New students of the University of Abertay Dundee, attended an official welcome ceremony at the Caird Hall this morning (Monday 14th September).
Following an overwhelming demand for places this year, almost 2000 students are expected to matriculate over the coming week.
The new students were welcomed by Professor Bernard King CBE, Principal and Vice-Chancellor, who told them that they were joining a University with clear and distinctive vision of how it intends to make a difference to their lives and future careers.
Referring to the recent 15th anniversary of becoming Abertay University, Professor King told the new intake that they are actually joining an institution with a history stretching back more than 120 years.
“In our early days, we were described by the government as an ‘industrial’ university, dedicated to providing advanced technological and industrial education for the young people of Dundee, Angus, Fife and Perthshire,” Professor King said.
“Today, we are a university of ambition, with clearly defined values that we expect all our staff and students to adopt. We are still very much a university for the local community, but we also have students from more than 60 countries, and our courses have evolved out of all recognition to embrace the very latest technologies and knowledge in a wide variety of fields.
“Our vision and passion remain essentially the same – to enable normal people to achieve extraordinary things by teaching them the graduate attributes of confidence, determination, creativity and teamwork, and through their efforts and ours to produce the industries of the future on which our collective wellbeing will depend.”
The new influx of students will be among the first to benefit from Abertay’s new Institute of Art, Media and Computer Games, the UK’s first ever centre of excellence for computer games education, which is due to open later this year.