Gift of giving
One of Australia's oldest and most generous women is one of the University's newest graduates. Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, who this year turned 100, has been presented with an honorary doctorate.
There are two threads that run through the life of Dame Elisabeth Murdoch - family and philanthropy.
The matriarch of the Murdoch media dynasty, Dame Elisabeth was at the centre of national events, and the centre of family life, as her husband Keith Murdoch built up the family's newspaper business in Australia. Then as the mother of Rupert, chief executive of News Corporation, she continued to give counsel and support as he and other family members expanded Sir Keith's legacy into an international conglomerate.
Dame Elisabeth has shown a similar degree of dedication to giving to the wider community.
She has given her time, effort and financial backing to more than 100 charities, and has lost track of exactly how many people she has helped.
"I have been at it for a long time," she said with a smile, "I have been alive for a long time now. It is tremendously rewarding, sometimes it is not how much that you give, it is the encouragement that you give that is very helpful to people."
Dame Elisabeth's long association with the Royal Children's Hospital has helped it raise millions, chiefly through the Good Friday Appeal.
The Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Parkville, the McClelland Gallery near Frankston, the Tapestry Workshop in South Melbourne and the Cranbourne botanical gardens are some of the other causes that have benefited from her involvement.
Dame Elisabeth has a long association with Monash University. She was close friends with the founding vice-chancellor, Professor Louis Matheson, who started his 17-year term half a century ago.
The connection was strengthened when she was recently presented with an honorary Doctor of Laws by seventh vice-chancellor Professor Richard Larkins.
"It is not only that the community, the state and the nation have received immeasurable benefits through all that Dame Elisabeth has done and continues to do in promoting research, in fostering health, in nurturing growth and in creating beauty," he told the ceremony, "it is also that her personal commitment and involvement has been made with a degree of warmth and humanity such as the world all too rarely sees."
For a woman aged five at the outbreak of World War I she has some understandably traditional views about community obligation and little time for those who do not engage.
"I hope it is because they are not too materialistic, sometimes people are not quite conscious of their obligations," she said. "They are more interested in what they are going to get out of it."
And when it comes to the benefits of an ongoing education, the centenarian is living testament to the University motto Ancora Imparo, or I am still learning.
"I think there is always more to learn, you must never give up. You must never think you are there," she said with a laugh, "you are never quite there."