Volume 6 Number 1 - Adm.monash.edu - Monash University

MONASH UNIVERSITY GAZETTE
GREAT HALL NAMED IN HONOUR OF SIR ROBERT BLACKWOOD
The Minister for Education, Mr L. H. S. Thompson (left) with Sir Robert Blackwood at the ceremony
The laying of the foundation stone of the Great Hall by
The Honourable L. H. S. Thompson, the Victorian
Minister for Education, took place on Monday 24
February 1969.
In his welcoming address the Chancellor, Sir Douglas
PREVENTIVE MEDICIN E-Continued
significance of this minor illness is great - so that there
is need for a much better co-ordinated attack on the
problem. Psychological medicine has provided clues but
there is further need for operational studies in better
defining the sort of help that patients require; ranging
from that of a friend. who may not be available in the
urban environment. to a social worker who provides
support based on the provisions of the welfare state.
These helping resources in the community must be
rationalized so that highly-trained medical manpower
can be used for maximum benefit. It is becoming clear
that the whole community is going to be increasingly
involved in the maintenance of health care and the prevention
and containment of disease. The doctor of the
future will be required, as a leader in the community,
to advise in this major area. To do this he will have
to know the structure of the community and the helping
resources available much better than he has in the
past. OUf teaching programme at Monash includes
considerably increased exposure of the student to the
community while he is still an undergraduate. This will
enable him to sec the setting of medicine in the whole
community so that he can learn to work with other
professions, both paramedical and non-medical, in order
to meet the total health needs of the community. As it
was put by Dr Millis. president of Western Reserve
University, in a recent report on the graduate education
of doctors in the U.S.A.: "Medicine exists to serve
society in common with the other socially useful professions.
It must ever be responsive to the needs of
the society it serves.'
Menzies, said: 'Today is a great day in the history of
Monash, although, unfortunately, few can take part in it.
This University is a new university, young not only in
years but, we hope, in outlook. But it is a university
in the great tradition - a tradition which we have inherited
from England and the Continent. Part of that
tradition is that there is an adherence to time-honoured
pageantry. More profoundly, part of the tradition is that
underneath the various disciplines that are here followed
there is an underlying unity. Call it what you willthe
pursuit of truth. the desire for excellence, the struggle
for perfection - it is. [ believe, one of the noblest manifestations
of the human spirit. And this University is
dedicated to the proposition that there is this unity,
'Today is important because it sees the foundation of
our Great Hall, and I believe that the Great Hall will
be the centre for this tradition in which we proudly
stand.'
Sir Douglas announced the University's decision that
the Hall would bear the name of its first Chancellor,
Sir Robert Blackwood.
'It is most fitting,' he went on, 'that today we have
with us Sir Robert Blackwood, the father of this University
and a great builder. The Council has decided
that the Great Hall of Monash University will be known
as the Robert Blackwood Hall. This we regard as a
fitting tribute to the first Chancellor of this University.'
Mr Thompson, speaking for the Government. expressed
appreciation of Sir Robert's contribution as a founder
of Monash.
He continued: 'I've always strongly believed that
there should be as high a degree of co-operation as possible
between the academic world and the business and
industrial world outside. In Sir Robert Blackwood We
have a man who has been the successful general manager
of one of our largest industrial concerns. A man
who has been professor of mechanical engineering at
Melbourne University and a man who knows university
(Continued on page 36)
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