April 5 2019
Dear colleagues,,
Our University Council met in Burnie today and decided that we will – over the next 10 to 15 years – develop a city-centric campus in the heart of Hobart while maintaining our ownership of the Sandy Bay campus.
While this is an important decision, it signals the continuation, not the end, of a conversation; a conversation that started with the feedback from staff, students and the community that we have already received.
This decision was informed by a range of analysis which has been widely discussed by our staff and students. Community groups and representatives were also invited to explore our perspectives and provide feedback. The feedback from our staff and students – gathered during various forums and online – was a central part of Council’s deliberations today.
Council had asked for two models to be developed in order to deal with the pressing issue of infrastructure at our Sandy Bay campus – two-thirds of which has reached the end of its useful life and needs to be rebuilt:
- a CITY-CENTRIC MODEL, in which we would move to be more a part of the inner-city while retaining Sandy Bay for our sporting fields, some specialist research facilities and accommodation; or.
- a DISTRIBUTED MODEL, in which our city operations would remain, but we redesign and rebuild our Sandy Bay campus onto a more sustainable footprint on the lower part of the current campus.
There was much discussion at Council today about the need for us to design a campus that meets the needs of staff and the 21st-century student, improves access to education, provides clear benefits to the community, and supports the social, cultural and economic development of Tasmania.
Through the feedback process with staff and students it is clear there are people for whom a move from Sandy Bay to the City is ‘unthinkable’ given the green campus in sight of the river that they love today, their connection with colleagues and sense of place here. There is another group who are strongly committed to the idea of a city-centric model providing the basis for a different sort of campus; one which reintroduces sandstone as part of a green heart on the Domain, brings our campus closer to the life and vitality of the City, and makes higher education much more visible and accessible. .
For the considerable majority – sitting between these perspectives – this was a tight call, wrestling with qualitative factors such as campus experience while landing more clearly on more quantitative measures such as a more ready connection to the community we serve, access for students and the financial impacts of each model.
During this process, we have attempted to engage staff and students in different ways – such as the use of the exhibition space where we laid out the logic behind the two models, provided access to the underlying data and provided the opportunity for feedback online and through the room – feedback that was there for all to see.
Generally, there has been a sense of appreciation about this, but also valid questions about whether we got the consultation process right. We are committed to building consistently deeper levels of engagement with our staff, students and community over time which, as a learning organisation, is the right thing to do. And it is important we do so because it is vital as we create a new campus that it is built from a shared vision of the best possible outcome we can conceive.
OUR CAMPUS FUTURE
We have heard and understand that we need to build a true campus with a clear heart, which brings people together and builds community, not just a collection of buildings in a different location. It is very clear that people want to retain a connection to nature, and to have a mix of built and green spaces.
This move to the City will see us return home to our original campus on the Domain with its heritage buildings, sandstone and parkland setting. It is a place rich in values that we will deeply respect as we bring new life to this wonderful part of Hobart. In the City, along a spine running down Melville Street, we will create a campus in which the buildings are beautiful, inviting and highly permeable - an inviting place for students, community and staff. We will need to create a strong heart to draw the campus together with public space, central library and shared staff and student facilities.
We will need to work with the Hobart City Council and those in the City today to create a sense of a university precinct with its own distinct character – an inviting, vibrant place friendly to pedestrians and cyclists.
As we do this, we need to respond to the very understandable concerns people have had about what being part of a city-centric campus community would mean for them.
Transport, the availability and cost of parking, office design and family factors such as child care were clear themes in the feedback from staff. If we are going to be a truly people-centred university, the experience of our staff needs to be at the front of our minds. We will consult closely and work with our staff to make sure such factors are carefully considered and addressed in the design of our new campus.
Future students and their experience at the University of Tasmania will be another guiding consideration. We need to make sure it is easier for more students to get to our campus, especially those for whom transport is currently a barrier to education. And we need to ensure that, once there, they have an experience which is not only distinctly Tasmanian, but of a comparable standard to any university in the country.
OUR NEXT STEPS
Our first step on this journey will be to pause and listen to our Aboriginal community to ensure our new campus honours the values and history of our first people. There is a heritage on our island which dates back 60,000 years or more, and if we are to be a truly place-based university, we need to bring that rich history and culture to our core.
Those conversations and feedback from the consultation process to date will then form the basis of a process to engage students, staff and the range of City stakeholders, from Council and traders to residents of nearby areas such as the Glebe, to create a shared vision for a university in the City. That vision will then guide a detailed master-planning process before careful specifications for each of our new buildings are developed through working with staff and students.
Importantly, Sandy Bay will remain under the stewardship of the University. Today, Council discussed ways in which we can ensure that over many years its development aligns with our social and environmental values, knowing that the land has an important part to play in the life and future of our city. We also are mindful that any future use is conducive to the amenity of both Sandy Bay and Taroona.
I recognise that today there will be strong feelings among those who love Sandy Bay and can’t contemplate a move and who may not have had the stomach to even read this far. There will be cynicism among some who thought this was always going to happen and there will be excitement among others. Whatever those feelings, it is important that we respect them and in time harness a sense of common purpose to create a new campus that will be loved by future generations as much as those who loved the University both when it was on the Domain and then here at Sandy Bay.
Kind regards,
PROFESSOR RUFUS BLACK Vice-Chancellor
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