Global Presence

We're really creating global leaders by the opportunities that we're providing our students as graduates who go into the workforce. I think they will be special people and they've got the capacity to work across cultural boundaries. While our alumni are entrepreneurial and they were very successful. It's a global world now and if I'm going to go into any industry of business, I'm gonna have to travel then I look forward to doing it in the future. So we're a relatively young university founded in about 1975 here in Wollongong, but at the same time really for the last 30 years have had a very strong international agenda. We've got locations in Hong Kong and Singapore, Malaysia and in Dubai.

Establishing and having our operations offshore is really bringing a highly reputable highly ranked qualification to the reach of students who may not have done that before. The University launched by was first private Western University in Dubai. Starting from eight students some 25 years ago to have graduated now over 10,000 from more than 100 nationalities. Some of them in extremely high-level positions. And at all levels of government and the private sector, you'll find an alumni of ours in senior roles was shaping the growth of the economy or shaping policy.

Student mobility is a really important aspect of what we'd like to see happen with the growth of us and having our own campuses offshore. That allows us both to engage with populations of students in those countries, but al so to drive these mobility programs predominantly for young Australian students.

I spent the last three months in Hong Kong then another three in Singapore and so this is my last sort of travel over cities in Dubai. I'm starting to form connections here, which I think will be great. So if you imagine a student sitting in a classroom with other students from 25 or 30 nationalities. The level of skills about communicating and appreciating other cultures. I think that's really unique.

What I hope to gain out of this is just enjoying my experience here, and I want to make lots of friends and meet people in the industry if possible, and focus on my studies and perfect what I've learned about living overseas. As well as our own locations where we've got our campuses overseas, we are in a link the University global partnership Network. We've built some very deep partnerships. We've got some Paulo in Brazil, North Carolina in the United States and the University of Surrey in England, plus one gong we exchange staff and students and run workshops continually now in areas where we've got common cause I think that's socially quite exciting because that allows a new type of multidisciplinary team to be creative I think the whole point of that partnership are Bank's leading universities it's a way of creating a group of academics drawn from different institutions and different disciplines to do something around a grand challenge we've got the leg reducing pollution more effective ways to do things living well longer with a particular emphasis on aging and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's new approaches to deal with antibiotic resistance if you look around the university and open lots of doors you see these sorts of research activities going on all over the place and the University of Wollongong is currently one of the leading Australian universities we need to come to the international footprint we've produced a hundred and fifty thousand alumni skilled individuals who've got all over the planet and those are the people who are taking ideas and fresh ways of looking at things for the future in their own economies