One hundredth and eighth annual commencement (Graduation ceremony program)

Historical Significance: This commencement has particular significance for optometry. It is the second graduation ceremony at which optometrists were admitted to a degree in the University of Melbourne obtained by completion of an optometry course. Page 8 (unnumbered) lists those being admitted to a Bachelor of Applied Science (Optometry) degree after completing the optometry course provided by the University of Melbourne and the Australian College of Optometry. Those listed are Anthony John Adams, Ian Laurence Bailey and Donald Edward Mitchell being three of the five who had completed the fourth year of the optometry course in 1962. (Missing are Stanley Elwood and Peter Skeates). Also listed are four optometrists who had completed the one year conversion course available to those who held a LOSc diploma of the College. They are Bruce Besley, William Cooper, Wolfgang Gartner and Edward Vines. The first award of the BAppSc (Optom) degree was to a New Zealander, Gavin Bridgeman, who was the only final year student in 1961 and would have taken out his degree, as the first optometrist to do so in the University of Melbourne, in 1962. In NSW the optometry course had been taught in the Sydney Technical College as a five-year part-time diploam course, although from 1954 there was a one-year conversion course to obtain a BSc (Optometry) degree at the University of NSW for optometrists who held the Associate Diploma of the STC. The degree from this conversion course was first awarded in 1955. A four-year full-time degree course was not established in the University of NSW until 1961, the same year that the University of Melbourne took over the Australian College of Optometry diploma course as a degree course.