Flinders University

Flinders University, commonly referred to as simply Flinders, is a public university in Adelaide, South Australia. Founded in 1966, it was named in honour of navigator Matthew Flinders, who explored and surveyed the South Australian coastline in the early 19th century.

Flinders is a verdant university and a member of the Innovative Research Universities (IRU) Group and ranks in the 10-16 bracket in Australia and 36th in the world of those established less than 50 years. Academically, the university pioneered a cross-disciplinary approach to education and its faculties of medicine and the humanities are ranked among the nation's top 10. The university is ranked within the world's top 400 institutions in the Academic Ranking of World Universities. The latest Times Higher Education rankings of the world’s top universities ranks Flinders University in the 251 to 300 bracket.

History:

Origins and construction:

In the late 1950s, with the growth of population in South Australia and the University of Adelaide's North Terrace campus reaching full capacity, the need for a second South Australian university was identified. In 1960, Premier Thomas Playford announced that 150 hectares (370 acres) of state government-owned land in Burbank (now Bedford Park) would be allocated to the University of Adelaide for the establishment of a second campus.

Planning began in 1961. The principal-designate of the new campus, economist and professor Peter Karmel, was adamant that the new campus should operate independently from the North Terrace campus. He hoped that the Bedford Park campus would be free to innovate and not be bound by tradition. Capital works began in 1962 with a grant of ₤3.8 million from the Australian Universities Commission. Architect Geoff Harrison, in conjunction with architectural firm Hassell, McConnell and Partners, designed a new university that, with future expansions, could eventually accommodate up to 6000 students.

Independence and opening:

In 1965, the Australian Labor Party won the state election and Frank Walsh became premier. The ALP wished to break up the University of Adelaide's hegemony over tertiary education in the state, and announced that they intended the Bedford Park campus to be an independent institution.

On 17 March 1966, a bill was passed by state parliament officially creating the Flinders University of South Australia. Although the Labor Party had favored the name "University of South Australia", academic staff wished that the university be named after a "distinguished but uncontroversial" person. They settled upon British navigator Matthew Flinders, who explored and surveyed the South Australian coastline in 1802. Its coat of arms, designed by a professor in the Fine Arts faculty, includes a reproduction of Flinders' ship Investigator and his journal A Voyage to Terra Australia, open to the page in which Flinders described the coast adjacent the campus site.

Flinders University was opened by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, on 25 March 1966. Peter Karmel was the first Vice-Chancellor and Sir Mark Mitchell the first Chancellor. The university began classes on 7 March 1966 with a student enrollment of 400. A significant early initiative was the decision to build the Flinders Medical Center on land adjacent to the campus and to base the university's Medical School within this new public hospital - the first such integration in Australia. Flinders first accepted undergraduate medical students in 1974, with FMC being opened the following year.

Expansion and restructuring:

In 1990, the biggest building project on campus since the mid-1970s saw work commence on three new buildings - Law and Commerce; Engineering; and Information Science and Technology. Approval for the establishment of a School of Engineering was given in 1991 and degrees in Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Bio medical Engineering were established shortly afterwards.

In 1991, as part of a restructuring of higher education in South Australia, Flinders merged with the adjacent Sturt Campus of the former South Australian College of Advanced Education. In 1992 the present four-faculty structure was adopted with only a minor change to the School structure made in 2011. In 1998, the Center for Remote Health, a rural teaching hospital based in Alice Springs, was established jointly with the Northern Territory University (now Charles Darwin University). This was expanded further in 2011 with the establishment of the Northern Territory Medical Program. Since 2000 the University has established new disciplines in areas including Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy and more disciplines of Engineering.

In 2015, the University opened a new campus at Tonsley, the former site of the Mitsubishi Motors Australia plant in Southern Adelaide. This campus houses the University's School of Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics, along with the Medical Device Research Institute, the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology and Flinders technology start-up company Re-Timer.

Campuses:

The University's main campus is in the Adelaide inner southern suburb of Bedford Park, about 12 km south of the Adelaide city center. The University also has a presence in Victoria Square in the center of the city, and Tonsley. It also maintains a number of external teaching facilities in regional South Australia, south-west Victoria and the Northern Territory. International students make up 10% of the on-campus student population and a number of offshore programmers are also offered, primarily in the Asia-Pacific region.

Organisation:

Flinders University offers more than 160 undergraduate and postgraduate courses, as well as higher degree research supervision across all disciplines. Many courses use new information and communication technologies to supplement face-to-face teaching and provide flexible options.