A $1.3 million Federal Government grant towards a new library and research centre will put future students at the University of Notre Dame of Australia’s Broome Campus at the cutting edge of educational technology.
The state-of-the-art complex will incorporate a traditional book and electronic library, an information and communications centre and a world class resource centre for Aboriginal studies.
Dean of Notre Dame Broome Campus Sister Pat Rhatigan said the centre was unlikely to be built until 2003.
The university was already fully financially committed to a $2 million student village of nine five-bedroom houses due to open on campus at the rate of one a week from February 12 allowing 45 new residential students.
She said the eventual addition of the library complex – a five-year dream for the university - would allow the campus to provide higher quality tertiary facilities to the Notre Dame students in the remote Far North West of WA and allow Australian students from as far afield as the Kimberley College of TAFE to Melbourne’s Monash University to share in its use.
Mature age or part-time students doing flexible delivery courses can continue their studies while working out in the Indian Ocean on a pearl farm or way out, mining zinc or lead, at Cadjebut.
Notre Dame’s Broome Campus, founded seven years ago, is recognised as one Australia’s most innovative smaller universities with a strong commitment to Aboriginal education and cultural issues
The government grant will be backed up by a further $600,000 to upgrade the technological links to the university’s main campus – 2,300 kms away in Fremantle.
Sister Rhatigan said the campus would like to have a long-range village for international studies on a one-term basis allowing students to return to Monash or Fremantle for the rest of their studies.
