The University of New England Council has approved plans for the University to offer 14 new courses next year, including Bachelor degrees in Pharmacy, Exercise Physiology, Exercise Science and Sports Science, and a Graduate Certificate in Anatomy by Dissection (Surgery and Radiology).

Other new offerings will be:

• Bachelor of Zoology
• Graduate Certificate in eLearning
• Graduate Certificate in Indigenous Australian Education
• Graduate Certificate in International Schooling, Education and Development
• Graduate Certificate in School Leadership
• Graduate Certificate in Special Education
• Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics with Honours
• Master of Urban and Regional Planning

The Chancellor of UNE, Dr Richard Torbay, said the four-year Pharmacy course and other new undergraduate and postgraduate programs fitted well with the UNE professional degree profile which already includes medicine, nursing, law and teaching.

The Pharmacy degree will be the first to be offered through distance education by an Australian university.

“UNE is mindful of its role to encourage more professionals to train in regional areas,” Dr Torbay said. “We need to build the number of pharmacists outside metropolitan areas and we see this as a way of helping to meet that demand as well as providing a more extensive range of choice for our internal and distance education students.”

Dr Torbay said the new Bachelor degrees in Sports and Exercise Science had been developed in response to demand from students and a growing sector seeking more people with professional qualifications.

The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Alan Pettigrew, commended the hard work of University staff and management, particularly in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, for developing the new Pharmacy course. “UNE staff put long hours into this project and are to be congratulated,” he said.

“Offering the Pharmacy degree is a fundamental component of UNE’s long-term commitment to improve equity of access to health care for patients and improve health services in rural areas of Australia,” Professor Pettigrew said. “Integral to that commitment is our aim to address the shortage of allied health professionals in rural and regional Australia.

“This degree has been developed in close collaboration with the Australian Pharmacy Council. It has received strong support from the community of pharmacists in northern NSW.”