GAZETTE - Adm.monash.edu.au - Monash University

MONASH lINIVERSITY GAZETTEUniversity's current submission to the Australian UniversitiesCommission a request for the establishment ofa resident string quartet. We see a need, and entertain astrong desire, to pioneer fin electronic music studio atMonash.Students in the reading roomThese and other plans are, of course. dependent on thesolution of the twin, related problems that every departmentfaces - space and money. We urgently needa fairly large auditorium-cum-classroom where valuableequipment can be kept and used and music made bothinformally and publicly without hindrance. We needsound-proofed and temperature- and humidity-controlledpractice-rooms to house instruments. We need alarger library area in which books and periodicals canbe kept where they logically and practically belongalongsideour scores and records - and we need considerablefunds to augment OUf score collection itselfto provide for practical as well as scholarly. performingas welt as referential needs. Perhaps some of these problemsmay be met when we move into properly designedquarters around 1972. At that time music may no longerliterally be heard "on high" (i.e., the un-sound-proofedeleventh floor), but its aims will, we trust, be nonethelesslofty!DEPUTY LIBRARIANMr. T. B. Southwell was appointed deputy librarian inOctober 1967.He came to Monash as chief reference officer in 1961after working in the library department of Angus andRobertson Limited. Between 1941 and 1960 he workedin the Fisher Library at the University of Sydney.Mr. Southwell graduated with a Bachelor of Artsdegree from the University of Sydney and is an Associateof the Library Association of Australia.MONASH MAN TO ADVISE AFRICANSThe Kingdom of Lesotho in Southern Africa has appointedan international lawyer at Monash University asits legal adviser on treaty rights. The lawyer, Mr.Barry Connell. has been given leave of absence fromMonash for twelve months to undertake the work.The post is under the United Nations TechnicalAssistance scheme.COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITIESCONGRESSThe past year, culminating as it has in the meeting inSydney in August of one of the world's largest gatheringsof senior representatives of universities for theCommonwealth Universities Congress, sponsored by theLondon-based Association of Commonwealth Universities,has been a period of more-than-usually-intenseactivity and responsibility for the Vice-Chancellor. Allthe Congress arrangements. and they have been bothdetailed and multifarious, have been in the hands ofthe Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee of whichDr. Matheson is currently chairman. His responsibilityhas been the greater because of his concurrent appointmentas chairman of the Association of CommonwealthUniversities itself, an association of approximately 140universities in twenty countries of the Commonwealth.The discussions which took place in Sydney were notlimited to universities of the Commonwealth but wereattended by representatives of a number of kindredorganizations, for example, the International Associationof Universities, the Association of American Universitiesand many other organizations interested inhigher education.The theme of the Congress, "The Role of Universitiesin Higher Education" was extremely broad. Thekeynote address was given by Sir Fred Schonell, Vice­Chancellor of the University of Queensland, whose sub"ject was 'The University in Contemporary Society". Theplenary sessions were concerned with Commonwealthuniversity affairs during the last five years and with thespecial role of universities in developing countries.Apart from the formal discussions, the Congress andthe meeting of Executive Heads of CommonwealthUniversities in Melbourne which preceded it havebeen significant for the personal contacts made possiblebetween normally widely-dispersed people whose primaryconcern is with education at the tertiary level.This was the first occasion on which the Congresshas been held in Australia. It is normally held in theUnited Kingdom at five-yearly intervals and has onlybeen convened elsewhere on one previous occasion, inCanada in 1958.AWARD TO PROFESSORIn recognition of his work in Australia Professor R. M.A, Laufer was awarded the 'Ordre des palmes academiques'at a small ceremony on Wednesday 13 September1967. He was head of the French section from1962 until August 1967 when he resigned to take up thechair of French and Comparative Literature at the Universityof Aix-Marseilles.M. Germain conferred the award on behalf of theMinister of French Foreign Affairs. He spoke of ProfessorLaufer's work in the Universities of Sydney andMelbourne where he taught French literature, of hispioneering achievements as head of a new French sectionat Monash, and of his other contributions to Frenchteaching and culture in Australia such as the foundationof the Australian Journal of French Studies.6