For over four decades Deakin University grown to become one of Australia’s leading universities and a integral part of the Geelong community and what makes Geelong, Geelong. Established in 1974, the university was Victoria’s first regional university and soon became a specialist in distance education that today spreads world wide with an extensive online campus. The Waurn Ponds Campus took its first students in 1977 and the university soon lead the way, offering accessibility to students with disabilities, hiring of a female deputy Chancellor and being Australia’s first institution to offer a off campus MBA course. Later in 1994 Deakin Uni became the first Australian university to open an office in India.
In 1990 and 1991 the university merged with the Warnambool Institute of Advanced Education and Victoria College further stretching the universities footprint and its history. The former Victoria College has been consolidated into one site at Burwood that has grown into a massive site today. In 1994 Deakin’s footprint stretched to Geelong’s Waterfront when they purchased what were old and nearly derelict old wool stores. The brand new Deakin Waterfront Campus opened in 1996. The spectacular campus that includes Geelong’s biggest theatre, The Costa Hall.
In 1999 Deakin teamed with Ford and the Victorian State Government and opened the Ford Discovery Centre opposite its original 1925 site in Gheringhap Street Geelong, this centre ran until being transformed into the Australian Government Statistics Centre in the mid 2010’s. 1999 also saw the International Fibre Centre open in Waurn Ponds regarded as a one of a kind centre like nothing else in the world.
The 2000’s saw the university being awarded so any awards including awards for its Koorie Education, its excellence in research and its innovation and Learning. While the last decade has seen the University at the forefront of carbon fibre research and other cutting edge technologies with a huge innovation centre being set up at Waurn Ponds engineering, designing and manufacturing for the world.
Today Deakin has some 50,000 students enrolled and is a benchmark in not only education but for its incredible research and development in new and emerging technologies like carbon fibre, Artificial Intelligence, Health that are all advancing our society and enabling a more sustainable world.
Deakin University is named after Australia’s second Prime Minister, Alfred Deakin who served three separated terms between 1903 and 1909. Today the Geelong waterfront campus is home to his library that features many of our country’s important documents and artifacts from his periods in office. The library is open weekdays.