Thankyou Curtin University

Hi everyone,

This is Ivana from the Bentley campus. I am studying a Bachelor of Arts- Asian Studies, Chinese Mandarin and a Bachelor of Commerce Public Relations double degree. Last semester I approached CBSplus for a PR position where I could use both parts of my degree as part of my placement.

I spoke to Liz Prendergast-Jones and she took me under her wing as my supervisor and was very excited that I would be able to use skills from both of my degrees.

I will be working for Rosie Kerr at the School of Accounting. My job consists of working with international students from the Chinese Articulation group. My first project is to run four focus groups with these students in order to find out about their expectations of life at Curtin and how we can better prepare them for that. More specifically we want to find out how good the videos on the Curtin website are at representing and introducing life at Curtin University.

The videos can be found when you scroll down the page and find the link called ‘watch videos’. http://international.curtin.edu.au/why-curtin.htm

I recommend that fellow bloggers take a look at these videos and give their point of view as to how informative the videos are for new students.

The first study week of university I was unwell as I had just returned from a rigorous camp as part of the ‘John Curtin Leadership Academy’. Therefore I could not get started on my internship but as soon as week 2 arrived I was so busy contacting people via telephone and email trying to get focus groups for the following week sorted out. Ideally I would have liked to start earlier as I think I would’ve found it easier. At least it gives me experience in working under pressure.

Rosie let me use her office which was very generous and beneficial to me as it had a computer and a telephone where I could get in touch with whomever I needed very quickly and effectively.

I didn’t realise just how many people I had to liaise with just to get some focus groups organised. These people included Curtin Mentors, CBS Admin to book rooms and catering, Ebonee Lynch the Mentor Programme Coordinator and many other managers and coordinators. I was surprised at the amount of people that I contacted that could not help me personally but referred me to another person who could. That was incredibly useful! For example Eric Clock, the Programme Development Coordinator at Curtin University was very helpful in assuring me that planning focus groups for next week was fine and that if I planned too far in advance some students would forget and others would say that they are too busy with studying to come. That was a good piece of advice.

As I was not allowed to contact the students personally due to ethical reasons, I had to go through Curtin Mentors to make contact with these students and to get confirmations. I found that extremely frustrating as I had to have faith in a 3^rd party in order for my project to be successful.

I have booked 5 sessions, 1 for every day of week 3 in order to have enough coverage to catch the most amount of students. Next week I will explain how they went and my result findings.

My supervisor Liz Prendergast-Jones just amazes me with her knowledge and is very stern and clear about what is expected of me. I like that because it keeps me wanting to be on top of everything and not let time slip away. She also is helping me with non-work related things such as what career path I should choose and other issues related to my remaining PR units. I feel very lucky to have met such an inspiring woman.

Stay tuned for the next blog!

Ivana Stefanovic
13377836
Bentley campus