Sydney, 12 March 2024: The Australian Catholic University (ACU) has officially welcomed its fourth intake of Ramsay Scholarship recipients for its Western Civilisation degrees, with a record number of students joining its Western Civilisation degree program in 2024.
Since its launch in 2021, ACU’s Western Civilisation program has more than doubled in size, with students enrolled in the Bachelor of Arts (Western Civilisation), the new Master of Liberal Arts, Bachelor of Laws, and the vertical double degree with a Master of Teaching (Secondary).
Central to the program is the support of the Ramsay Centre. Thanks to a partnership agreement between the Ramsay Centre and ACU worth approximately $50 million over eight years, high-achieving scholars are supported to complete ACU’s Western Civilisation degrees through scholarships worth up to $32,000 p.a. for the length of their degree.The scholars are taught in small class groups and receive academic mentoring. The agreement also funds the hiring of world-class educators to teach the courses.
The scholars were presented with their awards by Ramsay Chairman the Hon John Howard OM AC. Attendees at last week’s event also included ACU Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Zlatko Skrbis, ACU Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Julie Cogin and Acting Director of the Western Civilisation Program Professor Hayden Ramsay. Ramsay Centre CEO Professor Simon Haines, Ramsay Director the Hon Tony Abbott AC, and other members of the Ramsay Centre Executive and Board also attended.
The Western Civilisation program is designed to offer a comprehensive understanding of Western literature, philosophy, art, politics, religion, science, and history. ACU Vice-Chancellor Professor Zlatko Skrbis said the Western Civilisation program offered “an unparalleled opportunity for personal and intellectual growth”.
“As ACU embarks on this academic journey with its new cohort of Ramsay Scholars, the university remains dedicated to fostering intellectual curiosity, nurturing bright minds, and shaping leaders who will challenge the status quo and strive for a better tomorrow,” Professor Skrbis said. “At ACU, we aim to strengthen their intellectual engagement with the ideas and questions that have shaped Western civilisation, and the influence that its art, architecture, science, technology, language and laws have had on the world of today”.
Ramsay Centre CEO Professor Simon Haines congratulated the new scholars, calling the texts they would encounter in their studies, from Antigone to Jane Austen, Aristotle to Galileo, Shelley, Machiavelli, Blake; “fully charged high voltage electric dynamos”, “condensed essences of the extraordinary critical, often very counter-cultural minds that produce them”.
“…by the time you’ve glimpsed that what you are dealing with is not just a disconnected list of the names of dead writers but the deeply connected 3000 year old story of a whole civilisation with its own unique, distinctive ideas of science and democracy, goodness and justice, beauty and truth, human and divine love… your capacity for paying attention to what it means to be human will have been lifted out of the trivial world of TikTok and Instagram, and onto a higher level of thought which will be of enormous benefit to you in your lives, and also in your careers where you will be better at mastering complex human situations and institutions than your AI-dominated attention deficient colleagues,” Professor Haines said.
Ramsay Chairman the Hon John Howard OM AC spoke of the incredible generosity and optimism of the late Paul Ramsay AO and his wish for young Australians to better understand the foundation stones of our society.
ACU Acting Director of the Western Civilisation Program Professor Hayden Ramsay said he was delighted the event was held on the 750th anniversary of the death of St Thomas Aquinas, “…the patron of all Catholic universities, the greatest model of faith and reason in dialogue in a humanities context that our culture possesses.”
“There simply could not be a more fitting day to celebrate the fact that in partnership, a great Catholic university and the wonderful Ramsay Centre sponsored program come together,” Professor Ramsey said.
For more information on ACU’s Western Civilisation dgerees visit: https://www.acu.edu.au/about-acu/faculties-directorates-and-staff/faculty-of-education-and-arts/national-school-of-arts-and-humanities/western-civilisation-program
Media contact: Sarah Switzer 0407 816 098 / sarah.switzer@ramsaycentre.org
For more information on the centre please visit our website: www.ramsaycentre.org