University of Western Australia
The University of Western Australia is a public research university in Crawley, Western Australia, Australia. UWA was established in 1911 by an act of the Parliament of Western Australia.
The university is classed as one of the "sandstone universities", an informal designation given to the oldest university in each state. It is a member of the Group of Eight.
History
The university was established in 1911 following the tabling of proposals by a royal commission in September 1910. The original campus, which received its first students in March 1913, was on Irwin Street in the centre of Perth, and consisted of several buildings between Hay Street and St Georges Terrace. Irwin Street was also known as Tin Pan Alley, as many buildings had corrugated iron roofs. These buildings served as the university campus until 1932, when the campus relocated to its present-day site in Crawley.The founding chancellor, John Winthrop Hackett, died in 1916, and bequeathed property which, after being carefully managed for ten years, yielded £A425,000, equivalent to in, to the university, a far larger sum than expected. This allowed the construction of the main buildings. Many university buildings and landmarks bear his name, including Winthrop Hall and Hackett Hall. In addition, his bequest funded many scholarships, because he did not wish eager students to be deterred from studying because they could not afford to do so.
During UWA's first decade there was controversy about whether the policy of free education was compatible with high expenditure on professorial chairs and faculties. An "old student" publicised his concern in 1921 that there were 13 faculties serving only 280 students.
A remnant of the original buildings survives to this day in the form of the Irwin Street Building, so called after its former location. In the 1930s it was transported to the new campus and served a number of uses until its 1987 restoration funded by convocation, after which it was moved across campus to James Oval. Since then, the northern end of the building has accommodated the convocation council meeting room while the remainder is used for change rooms and meeting rooms as part of the cricket pavilion. The building has been heritage-listed by both the National Trust and the Australian Heritage Council.
Architect Rodney Alsop won the 1932 bronze medal by the Royal Institute of British Architects for Winthrop Hall. Those who knew him before his death, which occurred later that year, reported that Alsop had thought of little else but the Hackett Memorial buildings, including Winthrop Hall, for six years, and considered the buildings his life's greatest achievement.
The university introduced the Doctorate of Philosophy degree in 1946 and made its first award in October 1950 to Warwick Bottomley for his research of the chemistry of native plants in Western Australia. The university introduced a Bachelor of Philosophy program in 2013.
Campus
UWA is one of the largest landowners in Perth as a result of government and private bequests, and is constantly expanding its infrastructure. Developments in the last two decades include the $22 million University Club, opened in June 2005, and the UWA Watersports Complex, opened in August 2005. In September 2005 UWA opened its $64 million Molecular and Chemical Sciences building. In 2008, a $31 million Business School building opened. In 2014, a $9 million new CO2 research facility was completed, providing modern facilities for carbon research. The Indian Ocean Marine Research Centre, a $62 million research facility on campus, was completed in 2016. The Centre for Integrative Bee Research is located on the Crawley campus in Perth. CIBER conducts basic scientific research into honeybee reproduction, immunity and ecology and aligns its work with the needs of industrial and governmental partners.Arts and cultural facilities
The Crawley campus sits at the Swan River, about west of the Perth central business district. Many of the buildings are coastal limestone and Donnybrook sandstone, including the large, iconic Winthrop Hall, with its Romanesque Revival architecture.The Arts Faculty building encompasses the New Fortune Theatre. This open-air venue was built to celebrate Shakespeare's 400th anniversary, at the time the only replica in the world of the original Elizabethan Fortune Theatre, and used for 1964 Perth Festival performances. Since then it has hosted regular performances of Shakespeare's plays co-produced by the Graduate Dramatic Society. and the University Dramatic Society. The venue is also home to a family of peafowl donated to the university by the Perth Zoo in 1975 after a gift by Laurence Brodie-Hall.
The university's cultural precinct is in the northern part of the Crawley campus. Other performance venues include the Octagon and Dolphin Theatres and Somerville Auditorium, the Winthrop Hall, Sunken Garden, Undercroft and Tropical Grove, which play host to a range of theatre and musical performances, including during the Perth Festival.
The UWA Conservatorium of Music hosts many concerts each year by students and visiting artists, including series of free lunchtime concerts.
The Berndt Museum of Anthropology, in the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, contains one of the most significant collections of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural material in the world. Its Asian and Melanesian collections are also of strong interest. It was established in 1976 by Ronald and Catherine Berndt.
Libraries
The University of Western Australia has five libraries on campus, including the architecturally recognised Reid Library building, the largest of the five. The other libraries are the ; the J Robin Warren Library ; the Beasley Law Library; and the Education, Fine Arts and Architecture Library.Offsite locations
The university established a UWA Albany Centre in 1999 to meet rural education needs. UWA Albany offers postgraduate coursework and research programs through the Institute for Regional Development and the Centre of Excellence in Natural Resource Management. The UWA Rural Clinical School provides year-long rural placements for third-year medical students in Albany, Derby, Broome, Port Hedland, Karratha, Geraldton, Bunbury, Narrogin, Esperance, and Kalgoorlie; Western Australia. Additionally, the university is involved in the Combined Universities Centre for Rural Health in Geraldton.The university has further facilities across Stirling Highway in Nedlands, linked by pedestrian underpasses beneath the highway, and paths in front of the residential colleges. Although not directly contiguous with the main Crawley site, the university owns almost every parcel of land between them and has long-term plans to expand the two sites towards each other. The university also has facilities in Claremont, purchased in 2005 from Edith Cowan University. The university prefers to call these facilities UWA Claremont rather than a campus because it wants to remain a single campus institution that is located on the main Crawley campus. UWA Claremont is about west of the main Crawley campus. Further west, the university has staff in central Claremont.
Overseas, the university has strategic partnerships with institutions in Malaysia and Singapore, where students study for UWA qualifications, but does not operate these foreign institutions directly. UWA plans to establish two campuses in India following approval by the country's University Grants Commission in June 2025. The campuses will be located in Mumbai and Chennai.
The university has also developed a relationship with Australian Doctors for Africa with whom it sends academic staff to conduct medical student teaching in Somalia, Madagascar, and Ethiopia. There are two to four visits to each location per year.