Professor Juanito Camilleri, Rector of the University of Malta, and Mr Gayle Lynn Callus, President of the Kunsill Studenti Universitarji KSU, welcomed new students today at a ceremony marking the beginning of Academic Year 2014-2015.

This was followed by the Opening of Freshers’ Week on Atriju Vassalli. The Inauguration Mass followed, celebrated by Fr Michael Bugeja SJ, University Chaplain.

The theme chosen for this year is: STRIVE, ERR, LEARN… SUCCEED, GROW… LIVE! Rector explained that these six words were invaluable to him in life, as he thought they would be in the students’ lives too.

Professor Camilleri encouraged students to STRIVE, work hard and push their limits beyond their comfort zone. He reminded his audience that there was no shame in making mistakes. It would only be a shame if one did not do one’s best. To ERR or fail was a natural and essential part of a busy and engaged life, Rector said.

“Clearly one had to learn from one’s mistakes and embrace the wisdom achieved as a result.” Professor Camilleri also humbly reminded fellow academics that the methods for teaching and examining a course of studies ought not to be based on the ability to memorise or repeat facts but on how a student managed to internalise the subject, and how this learning was then hopefully demonstrated naturally in the student’s creative and individual way of thinking.

In other words, Rector said, he wished that students would recognise learning as an intimate experience and not as a cosmetic and artificial project.

To succeed in achieving one’s goals still remained what directs us forward, Professor Camilleri said. Although as he mentioned before, there was no shame in failing, success was very sweet, particularly if the challenge was not easy. He augured that students would savour the taste of success and enhance their appetite for more.

When he invited students to grow while at University, Rector said he was not only referring to intellectual or professional growth – this was only a part of a holistic formation. He invited students to grow as engaged human beings, sensitive to the needs of others, aware of what was happening in the world – a world of poverty, wars, a world with an insatiable hunger for resources. To this effect, Rector said, he was inviting all the University community to seek to make the world a better place, as it was in this manner that we all became graduates…graduates of life.

Rector encouraged students to live a full life and take up opportunities abroad. At this point he reminded everyone present that this was an international university and welcomed students from 84 countries. Cultural diversity is celebrated at University, he said, and it remained vital for numerous reasons to attract students from all the corners of the world.

Whilst acknowledging that the absolute majority warmly welcomed students, academics and other staff members from diverse cultures and countries, he reminded everyone that University Senate clearly declared that there was to be no tolerance for any racist behaviour.

Following the initial part of his speech in Maltese, Professor Camilleri then addressed international freshers. He spoke of the various investments in projects and facility development at the University.

He mentioned the other campus sites, namely the Medical School facilities at Mater Dei, the Junior College, the Valletta Campus, the Gozo Campus, the Cottonera Resource Centre, the Argotti Gardens in Floriana, and another upcoming Resource Centre dedicated to Sustainable Energy in Marsaxlokk.

Rector said that work on a Master Plan for the Msida Campus envisages five major projects, the construction of at least two of which is scheduled to commence in the next year or two when European Regional Development funding is secured.

Professor Camilleri spoke of ambitious visions for construction of a state-of-the-art Sustainable Living Complex requiring an investment of circa €36 million to house the Faculty for Built Environment, the Faculty of Education, the Institute of Sustainable Energy, the Institute of Earth Systems, and a School of Visual Art; the construction of a Post-doc, Creative, and Engineering Labs Complex – coined as the University’s trans-disciplinary “Research Incubator.”

“This would bring studios for the University’s School of Performing Arts to the heart of campus, and would create, for the very first time, facilities for trans-disciplinary thematic research clusters of postdoctoral researchers to be housed.”

Moreover, it would provide much needed additional space for the engineering laboratories, for the Institute for Creative Thinking, the Centre for Entrepreneurship, and for the business incubator. This project too would require an investment of no less than an additional €39 million, Rector stated.

Professor Camilleri also spoke of longer term plans to include: the construction of a University Residence and Community Complex on the land recently purchased adjacent to the main entrance on Campus. This would provide student accommodation and a variety of other services and amenities for all. He spoke of plans for a Clinical and Health Sciences Complex with extensive underground parking and public transport facilities on the site of the current main student car park.

This would allow the Medical School to move out of Mater Dei to increase bed capacity. Rector also said that plans were drafted for the University Sports and Wellbeing Complex to bring sport back to life on Campus.

Professor Camilleri admitted to not knowing yet where the funds for this would come from but he was certain everything was achievable if all worked together. ‘Unless we continue to seriously upgrade the infrastructure on Campus to match modern day requirements, in a decade or two, this 420 year-old Alma Mater will only be able to look back, alas, not forward!’ he said.

Rector went on to detail more recent achievements, such as work on the extension of the Faculty of Media and Knowledge Sciences, the Centre for Entrepreneurship and Business Incubation, the Knowledge Transfer Office, and the Business Incubator itself which he said was now buzzing with activity.

Rector spoke of the two-story extension on the footprint of the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery and the Department of Biology on Campus, which once completed would bring together a significant number of established researchers from a number of faculties under the umbrella of the newly established Centre for Molecular Medicine and Bio-banking.

At this point, Rector thanked the Minister of Education for his continuous support, and the Ministry of Finance who he said were now used to the pleas from the University’s Oliver always asking for some more.

Beyond the Msida Campus, Rector spoke of the embellishment of the Valletta Campus into an international conferencing and graduate centre, of plans to expand the facilities of the Gozo Campus, and the drawing up of an extensive list of works that needed to be done at the Junior College.

Professor Camilleri thanked his Pro-Rectors for their unstinting support and for sharing his vision, joys and frustrations, but most importantly “for getting on with it, most times against the odds,” he said. He thanked the College of Deans who always provided constructive feedback and advice whenever needed.

Concluding his speech, Rector appealed once again to the staff and student community to engage in any way they could in the run-up and during the unfolding of two events of national importance – Malta’s presidency of the EU in 2017, and Valletta the City of Culture in 2018. Professor Camilleri wished everyone a productive and fruitful year.

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