Acting Vice Chancellor, Murdoch University
Looking forward to make ties with the Indian education sector, Andrew Taggart, Acting Vice Chancellor, Murdoch University, is keen to begin research tie-ups in the field of agriculture, education and engineering. In tete-a-tete with Prathiba Raju of Elets News Network (ENN), Taggart talks about the scope for Indian students in Murdoch University for higher studies
Acting Vice Chancellor, Murdoch University
Please throw light on the ties between Murdoch University and India.
Most of our ties with India have begun with research in agriculture, infectious diseases, with some in education and in engineering. We are trying to make those research activities broaden as long as we get partnerships with Indian universities around research. We then look to broadening these partnerships to include the potential of jointly great programmes, PHD programmes, and post graduate programmes.
What kind of new courses are offered?
We have strengthened film study and cinematography from a long time. We’ve researched that area and have our potential partners here in India.
Can you please elaborate on the type of research Murdoch University conducts where Indian students can participate?
One of the on going research on Nanotechnology is looking at bone regrowth and facial reconstruction and the experimental work is also happening here. So, we are looking at generating new bone growth for facial reconstruction for road trauma and other accidents. The biotechnology is related to growing algae to produce energy. The partnership is looking at how flourishing algae fuels can be used to produce energy in a sustainable manner with no pollutions and no bad emissions.
Why do you think that more Indian students are coming to Australia for studies?
We have had a long history of Indian students coming to eastern side of Australia. We would like to encourage them to come to Murdoch University in Perth, the only city on the west coast facing the Indian Ocean. Australia is a very safe and environmentally conscious society, and the Australian dollar is very cheap to come and study in Australia. There are lots of other good reasons as well like high quality education, welcoming people and safe environment.
Which are the popular subjects among Indian stdudents in Australian Universities?
Most of the students in Murdoch study engineering and IT. We would also like to diversify into food, food production, energy studies, and the creative arts.
What are the takeaways you are looking for from the World Education Summit?
I think we are recognised as an international nature of education with the fact that education is a global industry and it doesn’t matter if it is secondary education, vocational education or university education. It’s a global enterprise that we need to learn.
We can learn a lot from India around engineering, IT, cultural studies and valuing culture as a part of history, wonderful tradition of languages within this country. So, it’s a global village and Murdoch is a global university and we want to be positioned that way. That’s the reason why I have come here to learn more about Indian education through this spectrum at the World Education Summit.
By 2020 how many Indian students will Murdoch University give admissions to and what type of courses will be introduced?
Murdoch University is a global university and wants to grow its global partnerships. So, we want to have more international students coming to our university and spend more time overseas. We have our intensive 10 weeks or a short course of intensive two weeks that is required to support and help students coming to Australia. We have many more international students coming to Murdoch University.
