UWA Gives Back, I have travelled the length and breadth of this great State and now have a much better idea of people's affection for the University, whether they live in Perth or in rural and remote areas.

Throughout this year, each Faculty organised its own UWA Gives Back event and I've been very fortunate to have been invited to participate in all of them.

Each has been enlightening. For example, our five-day Pilbara tour focussed on UWA's leading role in world-class research and expertise as a driver for business, industry and advanced tertiary education. It was heartening to see at first-hand ways in which UWA-generated teaching, research and community involvement has led to new and better ways to build WA's economic and social fabric, especially in the Pilbara minerals and energy sectors.

On another tour, along with staff and students from across the University, I was pleased to visited high school students in the the Kimberley to showcase the diversity of engineering and how it impacts our everyday lives. Our aim was to encourage high school students to consider tertiary studies and stimulate local debate on important regional issues.

In Kalgoorlie, we visited the Rural Clinical School and learnt how our medical students see and do more in their time in a rural setting than their counterparts in a metropolitan setting - and it is becoming the case that many such students end up choosing to make their career in rural and regional Western Australia because of the taste they got for it through their Rural Clinical School training.

In Albany, it was our Student Guild - also celebrating their centenary this year - who organised the Gives Back program. We are excited about Guild Volunteering's plans to be part of the ANZAC commemorations in Albany next year - particularly as several UWA students from the University's 1913 intake lost their lives in the Great War.

The overwhelming message of UWA Gives Back was to share our belief in the transformative power of education and the creation of opportunity - especially for students from regional parts of the State - to have access to this education. Through Aspire UWA, scholarships and camps such as those organised by School of Indigenous Studies, we create aspiration to succeed at tertiary level.

This has been an amazing year for our University. I look forward to working with you all to ensure that we continue the momentum.

And I wish you all a safe and happy festive season.

Paul Johnson

Vice-Chancellor

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