April 20th, 2017
ACEI President & CEO, Jasmin Saidi-Kuehnert will be traveling to Melbourne, Australia shortly to attend the Gronningen Declaration Network meeting on April 25-27. She will be representing ACEI as well as the Association of International Credential Evaluators and will be joining other invited guests to be a signatory of the GDN. The goal of the GDN is to making Digital Student Data Portability a reality so that citizens world-wide are able to view and share their “authentic educational data with whomever they want, whenever they want, wherever they are.” For more on the GDN, click here.
We thought that given Jasmin’s upcoming to Melbourne, we’ll share some fun facts about this city in southern Australia.
1. Melbourne is Victoria’s capital city and the business, administrative, cultural and recreational hub of the state. (1)
2. The entire Melbourne metropolitan area covers 9990.5 km2 and has a population of around 4.5 million. (1)
3. Before Melbourne was called Melbourne, it was named Batmania after John Batman, a colonist farmer from Tasmania who landed in Port Philip Bay in May 1835. (2)
4. The Black Box flight recorder was invented in 1958 by Dr. David Warren at the Aeronautical Research Laboratories in Melbourne. Warren’s father had died in a plane crash over the Bass Strait in 1934. (2)
5. According to the RSPCA, Melbourne is officially the fox capital of the world, with between 6 and 23 foxes per square kilometre in the urban area of the city. Despite these numbers, it’s still quite rare to see one! (3)
6. Melbourne’s tramway system is the largest outside Europe and the fourth largest in the world, stretching along 244km of track and boasting 450 trams. (3)
7. The world’s largest stained-glass ceiling is located in Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria. (3)
8. Before Canberra, Melbourne was Australia’s capital city between 1901 and 1927. (3)
9. The University of Melbourne is ranked 42nd in the world and is one of the oldest Australian universities, having been established in 1853. It now has over 47,000 students enrolled, including 12,000 international students from 130 countries. The university is highly reputed for its research, with over 100 research centers and institutes and a research expenditure of $850m a year. (4)
10. Seven universities in Melbourne are featured in the QS World University Rankings® 2016-2017, the highest-ranked of which is the University of Melbourne at 42nd in the world – second only to Australian National University on the Australian leaderboard. (5)
Bonus:
11. Known as Australia’s cultural capital, Melbourne regularly tops lists of the world’s most livable cities, and is full of all the attractions that make the Australian lifestyle so appealing – including beautiful beaches, nightlife and a fair proportion of sunny days. (5)
Sources:
1.http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/about-melbourne/melbourne-profile/Pages/facts-about-melbourne.aspx
2.https://www.buzzfeed.com/simoncrerar/marvellous-melbs?utm_term=.kvJB0ZkE7#.tlb3NkqAj
3.https://latrobetimes.blogs.latrobe.edu.au/2016/05/26/15-interesting-facts-melbourne/
4. https://www.topuniversities.com/where-to-study/oceania/australia/guide
5. https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings-articles/qs-best-student-cities/melbourne
The Academic Credentials Evaluation Institute, Inc. (ACEI), was founded in 1994 and is based in Los Angeles, CA, USA. ACEI provides a number of services that include evaluations of international academic credentials for U.S. educational equivalence, translation, verification, and professional training programs. ACEI is a Charter and Endorsed Member of the Association of International Credential Evaluators. For more information, visit www.acei-global.org.