Welcome from the Dean
Welcome to the Faculty of Arts, the oldest faculty in the University and a premier institution containing humanities disciplines ranked 17th in the world for arts, humanities and social sciences by the Times Higher Education Supplement. Our vision is to bring together the best scholars and the brightest students to create cutting-edge teaching and research. We aim to do this through a deep awareness of the multi-cultural nature of human experience and the powerful way that a liberal arts education enriches the life of the mind.
We are a diverse faculty with a common commitment to innovation and community engagement. We offer programs as diverse as Indigenous Studies, Classics and Indonesian language and at the same time we provide employment-relevant specialisations in such fields as public policy, journalism, linguistics, cultural conservation and development studies.
During 2007 the Faculty began a major overhaul of its structures and budget, including its teaching programs at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. This is producing an exciting array of new opportunities and challenges as we work to keep our programs at the forefront and to keep pace with the rapid changes occurring in this era of globalisation.
Our New Generation Arts degree reflects the inspiring ambitions of the Melbourne Model. We believe it has all the strengths of the former degree but with important new features such as common curriculum in first year, clearer sequences through the three years, capstone subjects in every major, and improved opportunities for internships and study abroad programs. Like anything that is new, we recognise the need to refine and improve what we are doing and we look forward to feedback from new students, parents and employers to make the new degree the best of its kind in the world.
In a recent survey of university students a major consulting company reported that first year students are already thinking about postgraduate study. We see the new Arts degree as the foundation for stronger, better postgraduate programs and career outcomes. During 2008 we will launch our new Graduate School which will offer graduates of three year programs at Melbourne and elsewhere a choice of New Generation Masters programs to complete their undergraduate specialisations and to link these to career outcomes. In addition, our existing professional masters programs are being refreshed and repositioned to reflect employer and market feedback, making them the best available in Australia and among the best in the world.
With change of this scale comes a need to abandon some of our old ways of thinking and working. Not everyone finds this easy. We have learned that our journey to improve what we do often echoes the wider challenges being faced by industry, by the public sectors of most countries and by NGOs working to achieve justice around the world. Our strategy is to be closer to these experiences, to better understand them and to learn from them. We believe this engagement empowers us to offer a liberal arts education that is specialised, deeply committed to the best research, but also actively and critically engaged in the challenges faced by our societies.
Best wishes for your time with us!
Mark Considine