Media Release
March 26 2007
UniSA Graduations week - thousands of success stories
UniSA’s week long graduation ceremonies from March 26 and 30 will literally cap-off a month of feverish activity in Adelaide – so next week amid the jugglers and buskers, and police and fire athletes from all over the world, you can expect to see some very happy graduates in their caps and gowns. More than 2800 students will graduate this week in special ceremonies at the Festival Centre.
Highlights of the week will include the awarding of two Honorary Doctorates – to former Director of the Art Gallery of South Australia and current Director of the National Gallery, Ron Radford AM and to retiring Vice Chancellor of UniSA Professor Denise Bradley AO who will preside over the ceremonies for her last time.
In every graduation there are hundreds of stories of success – of innovation, of brilliance, hard work and struggle against the odds. Below are just a few examples.
Monday March 26 2007 - 3 pm
Graduations for UniSA’s Schools of Architecture and Design, Social Work
and
Social Policy and the Unaipon School
Guest Speaker – Ron Radford AM, Director of the Australian National
Gallery
Refugee “social” work a real passion
Volunteering to help out a group of young refugees from the Sudan as part of her honours research in Social Work has become so much more than a case study for Anushia Raja Segaran. Today she will graduate with BA Honours in Social Work and while she already has a full time job with Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, Enfield Campus, the issues facing young African refugees are always close to her heart.
“Young refugees have often had a traumatic history, many come here having seen torture and lost family – many are orphans,” she says. “They are most often poor and yet have wider family commitments both here and back home and English is their second language, so you can imagine that the process of feeling settled in Australia is not easy and certainly not quick.”
Anushia’s volunteer work gives kids aged from two to 16 years a bit of a social network – it provides a relationship framework that engages them in the wider community and as she says “gets them out of the house”. She takes them to the park, the beach or other free or inexpensive activities and importantly, is a friend and role model.
She says improvements could be made by providing more community education about the lived experience of refugees. “When you have come from a country where there is war and a complete disintegration of all the aspects of a civil society that we take for granted, it is not always easy to adjust.”
Long term Anushia would like to apply her studies and career experience to working with migrant and refugee populations, but for now she intends to continue to volunteer on weekends.
Tuesday March 27 2007 at 3 pm
Graduations for UniSA’s School of Nursing and Midwifery
Guest Speaker - Associate Professor Susan O'Neill,
Executive Director: Nursing, Midwifery and Patient Services, Flinders
Medical Centre
Reaching another peak
Cathy Watson describes herself as “greedy for study”, and with five qualifications under her belt, it’s no wonder. The 45-year-old nurse practitioner and mother of three will graduate with a Masters Degree in Nursing at today’s graduation ceremony.
Watson trained as a nurse at St Vincent’s hospital in Victoria in 1982 while simultaneously taking subjects for her Bachelor of Arts so as not to lose her place in the course. She studied her Master’s Degree off campus, choosing UniSA because of the flexibility of the course work.
“I was able to mesh my interest in women’s health into the work I was studying, which brought an added dimension to both my work and my study,” Cathy said.
Now working at Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne, Watson combines her interest in women’s health issues with a passion for world humanitarian health issues. Watson recently returned from a trip to Kenya and Sudan where she was involved in a health facility evaluation program for charity organisation, Tearfund, UK.
“I take the opportunities life has to offer as they come and I have an incredible husband who supports my work,” said Watson.
Watson seems to have a talent for recognising opportunities. Not content with undertaking work in Sudan, the enthusiastic mountain climber also tackled Mount Kenya.
“I was in Kenya; the mountain was there, so I climbed it.”
Wednesday March 28 – 10.30am
Graduations for UniSA’s School of Marketing and International Graduate
School of Business
Guest Speaker – Mark Bickley, Chairman of SA Great
Graduate puts a new shine on environmental protection
As a 21 year-old male, Bachelor of Management in Marketing student,
Craig Lock, is hardly the prime demographic for the new US sitcom Ugly
Betty, but he sat riveted, notebook in hand, through the first episode.
His real interest? Documenting product placement for UniSA’s
Ehrenberg-Bass Institute of marketing.
