News Archive

I always look forward to the start of a new academic year.

The campus, so quiet over the summer, erupts with enthusiasm as we welcome thousands of students for the start of a new teaching year. It was great to see them streaming onto campus, many for the first time, exuding a mix of excitement and anticipation.

Among them are more than 4,000 first year students who will help write the next chapter of UWA's history by being our second century's first cohort of students.

The students are our raison d'etre, along with our world class research.

They have chosen to come to UWA to receive a world class education.

I want to extend my thanks to many students and staff from across the University, in particular the teams in Student Administration and Student Services, who made all our new students welcome.

I had the pleasure of meeting many new students as part of Orientation week activities. They have come from across the state, the nation, and the world, and from a wide variety of backgrounds. While each has a dream and a goal for the future, what they share is a desire to make themselves better through knowledge and education, and to contribute to our University's vision for a better world.

Our staff, both academic and professional, can help them to achieve that.

When I formally welcomed the freshers to the University I urged them to make the most of their UWA experience, and to ensure that they, like the more than 120,000 graduates before them, will look back on these years as some of the best of their lives.

I counselled them not just to excel in studies, but to become better people and citizens by expanding their thinking and attitudes, challenging the norm, forming new friendships, and becoming involved in the University community through clubs, societies and other on-campus activities - for during its first century, our University became known for the social breadth and intellectual rigour of its thriving student clubs.

The Student Guild, which celebrated its Centenary along with the University last year, plays an important role in nurturing the non-academic side of these ‘best days of their lives.'

We wish all our students, new and returning, local and international, the very best for their studies this year.