News Archive

A unique and inspiring group of first year students with something to celebrate gathered for lunch in the Sunken Gardens early in the semester.

Every commencing student has reason to celebrate the start of a new stage in life but, for many in this group, just getting to this stage has been a challenge.

They are the first cohort from the Aspire UWA program - 183 of them enrolled in first year courses.

"We are very excited to see so many students here at UWA, many of whom we first met when they were in Year 9,´said Louise Pollard, Manager, Aspire UWA "We all feel privileged to have worked with these students, who are the very embodiment of the philosophy behind Aspire UWA and hope that this is a sign of things to come."

Aspire UWA is the biggest outreach program to come out of the University, targeting students from Year 9 in 51 schools in regional and outer metropolitan areas with a traditionally ‘low transfer' to university.

The program particularly targets students from rural, Indigenous, refugee and low socio-economic communities with information, mentoring, on-campus experiences and school visits to encourage them to aspire to tertiary education..

Aspire UWA was launched in 2009 and has been steadily growing since this time.  In 2012 more than 5,000 students participated in the program and in 2013 this figure will grow even more with thousands of students around the state striving for excellence.

Published in UWA News , April 2013