5 December 2011
CITATION
Award of Doctor of Economics honoris causa
Mr Andrew Brice
Chancellor,
Andrew Brice is co-founder and CEO of The University of Queensland Endowment Fund (UQef), co-founder and non-executive director of Wotif.com, non-executive director of Diabetes Smart Pty Ltd, founding director of MenzurX Pty Ltd and a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants. He was previously an auditor with Arthur Anderson (1965–1977) and a partner with AH Jackson & Co (1977–2005).
In 2008, he was awarded the Business/Higher Education Round Table Award for Outstanding Philanthropic Support of Higher Education.
In 1999, Mr Brice co-founded, with fellow UQ alumnus Graeme Wood, the online accommodation business Wotif.com. The company went on to become a market leader with offices in nine countries other than Australia.
In 2006, Wotif.com was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. Mr Brice remains on the board of Wotif.com as a director.
Mr Brice has a demonstrated sense of civic responsibility and belief that a university education should be a realistic dream for all children in Queensland.
He has shown this through a distinguished history of philanthropy. Between 1998 and 2007, Mr Brice provided funding for the educational version of the Reuters Screen (the Integrated Real Time Equity System) in the UQ Graduate Economics and Business Library.
In 2005, he created a Wotif.com scholarship to support an orphaned Malaysian student while she was studying in Australia. In 2007 Mr Brice and Mr Wood established The University of Queensland Endowment Fund (UQef).
Through the UQef, Mr Brice supports the Young Achievers Program, Wotif scholarships for disadvantaged students and research scholarships at UQ. Other UQef supported initiatives include the UQ Centre for Youth Substance Abuse Research and the Frank Finn Scholarships for Commerce Honours’ students.
The Brice family’s ties to UQ are long-standing. Mr Brice's father studied philosophy at UQ in the 1930s and for 25 years, was the animal keeper at the Herston Medical School. Two of Mr Brice's brothers are alumni of UQ.
Mr Brice's wife, Jennifer, has a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Commerce from UQ, and, like her husband, is committed to the UQ Young Achievers Program, and the ethos behind it which is that everyone should have an opportunity to attend University regardless of their circumstances.
Chancellor, in recognition of his leadership and advocacy of educational philanthropy in Australia, I present to you Mr Andrew Brice, Bachelor of Commerce from The University of Queensland, for the award of Doctor of Economics honoris causa bestowed by the Senate of The University of Queensland.
