UNE’s Armidale campus has developed, building-by-building, over nearly 70 years.
Our educational model, and the types of facilities we need to support our students and our research, is now evolving far more quickly.
Like every university, we have begun thinking about how to bridge the gap between our historical legacy and what we need for the higher education of the future.
UNE is now working with consultants the Nous Group and GHD to consider how the Armidale campus, which remains at the heart of our institutional identity, should evolve to serve our changing needs over the medium term.
This process has included significant engagement with UNE staff in “co-design” sessions.
We are working towards a final set of outputs for the campus strategy, expected in the first quarter of February 2023.
At this point in the process, I would value your input into the articulation of the campus strategy through this survey. Staff and students are clearly the most important stakeholders in the University’s future campus.
From the outset, universities have been valued by teachers and students alike because they are communities of learning. This idea of a “community of learning” is rapidly evolving in a sector increasingly defined by online delivery.
This raises critical questions about the role of the campus in a digital world.
What do you, your students and your research need from our campus? For some it is access to research infrastructure, teaching laboratories, digital teaching spaces, physical records or specialised equipment; for others it is the human connection of team meetings and departmental seminars, the serendipity of face-to-face corridor conversations or a quiet place to write.
Beyond these practical dimensions, the campus can express our values – for example, recognition of the Indigenous owners of the land on which it is built, inclusivity through ensuring physical accessibility for all, sustainability through respectful engagement with the natural environment and choice of materials.
Whatever shape this beautiful UNE campus assumes in the future, it will be a physical home to a vibrant community of learning. The campus strategy is a chance to think about what that might look like in a digitally networked world. It is a chance to ask the hard questions, and propose novel answers.
In this spirit, I invite you to contribute to the survey. I look forward to sharing the ultimate results of this exercise in 2023.
The campus remains a vital resource for my lab and some aspects of the library. There are also occasional meetings that need to be undertaken face-to-face, but the global move towards offsite working means that the dedicated office space my not be as vital as it once was.
A greater number of personal offices for staff who prefer to work in their own space. Failing that, building spaces that are better adapted to working from home arrangements so people can virtually “join into” buildings on an as needed basis.
Nous Group and GHD should invite interested staff and students to provide input during their consultation process and NOT provide us a blueprint in February 2023 to be ratified, that has been compiled without wider consultation!
It is interesting to me that we can select where we think “a place that is safe, accessible and inclusive for all” sits as a level of priority, as though this may not be prioritised if the majority of survey participants put it as a lower priority. I would have thought that this should underpin every option rather than be an option in the list?
It is past time that asbestos ridden buildings such as those that have ccommodated education staff and students for more than 4 decades were replaced.