Monday 26 February 2023: The University of Wollongong (UOW) has officially welcomed 28 high-achieving students who have been named as UOW Ramsay Scholarship recipients for 2024.
The 2024 UOW Ramsay Scholars were welcomed at a reception on the UOW campus attended by Senior Professor Daniel Hutto, Head of UOW’s School of Liberal Arts (SOLA). The event was also attended by Ramsay Centre CEO Professor Simon Haines, our academic director Professor Diana Glenn, CFO Emily Williams and two Ramsay Centre Board members, Dr Michael Easson AM, and Professor Ann Brewer.
This is the fifth cohort of UOW Ramsay Scholars. Thanks to a partnership agreement between the Ramsay Centre and UOW, the scholars are supported in studying UOW’s Bachelor of Arts in Western Civilisation degree, through scholarships worth up to $32,000 p.a. for up to five years. The scholars are taught in small class groups and receive academic mentoring throughout the degree.
Selection is based on academic achievement and leadership qualities, as well as a desire to study the great works of Western civilisation. Scholars come from a variety of geographical areas across NSW and Australia, with 135 students now enrolled in the program.
Speaking at the reception, Senior Professor Hutto thanked the Ramsay Centre for its partnership with UOW, now in its fifth year, which he said enabled many talented students from diverse backgrounds to access a higher education opportunity found few places in the world.
Professor Hutto said the degree laid the foundation for “pretty much any future you might imagine for yourself” with recent graduates pursuing careers in fields as diverse as medicine, defence, and recruitment. He applauded past and current scholars, sharing that all the degrees’ honours students have graduated with first class honours, two students have been nominated for the top 100 Future Leaders in Australia and one student was also awarded Wollongong Council’s Volunteer of the Year award.
Ramsay Centre CEO Professor Simon Haines acknowledged the extraordinary generosity of the late Paul Ramsay AO, founder of Ramsay Healthcare, who left a large part of his endowment to foster the study of “the great formative works and institutions of our civilisation”, making the special partnership with UOW possible.
Turning attention to the books covered in the program, Professor Haines referred to the extraordinary works the scholars would explore, “a book list that not many people have conquered”.
“Ultimately everything modern derives from the writers that you’ll be reading,” Professor Haines told the scholars.
“As T S Eliot said 100 years ago, ‘Dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did. Precisely, and they are that which we know.’ The more obsessed we are with the ephemeral present, the more we need the foundational past: books that read and know us as much as we read and know them.”
“Whether it’s the history of science, the philosophy of democracy, ideas of goodness, of justice, of beauty, the many kinds and varieties of human and divine love; these continuous threads of argument and reflection run through the entire 2,800 year story of our civilization since Homer and the Old Testament and your curriculum will gradually reveal to you this deep connectedness and unity; even while the writers that you look at – think Galileo, Machiavelli, Mary Wollstonecraft- are among the most critical and counter-cultural thinkers on the planet.”
In the final address to the new scholars, 2023 UOW Ramsay Scholar Callia Spreitzer praised the degree: “Not only is this degree deeply fascinating, and the learning environment both encouraging and empowering, studying a Bachelor of Arts in Western Civilisation is a truly transformative experience,” Callia said.
The Ramsay Centre and UOW entered a partnership in 2019. Worth approximately $50 million over eight years, the partnership enables UOW to offer at least 150 undergraduate scholarships over that period and to hire world-class educators to teach its Western civilisation program.
To learn more about UOW’s Bachelor of Western Civilisation degree visit the SOLA website: https://www.uow.edu.au/the-arts-social-sciences-humanities/schools-entities/liberal-arts/
For more information on the centre please visit our website: www.ramsaycentre.org
Media contact: Sarah Switzer 0407 816 098/ sarah.switzer@ramsaycentre.org