This is the transcript for the video UTS Virtual Campus Tour
Oscar:
UTS is unique in the sense that the city is our campus and is situated right in the middle of the CBD. We’re not in a defined patch of grass as such – we have a collection of buildings scattered within a radius throughout the Sydney central business district. This means that we’re able to deliver some fantastic social as well as professional outcomes for our students, purely based on the nature and location of our campus. On the social side of things certainly coming along to your first year of university and you want to be meeting as many new people as possible, make as many friends as you can, and you are absolutely facilitated in doing this just by the location of UTS. We have so many fantastic places that you can go to after class – the societies and events and things of that nature, and they are right on our doorstep which is fantastic; certainly that was great for me in my first year when I was coming. I live a little bit little far away away so I wanted to meet as many new people as I could.
Now on the professional side of things we have thousands of companies right at our doorstep across a wide range of industries and so because we have them all so close to us we’re able to have really strong connections across this range of industry. That means that no matter what you study, we’re going to be able to have relevant companies coming onto campus to do different presentations, seminars, competitions and things like that. We also really keep our finger on the pulse within these industries so that we’re able to tailor our education such that you’re being taught the most relevant things for the sector that you want to move into, as well as things like internship placements and things like that. When you have these close industry connections, it’s that a little bit easier for us to help our students out today. To really illustrate this point I’m going to throw it over to Kenny and he’s going to have a little bit of a chat to you guys with a bird’s eye view of the campus.
Kenny:
As Oscar mentioned before, the city really is our campus and we have so many different locations that are literally right at the back of our house. The first place I would like to mention is Darling Harbour which is literally only about a 20 minutes’ walk from our main UTS building, so as you can see here, Darling Harbour is right at the back there.
Next up we have darling square again this is a place for entertainment, for food, just to hang out once you’ve got finished uni that again it’s only about a 10 minute walk.
And next up we have the main city area so Chinatown as well and right next to Chinatown we have the main CBD and town sections so again this is a great place for entertainment for food and every Friday night they have markets down there so it’s really good fun especially after having those late-night uni sessions.
Next up we have Broadway. This is religiously right next to building 11 which we will identify a little bit later on but Broadway is one of the major shopping precincts as well so if you want to do some quick shopping before you get to uni then definitely check out Broadway it is only about a 5-10 minute walk as well from UTS tower building 1.
So next stop we’re going to go straight into the main buildings that we have on our campus so the first building is building 1. This is the first UTS building and this is where most of the graduation ceremonies will be held. This is where most of our admin is done as well and it plays an important function as serving as the house for our end of year fashion shows and design shows as well. This is also where a lot of our student services and facilities are offered so we have counsellors, medical doctors, resume style help or careers help that you need throughout your degree. It was also voted one of the ugliest building in Sydney (twice) but that is also something that makes it incredibly unique to us.
So next stop we have building 2. Building 2 is one of our newest buildings and, over the decade, UTS has spent over a billion dollars on development of new infrastructure. Building 2 is currently being used by the law faculty and it has a five storey library as well and I believe Oscar will touch more about the library later on throughout the presentation but it is incredibly well built and you can actually see it in behind us on our screens – this is what the library looks like and it is open 24/7 to our students as well so you can always have a late night session overnight and sleep there while you’re studying as well.
So next we have building 3. Building 3 is our communications building. The great thing about the communications building is that it offers a lot of facilities that are not only offered to our communication students, but to other students at UTS as well. So, for example we have media production studios that you can book and hire and use the equipment for so you can really just experience the more creative side of your individual. We also have prayer rooms as well located in building 3 so that’s always very handy.
Next up we have building 4. Building 4 is a multipurpose building. It usually houses the postgraduate science students, but we also have the gym and the basketball court located inside it. I have a very fond memory of building 4. This is where I did my first cadaver lab. If you don’t know what cadaver labs are, essentially, it’s where we interact with the internal mechanisms of the human body and these bodies are from actual humans who have generously donated their body to our anatomical and surgical faculties.
Next up we have building 6 and this is the Design, Architecture and Building building and it houses workshop studios and even has an IKEA features lab as well so our product design students will get to go in there and design this design their products in relation with our partner, IKEA. And, of course, this is also a place where the end of year exhibitions are held for our design and architecture students.
