May 27, 2016

Scholarships support on-campus living and learning

A new accommodation fund is helping students achieve excellence.

For as long as she can remember, first year Communication and Media Studies student Laura Thomas has been on the path of leadership, taking every opportunity to learn and develop qualities that make a difference in the world.

“I wanted to be someone who was not only respected but also questioned and challenged in terms of my own ideas and solutions to issues relevant to all,” she said.

A visit to her school in Albury, on the New South Wales-Victoria border, by Gail Kelly, the then CEO of Westpac, opened her eyes to issues around gender equality in the workplace and inspired a passion for advocacy for the acceptance of women in the professional world.

“The opportunity to interact with someone of such significance was not only an honour, but motivated me even more to be a leader in the school community and in any other ways I can.”

To help her achieve her aims, she’s received an Excellence Scholarship from UOW accommodation operators Living + Learning Partners (L+LP).

As part of the agreement, two scholarships for Excellence as well as four Equity scholarships will be awarded annually, worth a total of $50,000 per year.

Laura currently lives on-campus at Kooloobong Village. She said the scholarship was a financial “weight off her shoulders”, particularly while focusing on her first year of studies and settling into life away from home.

“It’s one less thing to worry about, particularly in my first year and moving away from home to study,” Laura said.

“The on-campus accommodation is a nice environment and there’s a great atmosphere. There's a real sense of community in campus life, and it's like everyone has your back and is here to help if you need anything.” 

Laura said the scholarships would give her added motivation and support to help her achieve her leadership goals.

Fellow Excellence scholarship recipient and Bachelor of Conservation Biology student Elizabeth Morison, from Sydney’s inner west, said she chose to live on campus because it allowed her to be fully immersed in the UOW community.  

“I have access to facilities and support within minutes of my home, and I save that much time travelling that I can redirect it towards extra curricular activities,” she said.

“I've been here less than a semester and I can already see that I have such an incredible network of people from class, from home, from clubs and societies. It's been the most rewarding experience of uni so far.”

New accommodation buildings will provide an extra 1,000 beds in two new on-campus residences.

L+LP director, Peter Coman, said the scholarships go beyond providing quality accommodation to make a meaningful impact on students’ lives, as well as demonstrating L+LP’s commitment to corporate social responsibility and philanthropy.

“These scholarships serve to create opportunities that may make a difference in a student’s life through the transformative power of education.”

In addition to Laura and Elizabeth, four Equity scholarships and another Excellence scholarship have been awarded in 2016 to students from various regional locations around NSW.

Successful applicants must be full-time undergraduate students and have nominated to live in an L+LP-managed accommodation unit for the first year of their enrolment.

In late 2014, UOW agreed to grant a long-term licence of its entire student accommodation portfolio to a private sector infrastructure consortium.

The partnership is the first deal of its kind in Australia and will include an additional 1,000 beds in two new on-campus residences (comprising four towers), taking the total number of UOW beds available for students to more than 2,650.

Construction of two new, high-quality student accommodation facilities on the Wollongong campus is underway and is expected to be completed by 2018.