The first graduates

Report: Penny Rankin

Professor Richard Cashman

Today they can include up to a thousand students in ceremonies filled with pomp and circumstance, but the first Monash University graduation was for two students and took place in a University office.

It was July 1963, two years after the first students had started at Monash and five years after a State Act of Parliament established the University.

The first Monash graduation ceremony was being planned for the following year, but when two young postgraduate students completed their studies, one securing a PhD scholarship in the US, a graduation was quickly arranged.

Local newspapers recorded the historic event as Richard Cashman (now a professor) graduated with a Masters in History and Richard Harcourt graduated with a PhD in Chemistry.

Both had obtained undergraduate degrees from other universities before completing postgraduate studies at Monash.

The small ceremony was attended by Monash officials and the men's friends and family in what was then the University's Engineering Design Office.

Both men are proud to be the first people to graduate from Monash University.

Their memories of their early days at Monash are vastly different.

Dr Richard Harcourt

Dr Harcourt worked with just three other chemistry students and was supervised by the founding head of Chemistry at Monash, Emeritus Professor Ron Brown AM.

"I befriended David Vigor, who went on to become an Australian Democrat Senator. David initiated the MARS (Monash Association for Research Students - and secretaries) club which held a variety of social events and led to several Monash marriages," Dr Harcourt said.

Professor Cashman studied off-campus at the State Library of Victoria, he visited his supervisor at Clayton once a month, but doesn't recall seeing another student on campus during these brief visits.

"I remember feeling a bit lonely at times, but staff of the History Department took me under their wing. The department secretary, Mrs Morrison, would often take me to her family home for a Sunday roast, preceded by sherry," Professor Cashman said.

A Monash degree has held both men in good stead. Professor Cashman went on to accept his PhD scholarship to Duke University, North Carolina later that year.

He is now an Adjunct Professor in the School of Leisure, Sport and Tourism at the University of Technology, Sydney, and Director of the Australian Centre for Olympic Studies. He established and directed Australia's first Olympic Studies Centre at the University of NSW and has written more than 30 books on sports and Olympic history.

Dr Harcourt is now an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Chemistry at the University of Melbourne. He has authored more than 160 publications on the topic of chemical bonding.