Open for inspection

For many visitors who will apply to study here, Open Day will become the first of many University of Melbourne experiences.

Though Vice-Chancellor Professor Glyn Davis never studied at the University, he remembers his own first Melbourne experience vividly: “When I was a PhD student, a friend and I came to look at the University, and we were just so impressed by what we saw, the beauty of the campus, the medical research institutes on the perimeter, the quality of the library.

“We were deeply impressed. That was my first encounter with the University of Melbourne, and that impression has remained with me, that it is clearly a great place to study and to work.”

Led by Professor Davis, University staff have worked in recent years to redesign its programs and align them with international higher education developments.

The result is an Australian-first curriculum which offers a holistic, higher standard education that leads to a professional qualification or research higher degree.

At Melbourne, students complete one of six broad undergraduate degrees before moving to a graduate school to undertake a professional qualification such as Law or Medicine.

In the Bachelor degree, students can choose from more than 80 fields of study, completing up to 25 per cent of their subjects outside their core program to explore different options and disciplines.

On completion they may enter the workforce, or choose to progress to a Masters degree, where they specialise in one of more than 340 intensive, industry-focused programs. On completion, they are awarded a graduate qualification which enables them to compete with other graduates internationally.

Professor Davis said the University had looked at the way in which it delivered its programs and decided the thing which mattered most was giving students the best possible education. “We’ve made huge changes to make that possible.

“We think we can give our students an education which is second to none in this country, whether they come to us as undergraduates or graduates – and many will come as both.”

Professor Davis said the University “offers students the six best undergraduate degrees in the country, where they study with other high-achieving students, and have the advantage of being part of a place which is full of very bright, interesting and motivated people”.

There is evidence that the University’s students are of the best and brightest in the nation: The median ATAR rank for the Melbourne undergraduate degrees throughout 2005-10 was 94.

Professor Pip Pattison is a psychologist and the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Academic. She said staff had enjoyed reviewing, re-working and reconnecting with the curriculum in new ways and it was reflected in students’ reports of their experience: In 2010, 79.5 per cent of first year undergraduates rated their overall experience as good to excellent, and 80 per cent of undergraduates across the University said their second semester subjects were ‘well taught’.

“There’s coherence to the curriculum that the review process enabled us to build, and the changes have focused attention on what students are learning,” she says.

“Staff had an opportunity to think about what students need to know at the end of a degree, and built coherent packages to deliver that, which is really important for students.”

Professor Davis said students would also get to interact with the best academics in the country, as evidenced by rankings results published in the last year. The prestigious Times Higher Education supplement ranked the University of Melbourne, at 36th, the highest in Australia.

The University has also established itself as the country’s leading research university, topping the key indicators in the latest Excellence in Research for Australia report. The report, by the Australian Research Council (ARC), showed Melbourne had the highest number of research disciplines ranked at the maximum possible level – well above world standard.

This high-calibre research and research-led teaching means students at the University’s graduate schools enjoy an outstanding and challenging educational experience.

“We’ve very deliberately designed our undergraduate and graduate study programs to be different,” Professor Davis says.

“When you get to graduate school, our intention is to push you hard, to offer a really challenging education that takes into account your status as a graduate. We move you through the material quickly, because we know you’ve got the ability.”

Professor Pattison said graduate study built on the skills graduate students had developed in their Bachelor’s degree.

“Graduate students work with a high level of commitment and enthusiasm which comes from making a very considered choice about which particular vocation or direction they want to pursue,” she says.

“That commitment to the professional area of work allows us to teach in new ways, which is happening across the graduate programs like the Master of Teaching, the Doctor of Medicine, and the Juris Doctor in Law. The professional courses bring together theory, research and practice in an integrated way, which distinguishes it from the undergraduate experience.

“Graduate students start the practical work relatively early, so they’re working at integrating those three things, which is a skill they’ll need for the whole of their professional lives. We’re really trying to set them up with the best possible grounding for future professional practice.”

Professor Pattison said the strong intellectual foundations students gained at undergraduate level were critical for higher level study.

Andrew Ma completed a Bachelor of Commerce degree at the University in 2008, majoring in Actuarial Studies before choosing the Melbourne Masters of Teaching (MTeach) as his graduate degree.

“A postgraduate teaching degree seemed like a good pathway using my existing degree to do something practical,” he says.

 “It being a Masters degree rather than a Postgraduate Diploma was certainly a factor, and the course structure was very flexible. The subjects and options appealed to me.”

Mr Ma said the best thing about the Masters of Teaching was the school placement program. “Being in a school every week has really made a difference in this degree.”

Students spend two days a week during the entire course in schools, as well as the traditional three-week blocks.

“It was like an internship. At the schools, we had so much support from a Teaching Fellow and a Clinical Specialist, plus our supervising teachers. We also had seminars at the schools, which were practical and helpful for actual teaching,” he says.

Mr Ma completed his final-year subjects while teaching full time at University High School.

“I’ve enjoyed the challenge of the course, and feel it has prepared me to teach by myself.”

 Mr Ma was also eager to mention the range of choice available in his graduate degree.

“There is so much flexibility, and many options. During the second semester there was room to complete an elective subject, and there were three different final year options to finish the Masters.”

Mr Ma says he had greatly enjoyed both his undergraduate and graduate studies at the University.

“The University is certainly very diverse, and there are so many things to do. Between my first and second year in the Bachelor of Commerce, I was involved in the student union VCE summer school as a tutor, and it was a lot of fun because it wasn’t all serious, and it gave me a taste of teaching.”

Professor Pattison says as well as changing the curriculum, the University’s teaching and learning was supported by a program of professional development activities for staff.

Many of the faculties strongly encourage new and existing staff to take programs with the University’s Centre for the Study of Higher Education (CSHE), which runs a whole range of programs including an award level Graduate Certificate in University Teaching.

This meant students received best practice teaching from Australia’s research leaders who were also qualified university teachers.

The Vice-Chancellor has two pieces of advice for the 40,000 people who will attend the University’s 2011 Open Day: “Give yourself enough time. After you’ve gone to see the faculty and courses which most interest you, go and look at everything else. Often people think they’re interested in one thing, and then wander around and realise there are actually a couple of different things that interest them, and they find out about more than just one option.

“The second thing is to enjoy being on the campus. Have a coffee, lie on the South Lawn, listen to some music, see all the cultural richness of the University, get a sense of what it would be like to be a student here.

“Walking around and seeing how it looks to you is a great way to think, “I could be happy here”.