By Corey Everitt
Federation University in Berwick has welcomed students to their first O-week of another year of creating young local professionals.
Food, music, art and sports capped off a fortnight of student orientation events.
The Berwick campus will be attended by 2300 students this year, including 900 new enrollments and 200 international students.
Fjolla Mucaj, a young woman from Springvale, is starting her first year at Berwick and is excited to begin studying IT and business.
“I’m looking forward to learning more about IT in detail,” she said.
“There are a lot of different pathways and jobs you can do, not just general IT, you can do architectural IT, anything.”
Through IT, Fjolla hopes to make a strong career while pursuing her passion for design and architecture.
Fjolla, being a South East local, finds the Berwick campus the most convenient for her.
She finds inspiration from her father who works in architecture solutions for Amazon.
“I was going to do architecture, but my Dad influenced me to do IT because it’s a better pathway and it’s growing, I can still pursue architecture in IT,” she said.
“Maybe I can work for my Dad.”
IT is one of the largest programs Federation University runs, which includes the university’s strong “co-op” model where education mixes with business to train and employ students more directly.
Kathy Racunica, the head of campus for the Berwick site, wants to deepen the links the university has with local industry and business.
“The opportunity for employment in our region is huge, so we facilitate the ballooning need for professional employment,” she said.
“Our strike rate is very high for employment of graduates, as well as a really high salary rate.”
As the pandemic has subsided, the demand for professional employment has grown and Kathy sees the campus as a key pillar to rebuild local industries.
“For example, the region is desperately needing more teachers, from primary to secondary, and we’ve got all the courses there to feed into the growing demand,” she said.
“Same with healthcare workers, we have a huge population of nurses and health professionals.”
The university’s links with locals continue to grow.
This year they begin their business accelerator, where local industry can work with the university to establish short courses designed to upskill students in the ever-changing needs of industry.
Kathy takes pride in her university being ranked first in Victoria for undergraduate starting salaries in studies run by The Good University Guide, an indicator that the campus is integral to local and state industries.
Another key part of Federation University’s education is providing local young men and women equal opportunity to tertiary education.
Federation University has been number one in the country for most ‘first in family’ students for five years in a row.
Kathy believes it’s essential to provide this for the area.
“It’s a really fantastic achievement,” she said.
“Because with a huge multi-cultural, migrant population to be able to support higher education access in the region is just stunning.”
Federation University’s new year back on campus starts this week, with two weeks of orientations to begin the semester.