Next up we have building 7 and building 7 again a very special place for me as this is the first building I actually ever went into and this is where the first super lab is how. The Super lab is a big lab that can house over 220 students and run five classes concurrently and it is of course the home of the science faculty and another great thing about the science building is the fact that it has the crime simulation lab. Now the crime simulation lab is essentially designed to look like a typical Sydney apartment and your tutors will go inside and lay out a crime scene and your job is to go ahead and figure out what’s going on. and finally, we have the protospace. This is accessed by our design and engineering students and this is where all our 3D printing machines will be available to them, and you can create your prototypes.
Next up we have building 8, also known as the paper bag building. This is home to the business faculty and there is another sort of design element to it which we will touch more on later on but essentially right now all you’ve got to know is the fact that it is our business building and it was designed by Frank Gehry – a very well renowned architect.
Next up we have building 10. So building 10 is a combined building housing both the health and education faculties. So nursing students will mostly use this for their clinical simulation lab so we will touch more about clinical simulation labs but essentially these labs are designed to look like typical hospital wards and our students will go in there and simulate what a typical hospital condition will be like. Little fun fact about it is that it was the headquarters for the 2000 Sydney Ethics Committee in the 2000s Olympics.
And in building 11 we have the IT and engineering faculty and it has few incredible features such as the offshore robotics lab and the data arena. Now that arena is incredibly futuristic. The best way we can describe it is – think of Ironman utilising his suit as an interactive way to see data and we will talk more about that later on as well.
And finally we do have a very special place for our health and exercise management students they get their own campus, located in the Moore park precinct we have a partnership with Australian rugby as well and the brilliant thing about the Moore Park precinct and its building is the fact that there are no lecture halls whatsoever, so really highlighting the fact that everything we do is very practical by nature. Over to you, Oscar.
Oscar:
So that’s the first part – we’ve been having a look from the sky down. We’re now going to get a little bit closer up with all of these buildings starting with a sort of 360 view. We’re kicking this one off in the alumni green today this is where a lot of events would have been held today right next to building 1 if you were able to do this on campus. Now I’ve done plenty of these presentations in my time as a student ambassador for UTS and I always hear people say well because UTS is in the middle of the CBD that means you guys don’t have any grass there, right? And as you can see on the screen at the moment that is demonstrably false – we’ve even got a few trees here as well.
So the alumni green is nestled amongst several of our buildings that we touched on earlier. This is a fantastic space to come after class as you can see here it is supposed to be for students to relax and meet up. it’s also very common for different clubs and societies to hold activities the events out here on the green. Probably my favourite example of club activity happening out here is when you’re walking by and people are handing out free food – who doesn’t love that? Fantastic. So we would have a little bit of a look around from the human sort of eye view here. If we look up we can see building 1 – undoubtedly the ugliest building on the skyline in Sydney, right? Next to it we have building 2 with the faculty of law and the library. If you look around here to our right we have building 10 for nursing and education students. Next we have building 7 here. As we heard; home of the first superlab We do have 2, as well as other science things for our science students. And then down this way we have building 4 which we’ll be going inside of and having a closer look at shortly. It’s a bit of a multipurpose building. It has all sorts of facilities for postgraduate health and science students as well as our activate fit gym and the Ross Milbourne Sports Hall so we we’ll jump in and Kenny will be having a look at those with you now.
Kenny:
Brilliant. Now the activate fit gym as you can see here is the full gym with cardio weights, machines and classes available as well. So, Activate UTS, which is the student university union, actually runs this and with access into the gym students and staff actually gets discounts as well. Now the great thing is, for elite athletes, so anyone who is part of the UTS Elite Athlete Program, will get free access to the gym as well as a physiotherapist right next door to us. Now downstairs we’ll go. We’ll show you a picture later on but downstairs is the UTS sports hall which can be booked for free by UTS students. It has a full size indoor basketball court which can be transferred into an indoor futsal as well as indoor volleyball court as well as a dance studio as well. Now the gym is split into multiple function zones so we have the functional zone, we have a spin zone and we also have the cardio and weights area as well, as you can see in the images provided. Brilliant – back over to you, Oscar.
Oscar:
Alright, now I’ve been waiting for this one here. We’ve landed finally in building 2. So as Kenny touched on earlier, at UTS we pride ourselves in the support that we provide to our students, so he’s sort of touched on the careers side of things, and that is absolutely true, we have UTS careers that offers resume reviews, interview tips and coaching. We also have our careers hub web page which is pretty much like a ‘Seek’ or an ‘Indeed’ with plenty of job listings in internship opportunities for our students. What we’re looking at on the screen here is the student learning hub in building 2 so you can access sort of support services such as that as well as financial services and various academic services such as getting in touch with peer tutoring programs and things of that nature, as well as library services right so if you’re coming along and just want to understand how the library works the different interfaces that we use for borrowing books and things like that this is the place to come and you have someone that you can speak to that will direct you to get the support that you need pretty much no matter what your circumstances, right. As we said in building 1 we have a variety of both mental and physical health professionals to help you with pretty much anything that can be coming up for you.
