October 28, 2015

National award for UOW’s graduate employment initiatives

The University of Wollongong (UOW) has for many years been pleased to see the success its graduates have enjoyed finding employment – and now its achievements have been recognised as one of the 2015 Australian Financial Review Higher Education Award winners.

At a gala dinner held in Sydney last night UOW was announced the winner of the Employability category at the Australian Financial Review awards for its whole-of-institution strategy to help students in degrees where there is no regular access to work-integrated learning or who face barriers in finding employment. Such students would include those with disabilities, those in non-vocational disciplines, international, Indigenous and those from rural/regional areas.

Work-integrated learning provides the opportunity for students to link their discipline to a business or profession. The most common form of work-integrated learning involves a student placement or internship or project within a workplace. It’s a learning experience that benefits all parties.

A new subject, Career Ready Learning and Practice, is growing at a rapid rate as it provides access to internships for students at all regional campuses and the main Wollongong campus. It enables students to apply their career management skills and their discipline knowledge to a practical workplace setting.

UOW’s UniVative program was an employability initiative considered by the awards panel. UniVative was designed as a response to challenges experienced by international students and students in Arts, Science, Creative Arts, Management and some Health-related disciplines when seeking access to workplace experiences.

UniVative creates student ‘consulting’ teams with a mix of disciplines, culture and gender. Host organisations brief teams on structure, culture, business processes – then present the teams with a challenge – which they solve offsite. UniVative sees large volumes of students from varied backgrounds accessing workplace experiences without requiring a significant resource commitment from industry partners.

This latest award follows outstanding success in the 2016 Good Universities Guide, in which UOW outperformed all other Australian universities to score the highest number of star ratings - including five star ratings for teaching quality and graduate employability.

2015 was the 15^th year in a row UOW received five stars for graduates getting a full time job and the third consecutive year it was shortlisted as the best university careers service for graduate employers.

These results were also reflected in the recently released Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT) results, which ranked UOW as the best overall university in Australia with high satisfaction scores in the areas of teaching, learning, student support and full time employment.

UOW Vice-Chancellor, Professor Paul Wellings, said last night’s announcement by the Australian Financial Review demonstrated yet again why UOW graduates were highly sought after by employers.

He said the University attributes its success to the support provided to students through a range of services including helping them manage their transition to university, plan their careers and seek employment.

“We have developed an approach of enhanced support for students at every step of their experience because we believe guided support and preparation is the key to their success,” Professor Wellings said.

The Director of Graduate Career Development and Employability at UOW, Mr Martin Smith, said implementing a whole of institution approach to career development and employability has been supported from the outset by the Vice-Chancellor and the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic), who understand the value of developing career-ready graduates through the formal and informal curriculum.

“The university is seriously concerned about our graduates realising their career-related aspirations – whatever and wherever they study,” Mr Smith said.