Senior leaders from UWA, including Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Tim Colmer and members of the School of Health and Clinical Sciences, visited the WA Centre for Rural Health in Geraldton.

The purpose of the visit was to strengthen ties with the region, discuss the region's future needs and meet with a wide range of relevant groups.

As Professor Colmer observed: "Regional Western Australia plays a vital role in the State's future, and visits like this help us better understand local priorities and aspirations... and ensure that UWA's regional strategy delivers meaningful outcomes for regional communities.

Launched in January 2026, UWA Student Living marks a major step forward in how The University of Western Australia supports students in finding a place to call home.

Aligned with the University’s Live at UWA strategy, the new service delivers a more connected, student-focused approach to accommodation support. At its heart is a single point of contact — [email protected] — making it easier for students to access advice, guidance and housing assistance.

Student Living builds on the success of the previous service established in 2023 in response to Perth’s tight rental market. Now expanded into a comprehensive accommodation hub, it connects students with a diverse range of housing options, including University Hall, the four College Row residential colleges, Crawley Village postgraduate accommodation, Forrest Hall, purpose-built student accommodation providers, homestay networks and other trusted accommodation partners.

Student Living will play a key role in shaping UWA’s accommodation growth strategy. This includes overseeing the landmark UWA Nedlands Student Accommodation project, a 14-storey development now under way and set to deliver 847 new student beds by 2028.

In an opinion piece, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education and Student Experience) Professor Guy Littlefair explained how the university is responding to AI.

Noting that AI detection tools are ‘unreliable, inequitable and unsuitable for high-stakes assessment decisions’, he listed some of the measures UWA academics at UWA were using in response to student use of AI:

• Redesigning student assessment, ‘to strengthen validity, authorship assurance and academic integrity’;
• sharing GenAI-resilient assessment exemplars;
• centralising integrity processes and improving reporting to reduce the admin burden on academics;
• extensive use of invigilated exams.

This year a four-year nursing degree was launched at UWA.

The Bachelor of Nursing (Honours) has been accredited by the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Accreditation Council. It is also available to Albany students. UWA’s other allied health courses are in Pharmacy, Podiatric Medicine, Optometry, and Social Work.

There have been several new online courses developed as part of UWA’s College of Schools’ strategic priorities, one of which is a Graduate Certificate in AI which will include a Philosophy unit.

Over a year ago, the Minister for Education charged the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education to consider ‘how Australia can build Asia capability across the life course, from early learning through to tertiary education and into the workforce.’

Today it is said that fewer people study Indonesian than 50 years ago – twice as many secondary school students take German and five times as many French.

Not so at UWA. Our Language Hub offers training in Asian (Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese and Korean) and European (French, German, Italian and Spanish) languages. Students learn to translate not just words but ideas, and benefit from global opportunities, such as short-term study tours and long-term exchange programs, with the flexibility of Access UWA, for alumni seeking to pursue individual units without enrolling in a full degree.

As part of its vision to expand the University’s reach and become the eminent academic leader across the Indian Ocean Rim, development of the new Mumbai and Chennai campuses is proceeding apace.

Local staff are being appointed and courses in computer science, business management, artificial intelligence, global business, enterprise and innovation, and economics now being advertised for prospective students in India.

The first students will commence in September 2026.