The Response - UWA Staff - The University of Western Australia

‘Our group believes that using residential colleges as the focal point for more educational, cultural and pastoral
engagement with students is a positive step forward. A cultural home for all students should create a sense of
belonging, and an enduring attachment to the university for graduates, with benefits for future generations of
students (in the Oxbridge tradition).’
‘I think UWA should learn from how independent high schools manage students’ lives at school. My sons are still
very attached to the high school, and the school also remembers them through the alumni programme….The
school has a big endowment fund, mostly from the alumni programme and Parents and Friends programme….This
is a very important issue. The majority of the funding of Harvard and Stanford is from the Endowment, which is from
alumni. They can afford offer scholarships to top students over the world. They can also afford offer competitive
salary for top staff.’
‘UWA grossly under performs in the area of providing a variety of outstanding ‘places’ for student and staff
interaction. Quality food and drinks, including high street style coffee / tea outlets don’t really exist on campus. The
mode of delivery via the Guild in-sourced model is sadly out of date and requires urgent re-working both from a
service and choice model as well as a facilities and options of locations plan that covers everyone and captures the
huge latent market …The Uni Club provides a valuable a quality service but to too few in the overall population and
at a price point not all can afford.’
Proposal 3: That the University develop structures for personalised mentoring and academic support
for, and particularly for first year, students, to enhance their engagement with the learning opportunities
presented by the University.
‘Our group believes that more face-to-face tutoring in small groups is desired to engage with undergraduates in a
positive educational experience.’
‘Student support and mentoring don’t always need to come from the academic sphere. Professional staff at UWA
can offer career advice, provide material for units from ‘real world’ scenarios, build friendships based on cultural
backgrounds and even be a cheap source of shared commuting if car pooling was made more broadly available.’
‘What training and/or selection will take place of those faculty that will be acting as “face to face” mentors of
undergraduate students?
Will the budget be sufficient to provide the level of quality that we need to provide to be successful?’
‘If we are to properly articulate the value of an on-campus experience for students, we need to encompass [the]
much broader perspective of personal development. As long as we continue to focus just on acquiring knowledge,
alternative sources of knowledge such as online courses, even reading books, will all seem to pose a significant
threat to the viability of the on-campus university. The reality is that most students require lots of emotional support
from their peers and teachers as they go through an extremely challenging period of emotional development. I
suspect that many of the teaching staff in the University would only be dimly aware of just how important their
physical presence is for this development.’
‘In discussions on the difficulties experienced by higher degree research students in writing their theses, several
staff commented on their students’ apparent weaknesses in critical thinking skills. I was finding the same weakness
among undergraduate students. When I introduced some material on critical thinking in my fourth year course,
I was surprised to find that almost none of the students even knew what critical thinking is…. I suspect that it is
in these issues that we will find much better ways to explain the immense value of an on-campus educational
experience to our constituencies.’
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