Australian National University


The Australian National University is a public research university and member of the Group of Eight, located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies and institutes.
Established in 1946, ANU is the only university to have been created by the Parliament of Australia. It traces its origins to Canberra University College, which was established in 1929 and was integrated into ANU in 1960. ANU enrols 13,329 undergraduate and 11,021 postgraduate students and employs 4,517 staff. The university's endowment stood at A$1.8 billion as of 2018.
ANU counts six Nobel laureates and 49 Rhodes scholars among its faculty and alumni. The university has educated the incumbent Governor-General of Australia, two former prime ministers, and more than a dozen current heads of government departments of Australia. The latest releases of ANU's scholarly publications are held through ANU Press online. The entry requirements of many programmes are selective with high ATAR scores requirements. ANU has consistently been ranked as one of the best universities in Australia, ranking Number 1 in multiple university rankings as of 2023.

History

Post-war origins

Calls for the establishment of a national university in Australia began as early as 1900. After the location of the nation's capital, Canberra, was determined in 1908, land was set aside for the ANU at the foot of Black Mountain in the city designs by Walter Burley Griffin. Establishment of the university was disrupted by World War II but resumed with the creation of the Department of Post-War Reconstruction in 1942, ultimately leading to the passage of the Australian National University Act 1946 by the Chifley government on 1 August 1946.
File:Homopolar anu-MJC.jpg|thumb|right|Remains of the ANU homopolar generator designed by Mark Oliphant
A group of eminent Australian scholars returned from overseas to join the university, including Sir Howard Florey, Sir Mark Oliphant, and Sir Keith Hancock. The group also included a New Zealander, Sir Raymond Firth, who had earlier worked in Australia for some years. Economist Sir Douglas Copland was appointed as ANU's first Vice-Chancellor and former Prime Minister Stanley Bruce served as the first Chancellor. ANU was originally organised into four centres—the Research Schools of Physical Sciences, Social Sciences and Pacific Studies and the John Curtin School of Medical Research.
The first residents' hall, University House, was opened in 1954 for faculty members and postgraduate students. Mount Stromlo Observatory, established by the federal government in 1924, became part of ANU in 1957. The first locations of the ANU Library, the Menzies and Chifley buildings, opened in 1963. The Australian Forestry School, located in Canberra since 1927, was amalgamated by ANU in 1965.

Canberra University College

was the first institution of higher education in the national capital, having been established in 1929 and enrolling its first undergraduate pupils in 1930. Its founding was led by Sir Robert Garran, one of the drafters of the Australian Constitution and the first Solicitor-General of Australia. CUC was affiliated with the University of Melbourne and its degrees were granted by that university. Academic leaders at CUC included historian Manning Clark, political scientist Finlay Crisp, poet A. D. Hope and economist Heinz Arndt.
In 1960, CUC was integrated into ANU as the School of General Studies, initially with faculties in arts, economics, law and science. Faculties in Oriental studies and engineering were introduced later. Bruce Hall, the first residential college for undergraduates, opened in 1961.

Modern era

The Canberra School of Music and the Canberra School of Art combined in 1988 to form the Canberra Institute of the Arts, and amalgamated with the university as the ANU Institute of the Arts in 1992.
ANU established its Medical School in 2002, after obtaining federal government approval in 2000.
On 18 January 2003, the Canberra bushfires largely destroyed the Mount Stromlo Observatory. ANU astronomers now conduct research from the Siding Spring Observatory, which contains 10 telescopes including the Anglo-Australian Telescope.
In February 2013, financial entrepreneur and ANU graduate Graham Tuckwell made the largest university donation in Australian history by giving $50 million to fund an undergraduate scholarship program at ANU.
ANU is well known for its history of student activism and, in recent years, its fossil fuel divestment campaign, which is one of the longest-running and most successful in the country. The decision of the ANU Council to divest from two fossil fuel companies in 2014 was criticised by ministers in the Abbott government, but defended by Vice Chancellor Ian Young, who noted: ANU holds investments in major fossil fuel companies.
A survey conducted by the Australian Human Rights Commission in 2017 found that the ANU had the second-highest incidence of sexual assault and sexual harassment. 3.5 per cent of respondents from the ANU reported being sexually assaulted in 2016. Vice Chancellor Brian Schmidt apologised to victims of sexual assault and harassment.
The ANU had funding and staff cuts in the School of Music in 2011–15 and in the School of Culture, History and Language in 2016. However, there is a range of global endowments available for Arts and Social Sciences, designated only for ANU. Some courses are now delivered online.
ANU has exchange agreements in place for its students with many foreign universities, most notably in the Asia-Pacific region, including the National University of Singapore, the University of Tokyo, the University of Hong Kong, Peking University, Tsinghua University and Seoul National University. In other regions, notable universities include the George Washington University, the University of California, the University of Texas, the University of Toronto in North America and Imperial College London, King's College London, Sciences Po, ETH Zürich, Bocconi University, the University of Copenhagen and Trinity College Dublin in Europe.
In 2017, Chinese hackers infiltrated the computers of Australian National University, potentially compromising national security research conducted at the university.

