New university students were welcomed by University rector Juanito Camilleri and University Students Council president Gayle Lynn Callus at a ceremony marking the beginning of the academic year today.
Professor Camilleri encouraged students to strive, work hard and push their limits beyond their comfort zone. He augured that students would savour the taste of success and enhance their appetite for more.
He said that work on a master plan for the Msida campus envisaged five major projects, the construction of at least two was scheduled to commence in the next year or two when European Regional Development funding was secured.
He spoke of ambitious visions for the construction of a state-of-the-art sustainable living complex requiring an investment of some €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 space for the engineering laboratories, the Institute for Creative Thinking, the Centre for Entrepreneurship, and for the business incubator. This project would require an investment of an additional €39 million.
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. Prof. Camilleri said plans were drafted for the University Sports and Wellbeing Complex to bring sport back to life on Campus.
He admitted to not knowing yet where the funds for this would come from but said 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.
Fresher’s week was also attended by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat who met students and their organisations.
He said that the government had to ensure that the university continued to enjoys its autonomy but there was also space for a plurality of educational institutions.
This, he said, was not a question of competition but complementarity.