The term `Faculty of Arts' is used both in a broad descriptive sense and in a strictly legal sense. In the descriptive sense, it is used to include all students enrolled for arts degrees and all staff, including academic, administrative, technical and clerical, attached to the departments and centres of the faculty and to the Arts faculty office. The departments and office on the Clayton campus are housed chiefly in the west wing and south wing of the Robert Menzies School of Humanities, with a notice board on the ground floor indicating the location of departments and staff. On the Caulfield campus, the Faculty of Arts is located on the fourth floor of block B, while on the Peninsula campus the faculty can be found on the fourth floor of building A.
The Faculty of Arts is one of the largest in the university in terms both of student and of staff numbers. In 1996 on the Clayton campus there were more than 4000 undergraduates, the majority of whom were full-time, and nearly 1200 graduate students. Its teaching staff numbers more than 250 full-time and part-time members, together with sessional staff. About three-quarters of the full-time staff have permanent appointments. Following the merger, the faculty had its first intake of 100 students into the Bachelor of Arts course on the Peninsula campus in 1991 and commenced offering the Bachelor of Arts degree on the Caulfield campus in 1992. With the closer integration of the Gippsland campus into the structure of the university, the School of Humanities and Social Sciences became part of the Faculty of Arts in 1993. The Gippsland campus offers a variety of arts degrees and social welfare qualifications.
The Faculty of Arts is also responsible for the administration of two university degrees: the Bachelor of Communication degree offered on the Berwick campus and the Bachelor of General Studies offered on the Caulfield campus through Open Learning Australia.
There are fifteen departments in the faculty:
The faculty also has a number of centres, headed by a director and advised by staff who teach or research within that centre. Most of these staff are also members of departments. The centres which offer undergraduate or graduate teaching programs are American Studies, Australian Studies, Human Bioethics, Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, Drama and Theatre Studies, European Studies, Police and Justice Studies, Bibliographical and Textual Studies, Development Studies, Science and Technology Studies, Studies in Religion and Theology, Women's Studies and the Koorie Research Centre. Other centres of the faculty are: Migrant and Intercultural Studies, Language and Society, and Southeast Asian Studies. Where centres undertake teaching responsibilities for an area of study, it is normally an interdisciplinary program involving staff and subjects from a number of departments. An exception is the Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies which has responsibilities for a disciplinary area of study. There are also some centres within departments. Two institutes have coordinating responsibility for activities which involve various departments and centres. These are the Monash Asia Institute, which houses six centres related to Asian studies, and the Institute for Critical and Cultural Studies.
In its legal sense the faculty is a statutory body of which all full-time members of the teaching staff are members. The major academic responsibilities of the faculty are vested by legislation in the faculty board, a smaller body of about ninety, including all heads of departments and schools, other departmental representatives elected on a proportional basis, and nine student members, two graduate and seven undergraduate, elected in November of each year by the students enrolled in the faculty. The faculty board normally meets about every six weeks from March to November. Except in certain matters on which it has power to act, it makes recommendations to the Academic Board or through the Academic Board to the Council.
The organisation of teaching and research rests with the heads of the departments, who act in consultation with other members of their departments and within the framework provided by the degree regulations and any other conditions which may be agreed upon from time to time by the faculty board.
The faculty board is concerned with questions which affect more than one department, with interpreting and amending the regulations, and, in particular, with new developments within the faculty. It has certain committees, some of which have power to act on behalf of the board when an immediate decision is needed. These committees include:
1 the Committee for Undergraduate Studies, which advises the board on all matters relating to undergraduate students as they arise including questions of student workload and matters concerned with assessment; approves admissions to fourth-year honours courses and advises the board on matters concerning the honours degree; acts for the board in cases involving use of discretionary powers conferred on the faculty by the degree regulations and considers proposals for the introduction of new subjects and courses;
2 the Committee for Graduate Studies, which advises the faculty on all matters concerned with the admission of candidates for higher degrees and graduate diplomas and the awarding of higher degrees and diplomas;
3 the Admissions and Exclusions Committee, which acts as a subcommittee of the Committee for Undergraduate Studies in controlling the selection of new undergraduate students and considers the cases of students who become liable to be excluded for unsatisfactory progress.
Finally there are various service and administrative components within the faculty. The faculty office consists of the offices of the dean and the faculty registrar, the Resources Office, the Computer Services Unit, and the Language and Learning Unit. The Language Centre provides services and facilities for the teaching of languages within the faculty.
The chief officers of the faculty are the dean, the associate deans and the faculty registrar (Arts). The dean is a professor of the faculty and presides over meetings of the faculty, the faculty board and its committees, and is especially concerned with staffing and finance.
The faculty has three associate deans, who are responsible for teaching and undergraduate matters, research and graduate studies.
The faculty registrar (Arts) has superintendence over the student administration and student services of the faculty, provides information on policy and planning matters and is responsible for the provision of secretarial services to various faculty boards and committees.
