About us

1951 - 1965: The early days

The University of Newcastle began as a college of the University of New South Wales. It opened in late 1951 and accepted its first students in 1952.

It was located at Tighes Hill—on the same site as the TAFE NSW Hunter Institute, then known as a Technical College. The staff and students of the Newcastle University college shared cramped conditions with their Technical College colleagues. Space was at such a premium that one lecturer's office was his car; another lecturer, Dr. Beryl Nashar, was accommodated with a flimsy partition in the typing pool.

The community had campaigned for a University since the 1940s. While the Newcastle University College offered a university education in the region, the community wanted more. They campaigned throughout the 50s to get it.

In 1962, the Vice-Chancellor of UNSW, Sir Philip Baxter, finally relented. Work began on transforming the fledgling college to a university in the full sense.

1996 - present: Technology brings change

This period of the University's history has seen fundamental changes to the technologies with which we teach and the nature of student experience. In 1997 The Forum was opened. At the time, it was the largest gymnasium in the area. In the early days of the University, team sports, particularly Rugby, were popular. The Vice-Chancellor and other senior staff members rarely missed a game, always showing up in the University colors. By the mid-nineties this had shifted; students continued to pursue fitness as part of their University experience, but now they did so on their own schedule.

This pattern has been repeated across the University, particularly in the provision of information services. The first Vice-Chancellor used to spend an hour every morning reading the Times in the Library now named in his honor: 11 am, regular as clockwork. Students are now more likely to be seen drinking coffee and accessing online course materials in one of several information commons, twenty-four hours a day. The first of our information commons, the Auchmuty Information Common, opened in 2003.

The 2004 fire in the Shortland Union building in retrospect seems a turning point: a signal of the changes to student life and presage of more to come.