From the Vice-Chancellor (Alumni Newsletter - February 2019)

Celebrations for the Lunar New Year are over and the year of the Pig has commenced. Deakin was honoured to join with the Asian Business Association of Whitehorse in supporting the 2019 Chinese New Year’s Celebration in Box Hill. Over 100,000 people took part in the celebrations including the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.

The year has started in earnest and we welcomed almost 10,000 students to T1 for 2019, 3,850 of them to our Cloud Campus. The February graduations saw 3,611 graduands proudly cross the stage to receive their Deakin testamur (2,234 graduated in absentia). As you will remember well, graduations are happy and inspiring events, honouring the achievements and success of our new graduates. If you are one of those who graduated recently, please don’t forget to fill in the Graduate Outcomes Survey when it arrives. The survey is sent to all recent graduates by the Australian Government and the feedback helps us improve what we do for the next generation of students.

My congratulations also to all members of the Deakin community who were recognised in the Australia Day Honours , particularly Alfred Deakin Professor David Crawford (Head of the School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences), Associate Professor Sonia Allan (Deakin Law School), Professor Jennifer McIntosh (School of Psychology) and former Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Daryl Le Grew, on their honours.

One of the items in this month’s dKin Times is our GIVE initiative. Since introducing our Deakin Sanctuary Scholarships, nine refugees and asylum seekers have been able to study at Deakin and we hope to  more than quadruple the number by 2020, providing tuition fees, housing and study expenses for those on bridging, temporary protection or regional five-year visas. I encourage you to consider supporting Deakin’s Sanctuary program and other equity scholarships – every dollar helps; it is not how much you give, but that you do give.

Enjoy this month’s dKin… and do keep in touch with us. And enjoy what’s left of the sunshine wherever you are in the world!

Jane den Hollander AO
President and Vice-Chancellor