By KATRINA BRANDON
BOUND with colours, laughter and new adventures, Churchill’s Federation University Gippsland Campus hosted a Summer Splendour Festival earlier this month.
Live music, food trucks, games, and information stalls highlighted the beginning of the semester, as more than 3000 new students transitioned to university life.
“We’ve got the Summer Splendour Festival, which is fabulous because it allows the students to network, catch up with academics, catch up with previous friends, and also explore a little bit more,” Federation University’s Director of Regional Strategy and Engagement, Andrew O’Loughlin told the Express.
“We’ve got all the students back in, and we’ve got 3000 students starting across the university, which is really good to see. And it’s about the busiest I’ve seen in a long while, which is fantastic. That 3000 adds to the 4200 students that are continuing.”
The festival invited new and returning students to the campus for a day of fun interactions and further information about opportunities at the campus, such as orientation, which was held the week before the festival.
At orientation, new students got a taste of university life through campus tours and course overviews, along with the FedReady short course program, which helps students develop the academic skills they need to get started at university.
Combining the new and current cohort, students engaged in friendly competition, such as board games or trivia, feasted on free food, and relaxed with peers.
“Our goal is to provide students with the best learning experience possible, and events like the Summer Splendour Festival offer a valuable opportunity for them to connect with their peers and lecturers while also exploring the various support services available to them at Federation,” Federation University Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Duncan Bentley said.
“This year, we’re excited to expand our cooperative education model, helping students become work and world-ready through direct engagement with employers, enriching work placements, and opportunities to develop essential workplace skills.”
Federation’s most popular courses for Semester 1 are the Bachelor of Nursing, Master of Social Work (Qualifying) and Bachelor of Information Technology.
Mr O’Loughlin said: “Allied Health is certainly increasing significantly, and we’re looking to grow it and the engineering sites”.
“The growth in health is significant, and the government has pointed towards the need for more people in allied health. And we’re seeing a genuine interest in students coming in and studying, not just nursing, but as I say, the full array of Allied Health, which is speech, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, and psychology.
“We’ve got over 286 scholarships, almost a million dollars worth, to give students. So the opportunities for the students to come in and be fully supported in areas and disciplines of their choice.”
The university’s scholarship opportunities for 2025 are shaping up to be the largest ever, giving students the chance to succeed in their studies without the stress of financial pressure.
Other opportunities have also become available at Federation University, such as the co-op.
The co-op offers students opportunities to participate in placement (paid or unpaid), which allows them to earn credit for their course. Mr O’Loughin explained how this enables students to gain valuable experience.
“We’ve done our soft launch with co-op,” he said.
“Now the co-op is in full rollout mode across the university, so students will all have the opportunity to undertake a paid placement, which is also for credit in their courses.
“Pretty much every student on a co-op course has been offered a job with their prospective employer. So it’s a really good way to find work. It’s an excellent way to understand what employment will entail and is the key competitive advantage in this workplace.
“Businesses are also looking for students to have that edge, and that edge is also about having something marketable: the co-op placement. It was initiated around 2021, but we had our soft launch last year with one of the institutes, the Institute of Innovation, Science and Sustainability, so that would have been engineering, IT, business and science.”
According to Mr O’Loughin, Federation University is the first university to have created an opportunity like this in Australia.
Within the co-op, students enter the workforce under employee conditions and experience the full range of the workplace. The idea is students use what they have learnt in the classroom and can apply it in the workforce to see how it operates.
Mr O’Loughin explained that he has found that, in some cases, it improves the classroom experience.
“A lot of the students have reported back that it’s the best way that they’ve found to learn because of some of the issues they talk about in the classroom,” he said.
“We want them to take what they’ve learned in the classroom and be able to apply it in the workplace and see how it operates in the workplace. Sometimes it’s different, sometimes it’s the same, but it also makes for a better classroom experience.”