So we are in building 2 – here’s the first look inside that we’ve had of UTS newest building. It is 17 floors overall, 2 of which are underground, 15 are above. It houses our library as well as the faculty of law so the library is spread over 5 floors in which rooms such that we can see behind Kenny and I and then the other 3 are more of what you think of is a traditional library. The law faculty is up on the 14th and 15th floors primarily. We get the best view and then we have some great facilities up there for law students. For instance, moot courts we have several up there the largest of which is the sir Gerard Brennan moot court named after the former High Court judge and also a vice chancellor of UTS in the early 2000s. So certainly I’m very keen to get in there and do some mooting once we’re able to get back on campus and for those of you thinking about coming along with studying law I just have to touch on it really quickly and say what a fantastic extracurricular it is, something I couldn’t recommend highly enough. It’s great for your resume as well as a great experience. So that’s the foundational view here of one of our lower levels. If we have a look through you can see back where we started onto the alumni green. We’re now going to throw back to Kenny for probably my favourite part of the UTS campus – definitely where I spend the most time.
Kenny:
Brilliant. So up next up we have the UTS central food court and the food court actually has about 8 different food outlets including Pappa Rich, Mad Max, Cha Time and Sushi World and is also leading in world for sustainability as well. So the greatest thing about this is that we don’t use any single use plastic whatsoever – we use plastic alternatives that can be easily recycled and composted that means that UTS is reducing the amount of waste we send to landfill by about 20 tonnes every single year and the great thing about the UTS central food court as well is the fact that there are lots of discounts for students and honestly for the price point and the quantity you getting your never going to go hungry here.
Oscar:
100%. Alright, moving on now we’re going to have a look at one of our large collaborative classrooms that we have again in building 2. So as I said a few times now, building 2 is our most recently opened building and it really well represents UTS philosophy on education both now as well as moving forward into the future, right. So in our newest building we no longer have any lecture theatres. We replace those with large collaborative learning rooms such as this one and the whole idea behind that is to build skills in our students that they’re going to be able to readily apply in the workplace where these skills are in high demand. The whole idea is it save you on your first day of your job when graduating university your boss isn’t going to take you and stick you into a room with a few hundred people. Instead, you’re much more likely to be working in a collaborative environment as part of a team. So while we’re imparting the knowledge that’s necessary to excel within your chosen field, you are also being equipped with all the skills necessary to apply that knowledge in the best way and also the most in demand way in these industries. In this room is an example of that. It can be sectioned up quite easily. Honestly, it is big enough you could probably hold two classes in here at the one time if you wished. So it’s really focused on this human element in that regard and it’s worth noting as well that what when these rooms are being used by faculty to teach they are open available for booking for students to come together and just study in groups or work on group assignments and things of that nature. So we’ll move on now. We’re going to stay inside of building 2. I’m sure Kenny is pretty excited about this stuff.
Kenny:
Yes I am. So the next the place we’re going to be visiting is the Hive Superlab and this is my favourite place. This is where I’ll spend majority of my time at university. So the Hive Superlab again gets its name from its hexagonal design and as you can see here it’s designed to maximise collaboration. As Oscar said before we are trying to move towards a more collaborative teaching method and it really does set up that buzzing atmosphere when it comes to teaching and learning science. Now this lab is actually bigger than our superlab so this one can actually hold over 270 students and runs seven classes concurrently – one in each colour section and the great thing about this place again is the fact that we don’t use headphones anymore we use bone conduction technology, so essentially you put on little headset and then it’ll vibrate into your temple bones and that’s how you’re going to listen and hear your tutors speaking while also being able to listen and interact with the students around you.
Now the Hive Superlab is a PC2 lab that means it’s a physical containment 2 lab which means we actually get to interact with more dangerous pathogens like E. Coli and salmonella and a little fun fact about the Hive Superlab is the fact that back in the first Covid pandemic this particular lab was actually used to develop a COVID vaccine as well. Now this is a lab that’s only open to students in second year and above, so including postgraduate science students but essentially this is where you get to learn more advanced scientific technique such as cultivating your own culture or learning different assays to identify certain proteins and to utilise a range of different equipment that will help you in the career in science. Back over to you, Oscar.