“With increasing advertising cluttering the airwaves, advertisers are looking for strategic product placement in television programs to promote their lines,” said Lock who is one of 667 Division of Business students graduating at today’ UniSA graduation ceremonies.
But Lock’s real satisfaction at UniSA lies in the role he played in producing a marketing plan for the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) National Pollutant Inventory which was instigated first here in South Australia, but is also being introduced across Australia. Lock joined final year marketing students in UniSA’s Marketing Project Program which places students in the workforce four days a week for a semester. Lock was lucky enough to join the EPA where he and a fellow student were given ownership of a project to investigate and improve the usage of the National Pollutant Inventory.
“We were given full autonomy to analyse the usage of the current database and look at ways to give it broader appeal and make it more user-friendly.
“It was a real buzz to see the work that you do as a student being applied in the workplace, not just shelved to gather dust, as you fear it might be. What a great project to add to your resume.”
Thursday March 29 – 3 pm
Graduations for the Schools of Advanced Manufacturing & Mechanical
Engineering
Guest Speaker – Anne Howe, CEO SA Water
Master engineer a top performer
At just 28 years old, Behnam Fahimnia already has an enviable list of academic achievements and he is quick to share that success with his university lecturers and his family without whom, he says he could never have come so far.
Born in Tehran, he graduated with a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering in solids designing from Tehran Azad University in 2001, ranked second in his year and was granted the Parsian Manufacturing Award (PMA).
“I chose to move to SA to do a Masters in Advanced Manufacturing Technology at the UniSA because the Centre is so well-known for its high academic standards and research excellence,” said Fahimnia.
Today Behnam not only graduates with his Masters but is ranked the top student with high distinction in all of his subjects. He was awarded a UniSA scholarship in December 2006 and is now a PhD candidate at UniSA. Having already published several conference papers and journal articles both nationally and internationally, he was awarded the “Achievement Award Certificate” by World Enformatika Society in October 2006 for his research contributions to the field of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering and proposing quality papers in XV International Conference in Spain.
“I’m thankful for the opportunities UniSA has offered to me that I would not have experienced in my country of birth. I’m especially grateful to Professors Kazem Abhary and Lee Luong, and Dr Romeo Marian, and Behzad Motevallian for their keen intellect and their circumspect and concise guidance throughout my study. And I could never have achieved this success without the support and never-ending love of all my family.”
Friday March 30 2007 – 10.30 am
Graduations for UniSA’s School of Education
Guest Speaker – UniSA Vice Chancellor and President, Professor Denise
Bradley AO
A long journey to learning
Although it was more than 30 years ago, memories of rice wrapped in
banana-leaf packages and a piece of rock salt for school lunch, are
never far away for Nittaya Cameron. Born and raised in a poor farming
family in the Thai village of Punta Koen, Nittaya’s extraordinary
passion for learning has finally been satiated. She graduates today with
a degree in Early Childhood Education from UniSA.
Her journey has been amazing, difficult and full of moments of despair, hope and happiness.
In 1984 at 19, Nittaya left Thailand for Australia to flee an arranged marriage to a man old enough to be her father. She married an Australian but her young husband’s battle with addictions saw the marriage fail and she found herself a mother of one, alone and without an education.
“In Thailand, to study past year eight, you must pay,” she says. “My parents just didn’t have the money.
“When I could no longer go to school, I kept trying to learn more by offering to do other children’s homework. “I also liked to watch people and learn things. “I worked out how to make coloured fireworks by the time I was 10, but ultimately I had to get a job to help feed the family.”
Today Nittaya is happily married to a man who has encouraged, cajoled and supported her from those first excited steps into an Introductory Vocational Education Certificate course at Port Adelaide TAFE, to her proud and satisfied steps across the Festival Theatre stage.
She has already found work in childcare, something that brings her enormous satisfaction.
“I feel I can now give children two things that are fundamentally important – care and the chance to learn,” she says.
Details of the entire graduations timetable can be found
online.
Media contact
-
Michèle Nardelli office (08) 8302 0966 mobile 041 8823673
email michele.nardelli@unisa.edu.au