The University of New England was formed in 1938 as the New England University College, a College of the University of Sydney. The University became fully independent in 1954 and pioneered teaching to external students by correspondence, making UNE Australia's most experienced provider of distance and now online education.
UNE is Australia's oldest regional university offering more than 200 courses at undergraduate, postgraduate coursework and higher degree research levels. UNE has more than 20,000 current students and 1,200 staff.
UNE's Vision
Since it was established, the University of New England has undertaken fundamental and applied research in many disciplines. Its scholars and scientists have established international reputations through their contributions in areas including rural science, agricultural economics, geology, educational administration, linguistics, archaeology. Collaborative research with other institutions, such as the CSIRO, has led to many important projects including participation in Cooperative Research Centres. It is through its research activities that the University is able to assist in the economic, social and cultural advancement of Australia and in the advanced training of undergraduate and postgraduate students.
The University seeks to serve regional, national and international communities through the progressive pursuit of excellence in scholarship, research and teaching. In committing itself to this mission, the University of New England uncompromisingly endeavours to build on its strengths and gladly accepts its responsibility to serve the educational, cultural, intellectual and social needs of regional/rural Australia in general, and the New England region in particular.
Partnerships (national and international)
Mutually beneficial relationships with other educational institutions – both in Australia and overseas – are a vital part of UNE's vision for the future, and the number of such relationships has grown steadily since the beginning of the new millennium. By the time Ingrid Moses left UNE at the beginning of 2006 the University had extended its international reach, forming partnerships with universities in countries including China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam.
International partnerships have continued to grow. Such links with China, for example, now include advanced standing and cooperation agreements with Chinese educational institutions, enabling many students from those institutions to gain UNE degrees by completing their study programs in Armidale.
Other relationships with institutions around the world include Memoranda of Understanding for academic exchange, joint research, resource sharing, and – for students –study abroad and exchange agreements.
Languages
As a leader in foreign language teaching, UNE has developed an innovative way of making its language courses available to students at universities that don't offer courses in those languages. The widely admired 'UNE Blended Model' has enabled students at a number of Australian universities to include UNE courses in languages such as French, German, Italian, Chinese and Indonesian in their degree programs. The 'UNE Blended Model' combines distance education (much of it online) delivered from the UNE campus in Armidale with face-to-face teaching by local tutors employed by UNE. Since the introduction of its Blended Model in 2005, UNE has provided new opportunities for students to undertake university-level language courses at a time when such courses are particularly vulnerable.
In the teaching of Indonesian, UNE is one of four Australian universities constituting the Regional Universities Indonesian Language Initiative (RUILI). Established in 2007 with a grant from the Australian Government, RUILI enables these universities to develop and deliver Indonesian language programs based on common curricula, and to draw on the special expertise of lecturers from throughout the consortium in the development of advanced units. A partnership with the University of Mataram on the Indonesian island of Lombok is providing in-country language courses for students from all four of the Australian universities. International partnerships enable UNE students of other languages, too, to study abroad.