Oscar:
Alright so this is the last one from building 2 for the moment guys. This image here really makes me wish that we weren’t doing this through a computer screen but that we’re actually standing here in real life and certainly this is something you get to experience when you come along to UTS and join us next year. So this in building 2 is sort of our rooftop garden and is directly adjacent to the library. So you can be sitting inside studying away in this quiet and able to easily access an outdoor space to stretch your legs. With that being said, you can come here just because you want to relax, meet up with friends, whatever it may be because it does have a fantastic view. It really, again, just emphasise we want our students to have the best environment possible in which they can learn as well as relaxed and socialising with their friends. So that’s it for building 2 for the moment. Weve got to move on to building 8 with Kenny now.
Kenny:
Next up we have building 8 and I think this is probably one of our most famous buildings because of the fact that it was created and designed by a very famous architect, Frank Gehry. You might know him for the fact that he built the Walt Disney concert hall and the Louis Vuitton foundation building. Now the building itself has a paper bag design but interiorly it actually has a more tree trunk design. So a lot of our classes inside the business building are circular or oval with the teacher actually standing in the centre of the room and the students surrounding them. Again, it’s trying to emulate that UN style conference room meeting and again this is to highlight the fact that we’re trying to move away from the traditional teacher at the front and students at the back listening. It’s definitely to enhance the more collaborative nature of our courses as well. And then from those central tree trunks we have small branching breakout rooms where students can collaborate with each other and discuss their ideas following their sessions at the main room. Now a little fun fact if you can see just down straight from the pathway there straight down is the powerhouse museum which pre-COVID students actually had free access to because we actually got to do our lectures and tutorials in the powerhouse museum. So we get free access. We get to look at the museum just for a little bit and then we get to join our classes afterwards which is always really exciting.
Oscar:
100%. Alright, now to finish off this part of the tour we’re going to actually end on the in the most instagrammable location on UTS. It’s our double helix staircase which was modelled after human DNA. I know certainly after the pandemic, I’m planning to come back here to get some LinkedIn photos or some photos for the Instagram – something along those lines. So if we have a look here, it’s modelled after human DNA and is meant to represent innovation and research. Two values, two pursuits that we value very highly at UTS and hold as a sort of core to what we’re about as an institution. So it is in building 2. It can take you from the ground floor all the way up to the library and if you’d rather walk – you know, burn a few calories rather than get in the elevator, then go up that way. So now we’ve looked at everything we’ve got in the 360 tour, I’ve got to move on and talk about a few buildings that we haven’t seen so far and their associated faculties.
Sorry guys will get the screen recording for the new photos up. There we go. Alright, and while we’re doing that I’ll just answer one question I can see here – what number is the Moore Park building. It’s not numbered it is just known as the Moore Park building. I also saw one about building 5. Fun fact -that used to be the library and the law building until building 2 opened. Our building 5 is now a little bit up in the air as what’s going to happen with it so we’re still waiting to see what’s going to happen with that one. I’m going to jump in and will get started with the rest of buildings, thank you.
Kenny:
Thanks Oscar. Now this is our basketball court located right underneath building 4. Now a little fun fact about it is actually located right underneath the alumni green so the alumni green itself is actually a roof for our basketball court which is actually one reason why it’s such an innovative design. Now again, as I said before UTS sports hall can be hired by students at any point throughout your degree of course and of course you can also convert this into an indoor futsal place or stick up some ropes, stick up some nets and convert it into an indoor volleyball area as well. Some of the societies that use these areas are the sporting societies or the UTS hip hop society as well – they convert this place into a studio and practice their dances here. And right upstairs is where the Activate gym is located as well. So, next up we have building 10. I think Oscar will mention this.
