The year was 1990. Bob Hawke led his party to a fourth federal election win, Nelson Mandela was released from prison and the Berlin Wall started to come down.
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It was also the year the Canberra College of Advanced Education became the University of Canberra.
The current vice-chancellor Paddy Nixon was finishing his PhD in the embryonic field of computer engineering at the University of Sheffield in England.
He had a very early computer, not for playing games, but to actually write games and programs to help his father run the school parents' committee.
"I remember when I was a PhD student, the internet was just starting and it was in an area related to mine and I was in the first couple of thousand people on the World Wide Web as it was known and then, because we were working with the teams in CERN that we're putting it together," Professor Nixon says.
This year University of Canberra has been celebrating its 30 year anniversary of becoming a university by sharing stories of alumni and researchers past and present.
Throwback to Canberra College of Advanced Education:
Professor Nixon, who officially started in June this year, has been getting to know each faculty and research unit intimately, identifying the universities strengths to build on in the future.
He quickly got up to speed on the health and education initiatives that have had an impact both in the ACT and internationally.
For instance, the ELSA research group has developed education programs for preschoolers to develop the skills to succeed in science, technology, engineering and maths.
Meanwhile, other education researchers have been educating the children of farmers in Papua New Guinea and Pakistan to improve literacy in those communities.
"We obviously skyrocketed up the global rankings, top 20 in the world and the young universities," he said.
"There's a lot of young universities in the world and very few have done that. And I think that's a real testament to our people."
Looking ahead at the next five years, Professor Nixon wants to embed the institution's civic identity as first and foremost Canberra's university. He also wants to grow its reputation in specialty areas of sport, health and education.
In the immediate future the university will have to ride out the difficult circumstances thrown up by the coronavirus pandemic as well as significant reforms brought in by the Coalition's job ready graduates package.
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The legislation changed the student contribution for certain courses starting from next year in an attempt to funnel students into degrees in areas deemed to be national priority and more vocational in nature.
"Certainly it will change elements of how we develop the institution but overall I think we see how we can work within it," he said.
"There is a few perhaps counter-intuitive impacts in terms of where we would like to grow students but we as university have made a commitment to keep our breadth, not just doing arts, we're doing health, education, science, technology, etc."
"So we're at the moment working out how we can manage that breadth within the within the university and retaining a very strong commitment to not just our our nurses and teachers and others but also to our creative industries, to the arts community and to the humanities."
The COVID-19 recession has led to an upturn in the numbers of domestic enrolments for 2021.
The university sector will also be treading carefully through an inquiry into foreign interference in universities while its international agreements will be able to be scrutinised by the federal government under new legislation.
Despite the rocky path, Professor Nixon is upbeat about the university's future.
"I may have chosen a different time to come to the university but actually I'm not sure I could have chosen a better time, because I think the university is really set on seeing how it grows for the next 30 years."