News Archive

More than 12,000 alumni now live overseas in more than 100 countries. Some are locals taking the skills acquired at UWA to every corner of the globe, some were international students now investing their knowledge and experience in their home countries. Tamara Hunter has tracked down just a few of the University's many ‘ambassadors'.

For 100 years now, they have come. Year after year, initially in their hundreds, more recently in their thousands: fresh from school, from travelling the world, from another country, or from working, loving and exploring life.

They have come to The University of Western Australia to learn. And when they have palpated and dissected, scrutinised and searched, analysed and discovered whatever it is they came here to find, they have dispersed - headed out into the world to share and grow their knowledge.

In many cases, that knowledge and experience ends up on the world stage. More than 12,000  alumni now live outside of Australia, in almost every imaginable location, from Japan to Russia, Cambodia to Uruguay.

Some have landed in the biggest and brightest cities of them all, like London, New York, Beijing or Singapore. Others have found their way to some of the most troubled or inaccessible parts of the world, like Sudan, Syria, Rwanda or Iran.

Wherever they are, graduates are making a name for themselves across every discipline, with luminaries emerging across the arts, the business and legal worlds, medicine, education, politics, science, engineering, technology, agriculture, resources, the not-for-profit sector and more.

Among them are well known names like Indonesia's Vice-President, the Hon. Dr Pak Boediono, Australia's ambassador to the United States of America, Kim Beazley, and Jeremy Hobbs, managing director of Oxfam International.

Some were remarkable right from the start,  like Dr Akshay Venkatesh who, at 13, became the youngest student to enrol at UWA. He completed first class Honours in pure mathematics at UWA in 1997 and, by 16, was a PhD student at Princeton University. He is now a professor of mathematics at Stanford University.

Others made their mark after years of hard work, like Dr Desmond Collins, a palaeontologist and Life and Physical Sciences graduate (1960). Dr Collins led 18 seasons of field reconnaissance and excavation of the 505 million-year-old Burgess Shale, a world heritage site in the Canadian Rockies. His team

was rewarded in 1992 by the discovery of the fossil remains of moulting arthropods, confirming what palaeontologists had only suspected before - that ancient arthropods shed their outer skeleton during growth just like their modern counterparts.

Some - like 1998 engineering graduate Reece Lumsden and Emeritus Professor Ron Lyon (Life and Physical Sciences, 1950) - looked to the skies and went to work in fields like x-ray astronomy, astrophysics, space exploration, lunar soil research and aviation for organisations including NASA and Boeing.

Others pursued pressing issues like global warming, biodiversity and food security. The calibre of her UWA education led one graduate, Mrs Eviness Nyalugwe, to achieve rapid promotion within the Malawi Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security. Just a year after completing her Masters in Natural and Agricultural Sciences as an AusAID student in 2008 she had become the ministry's Deputy Director of Crop Production Responsible for Horticulture.

Many Asian students came to UWA on scholarships under the Columbo Plan, a bold initiative begun in the 1950s as a way to bring Asia and the West together at a time of political uncertainty. They included Indonesia's Vice-President Boediono, who graduated with honours in economics in 1967. In 2011 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate for his service to Indonesia and the global community.

Another Columbo Plan student, from Malaysia, studied engineering before changing focus and becoming a much-decorated expert in Indian classical dance. Ibrahim Ramli, who graduated in 1976, trained with the West Australian Ballet Company while studying, then toured with the Sydney Dance Company for six years before returning to Malaysia to establish the Sutra Dance Theatre. He has performed all over the world and is a cultural icon in his home country, which declared him a National Living Heritage Treasure last year. In 2011 he was presented with a UWA Distinguished International Alumnus Award.

The Business School has produced others working at a high level internationally - people like Joel Cohen, executive officer in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and Department of Field Support at the United Nations, and Loretta Tomasi, CEO of the English National Opera.

Graduates of other faculties have also scaled international business heights, including Mr Peter Pang, president of Bosch (China) Investment, who received the Australia China Alumni of the Year Award in 2010; Simon Linge, president of New Zealand Steel & Pacific Islands at BlueScope Steel; and Dr Jonathon Sedgwick, who became Chief Scientific Officer for multinational biopharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. His research has focused on the role of inflammation pathways in diseases including autoimmunity and cancer.

Vice-Chancellor Paul Johnson says alumni play a vital role and the sheer diversity of UWA's alumni demonstrates the many ways in which graduates have benefited from the international education offered by the University.

"From our governing body - the Senate - to our on-campus activities, to our international alumni chapters across the nation and around the globe, our alumni play an integral role in the life and work of our University," says Professor Johnson.At a recent alumni function in Singapore, the Vice-Chancellor told graduates: "You are the reflection of UWA's commitment to education, research and lifelong learning - helping to direct and encourage future generations to aspire to a degree from The University of Western Australia."

UWA graduates around the world keep in touch with the University through the Development and Alumni Relations Office (see A worldwide network) and through uniview which has a print run of more than 70,000 and drops into mailboxes around the world, from a single copy in Burkino Faso in Africa to 4,000 in Singapore.

Published in Uniview Vol. 32 No. 1 Summer 2013