The deputy faculty registrar (Arts) has responsibility for student services across the three metropolitan campuses and the management of administrative and technological change in the student administration processes in the faculty.
The coordinator of undergraduate studies is responsible for undergraduate student-related matters on the Clayton campus. Course advisers are available at Clayton to advise undergraduate students on the planning of their courses and on changes of course, and the Office of Graduate Studies is established to assist graduate students. Students based on the Caulfield and Peninsula campuses should consult faculty staff on their home campus for course-related advice.
Any student wishing to see the dean, the faculty registrar (Arts), the coordinator undergraduate studies, course advisers, postgraduate administrative officers or other faculty staff is normally able to make an appointment at fairly short notice. Inquiries should be made at the faculty office, first floor, west wing of the Robert Menzies School of Humanities (Clayton students); fourth floor, B block (Caulfield students); or fourth floor, A building (Peninsula students).
Students wishing to bring any relevant matters to the attention of the student members of the faculty board should feel free to do so. The student members can be contacted c/o the office of the faculty registrar (Arts).
Students enter the Faculty of Arts as students on a particular campus. The BA course is offered on the Clayton, Caulfield and Peninsula campuses. Once they complete the first year of the BA on the Clayton or Caulfield campus, students may, if they wish, transfer to any other campus to complete the course. Students on the Peninsula campus are required to complete sixty-eight points of arts subjects (closer to two years) on that campus before transferring to another campus. Transfer may be effected earlier with the permission of the faculty. During first year a student may take a subject each semester on another campus. Students on the Peninsula campus may take a subject each semester on a different campus in second year also. There are many reasons for choosing a particular campus.
Clayton has the largest intake of arts students and offers a very large number of first year subjects, minor sequences and major sequences. Most honours courses (fourth year) and graduate courses are offered on this campus. Various specialised degrees and double degree programs are offered at Clayton.
Caulfield offers the BA, BA/BBus double degrees and courses in police studies, human services and the Bachelor of General Studies through Open Learning Australia. It is situated near the Caulfield railway station and attracts part-time students to its evening classes and to its distinctive psychology program offered by the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Science. Major and minor sequences in the BA course are offered in sociology, English, politics, applied statistics, cinema studies, police studies, philosophy, history and psychology. Additional first-year subjects include behavioural studies.
Peninsula is geographically convenient to students in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne and the Mornington Peninsula. It offers the BA as well as the BA/BBus, BA/BComp and BA/BEd double degrees. Major sequences in the BA course are offered in sociology, English, politics, history, applied statistics, business Chinese[*], German, geography and environmental science, business Japanese* and psychology. Minor sequences are available in these disciplines as well as in philosophy. Human biology is also offered at the first-year level
A student can complete the BA on any of these three campuses.
Gippsland offers a number of degrees and diploma courses which enable students to choose an academic program that best suits their individual needs. The BA(Humanities and Social Sciences) degree offers major studies in English, gender studies, history/politics, writing, Indonesian, mass communications and sociology. Minor sequences are available in Australian studies and community studies. The BA(Journalism) includes a major sequence in journalism, a minor sequence in mass communications, and an additional arts minor. The Bachelor of Arts (Psychology and Humanities) includes a major sequence in psychology and a second major sequence from English, gender studies, history/politics, Indonesian, mass communications or sociology. The Bachelor of Arts (Communication) includes a compulsory sequence in communication studies, an arts minor sequence and a specialisation sequence which can be chosen from a range of areas such as tourism, journalism, writing, management or business computing.
Also offered is a Bachelor of Social Welfare (BSocWelf) degree, as well as diplomas of arts in Koorie studies and social welfare, a Graduate Certificate of Arts (Humanities and Social Sciences) and graduate diplomas of arts in humanities and social sciences and in social welfare.
In addition, students may complete the following double degree programs:
The Berwick campus opened in 1996, and offers a number of double degrees and double award (University and TAFE) programs unique to the campus. Programs controlled by the Faculty of Arts all involve the Bachelor of Communication degree which offers a compulsory major in Communication Studies, a major in an arts sequence and a major in an area of specialisation (advertising, business information technology; information management systems, journalism studies, public relations or tourism). The Bachelor of Communication degree cannot be taken by itself, but must be taken in combination with another Monash degree (in either Business or Tourism) or a Casey Institute of TAFE diploma or associate diploma (in Information Technology, Marketing or Professional Writing and Editing).
Teaching at Berwick is conducted using a variety of media. Much teaching is presented in the traditional lecture and tutorial format, but some subjects are taught principally on-line on computer and others involve the use of interactive teleteaching, where lectures on one campus are beamed into a classroom on another campus. Students at Berwick not only learn about communication, but are also given the opportunity to experience some of the most up-to-date communication methods in the world.
[* ] Final subject in major sequence must be taken on the Clayton campus.
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