University announces winner of its inaugural “most prestigious prize”

Dec 02, 2004

$10,000 Chancellor Robert Hope Memorial Prize

A commerce/law student with a passion for social justice, has been announced as the inaugural winner of the most prestigious prize at the University of Wollongong - the $10,000 Chancellor Robert Hope Memorial Prize. She will use part of her prize money to assist the village of Mafi Zongo, in her native Ghana.

It is an award of the Council of the University of Wollongong made on the recommendation of a committee chaired by the University Chancellor, Mr Michael Codd, AC. The prize, named in honour of UOW's first Chancellor and one of Australia's most prominent legal practitioners, Justice Robert Hope, AC, CMG, will be made to Yayaa Tsamenyi. The award is based on a graduating student's academic excellence as well as his or her contributions to the University and wider community.

“I believe the late Chancellor, a strong social advocate himself, would be proud to see that the University's paramount prize has gone to somebody like Yayaa. Equally, he would have been proud of the runners-up -- Hadeel Dabbagh, who is doing IT studies from the University of Wollongong in Dubai, and Shane Lauf, who has completed what is believed to be the only combined engineering/Japanese language degree in the country,” Mr Codd said.

The Chancellor said the calibre of the two runners-up was so high that the University would issue them special certificates for their achievements and $2,000 each in prize money.

Yayaa, who now works at Blake Dawson Waldron Lawyers as a law clerk, has been actively involved in a range of community activities in NSW and she has not forgotten her country of origin, Ghana. She has already volunteered as an English teacher and medical assistant in her family's home village of Mafi Zongo.

As well as her $10,000 prize money, Yayaa will also be presented with the Robert Hope Medal by Mrs June Hope, the wife of the late Justice Robert Hope, at Yayaa's graduation ceremony on December 17.

Justice Hope was a QC and former NSW Court of Appeal judge who headed two landmark royal commissions into Australia's security and intelligent services. He was Chairman of the NSW Law Reform Commission. He contributed much to Australia's public, intellectual and cultural life and became the first Chancellor of the new autonomous University of Wollongong in 1975.

He stayed for 22 years retiring only in 1997. Justice Hope died in 1999 at the age of 80.The new memorial prize attracted 30 applicants from across all the University's faculties and included mature age students, indigenous students and overseas students.