Acclaimed writer and University of Queensland graduate Janette Turner Hospital, now Carolina Distinguished Professor of English at the University of South Carolina (USC), teaches an undergraduate course in contemporary literature which is also free and open to the public — a course so popular that 600 members of the public register for it.
When USC ran out of sufficient funds to offer the course, such was the enthusiasm of the students that they banded together and raised US$20,000 in just a few weeks to keep it going.
As the face of this year’s University of Queensland Chancellor’s Fund Appeal, Dr Turner Hospital said she hoped to tap into a similar spirit of giving to raise funds for UQ programs and infrastructure.
With the 2004 Chancellor’s Fund Appeal focused on fellow graduates of the 1960s, she says she is convinced of the need for dynamic cross-fertilisation of ideas and interactions between community and university, “town” and “gown”.
“An important way of achieving this end is through donations to appeals such as this,” she said.
Dr Turner Hospital urged all graduates, especially those from the 1960s, to give generously to this year’s Appeal. She said if graduates gave a minimum of $60 each, the Appeal’s target of $600,000 would be readily achieved.
“I look back with fond memories of my own time at University — the activities I was involved in, the friends I made and the intellectual stimulation of those heady days,” she said.
“But things have changed dramatically since the 1960s. Universities around the world have had to rely increasingly on donations in order to provide not just the educational extras, but in some cases, the basics.
“Without more funds, today’s UQ student will not be able to enjoy the same standard of education we did. In fact, without more scholarships for example, many students will not be able to attend university at all.”
University of Queensland Deputy Vice-Chancellor (International and Development), Professor Trevor Grigg, said he hoped 1960s graduates, the beneficiaries of a relatively unfettered tertiary education themselves, would dig deep for today’s pressured university sector.
“The 1960s was a time when university students everywhere heightened their senses of social responsibility, optimism and global understanding,” Professor Grigg said.
“Today, it’s a very different environment students find themselves in. A decade of government funding cutbacks and ‘making do’ is taking its toll and the gains of the past may evaporate if sufficient funds are not found.”
Media contact: Shirley Glaister at UQ Communications (telephone 07 3365 3374, email s.glaister@uq.edu.au).
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