Campuses and buildings

The main campus of ANU extends across the Canberra suburb of Acton, which consists of of mostly parkland with university buildings landscaped within. ANU is roughly bisected by Sullivans Creek, part of the Murray–Darling basin, and is bordered by the native bushland of Black Mountain, Lake Burley Griffin, the suburb of Turner and the Canberra central business district. The Acton campus is also home to three sports fields, six tennis courts, two gymnasiums and a pool. Many university sites are of historical significance dating from the establishment of the national capital, with over 40 buildings recognised by the Commonwealth Heritage List and several others on local lists.
With over 10,000 trees on its campus, ANU won an International Sustainable Campus Network Award in 2009 and was ranked the 2nd greenest university campus in Australia in 2011.
Four of Australia's five learned societies are based at ANU—the Australian Academy of Science, the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and the Australian Academy of Law. The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science and the National Film and Sound Archive are also located at ANU, while the National Museum of Australia and CSIRO are situated next to the campus.
ANU occupies additional locations including Mount Stromlo Observatory on the outskirts of Canberra, Siding Spring Observatory near Coonabarabran, a campus at Kioloa on the South Coast of New South Wales and a research unit in Darwin.

Governance and structure

University Council

ANU is governed by a 15-member Council, whose members include the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor. Gareth Evans, a former Foreign Minister of Australia, was ANU Chancellor from 2010 to December 2019 and Brian Schmidt, an astrophysicist and Nobel Laureate, served as Vice-Chancellor from 1 January 2016 to 1 January 2024. Evans was succeeded as Chancellor by a fellow former Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, in January 2020. Schmidt was succeeded as Vice-Chancellor by cultural anthropologist and Distinguished Professor Genevieve Bell in January 2024.

Constituent colleges

ANU was reorganised in 2006 to create seven Colleges, each of which leads both teaching and research. Additional restructuring occurred in 2017, resulting in changes to the names and schools within the Colleges.

Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

The ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences is divided into the Research School of Social Sciences and Research School of Humanities and the Arts. Within RSSS there are schools and centres dedicated to History, Philosophy, Sociology, Politics & International Relations, Demography, Arab and Islamic Studies, and European Studies, as well as the Australian National Centre for Latin and American Studies, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, and the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods.
RSHA contains schools of Archaeology and Anthropology; Art & Design; and Literature, Languages and Linguistics, the latter of which include departments focusing on Linguistics & Applied Linguistics; English, Screen, Drama & Gender Studies; Languages & Cultures, and Classical Studies. RSHA also houses the ANU School of Music. In 2017, ANU ranked 6th in the world for politics, 8th in the world for Social Policy and Administration and 11th in the world for development studies.
The college is also home to the Australian Studies Institute.
The college's School of Philosophy houses the ANU Centre for Consciousness, ANU Centre for Philosophy of the Sciences, and ANU Centre for Moral, Social and Political Theory, an organisation whose purpose is to "become a world-leading forum for exposition and analysis of the evolution, structure, and implications of our moral, social and political life." Its president is Nicholas Southwood and key people include Seth Lazar, Geoff Brennan, Bob Goodin, Frank Jackson, Philip Pettit and Michael Smith.