Oscar:
Absolutely. So, as we mentioned at the start, our building 10 houses our nursing and our education facilities as well as midwifery. Now UTS is number one in Australia when it comes to nursing and midwifery. We’re also ranked amongst the top ten institutions worldwide in these areas. Of course, it’s something that we’re very proud of, and we’ve chosen this image to represent part of the reason why we’re so highly regarded. So, we have fantastic facilities for our nursing and midwifery students, as well as ensuring they get as hands on as possible from as early as possible in their degree. So the example of that is if you’re studying midwifery with us over the course of your degree you will actually be following ten women throughout the course of their pregnancy from the very start to the very end, such that when it comes time for you to leave university and go into the workplace you’ve already been there, done that, seen at all and you’re that much better equipped to be able to handle everything that the workplace will throw at you. Also, in terms of the facilities you can see in front of you here, so these dummies that the nursing students are working on are able to simulate a whole variety of conditions and injuries and that’s actually how our nursing students are assessed on some occasions, right. So the students will be left in the room with these dummies simulating various issues and then they will be assessed and monitored in terms of how they are able to respond. So you can see we’re very closely trying to emulate them as much as possible, having our students getting hands on and in an environment that is close to practice as possible so that’s at least one of the reasons, both the facilities, as well as the hands-on experience across various areas of their study that make us so highly regarded. You can also see this in our education facility but we have a massive emphasis on placements for our students so we have a whole office whose only job is to get our students into schools. So basically the idea there is you’re not waiting until the very end of your degree and then doing one big placement. We’ll try and get you in there as soon as possible so you’re not doing all this study and then you go out into a classroom and you find that you can’t stand being in there with all these children. We’re absolutely trying to avoid anything along those lines of course so that’s just an example of how with regard to those faculties we get hands-on education, practical experience and really simulating the working environment as closely as possible. We’ll now move on to have a look at building 6.
Kenny:
Brilliant, so this is a building 6. This is one of the actual levels of it so each level is designed for the specific sort of design, architecture and building degrees available. This particular image shows our fashion and textiles level, and, essentially, as you can see here, everything we do in our design and architecture building degrees are very hands on and practical. We do have a very strong focus on practicality and creating a portfolio throughout your degree so at the very end of the year we actually have the end of year fashion shows or design shows where our students can actually exhibit their artworks and their projects, as you can see here, and UTS will actually create create a runway whether it be in building 6 or in building 1 and building 2 and they’ll hire models. They’ll get to put their projects onto their models and there will be a whole runway and industry partners from all of the world including Vogue as well will actually come in to look at our student’s artworks. And this is just another example of artworks that have been placed all around UTS and have been showcased in various situations as well
Oscar:
100%. I’m now having a little look at our Moore Park facility. So this is for our sport and exercise science and sport and exercise management students. The whole idea is they have an entire facility where they can really stretch their legs. The analogy that I like to use is that if you’re a health and exercise science student or even a typical traditional science student, if you’re sitting in your classroom you’ve got your laptop open, you’ve got a bunch of numbers in front of you. Those numbers will be derived from experiments that you have done that gives you a foundational and fundamental understanding the entire process from the start to the end and again really allows you get hands-on with what you’re doing and that’s what you can see in this image here.
So we also have a fantastic relationship with Rugby Australia where a lot of the sort of tests and things of that nature are done at Moore Park. We’re actually doing in collaboration with high class and world class professional athletes so again this is a fantastic opportunity for students to really be understanding if they move out and work in that field at the highest level they are already getting exposure to that whilst in their first and second years at university which is a really great opportunity. So we now move on to, last but not least, building 11. That’s the home of our faculty of engineering and IT.
Kenny:
Brilliant. So building 11 faculty of engineering and IT has one of the best interior designs in terms of the architecture. It has these staircases that replicate the Harry Potter shifting staircases so if you actually ever get to have a chance to walk into UTS campus definitely check out building 11 – it’s incredibly high tech as well. So we have a lot of sustainability features built into this particular building so, for example, we have water catchment on the top of the roof as well as sort of miniaturised hydroelectric dams that can actually generate power for our particular buildings. Furthermore, other water collected will actually be used throughout the building as well and there are sensors all around located all around our buildings that can actually detect the presence of the quantity of human presence and then it will shift the energy output based on the amount of people in one particular area as well. Now as you can see in this particular picture this is generally what the interior of our building would look like so we have a lot of spaces for us students to sit down, study, relax or just collaborate with their friends and it’s a great space. Right beneath that we have our Penny Lane Cafe as well which is incredible. There’s incredible food there so if you really do need a break from university, just go down there, get the daily specials there for about $10 and you get amazing food. Next up, we have the data arena which is something that we mentioned previously in the beginning of this presentation. The data arena is a 360 screen. When you walk in, you essentially put these VR goggles on and you can actually interact and see your particular data in a 3D way. So, think of Ironman essentially where he uses Jarvas then he expands the different sort of icons around him and so that’s sort of the visualisation we wanted to present with this and this gives our students and all our staff and students a means of interacting with designs on a hands-on level.
Oscar:
Alright, so guys that’s pretty much the wrap of looking at all the buildings that we have on campus in our discussion around the different faculties.