John Mawson, head of agriculture and wine sciences, and Yann Guisard at the CSU Wangaratta orientation day yesterday. Picture: KYLIE ESLER
MELISSE Robinson is determined to be one of those Australians who are dedicated to providing clean, fresh, food for the rest of us.
To further that goal, she yesterday began an agriculture course at a new Charles Sturt University study centre, along with 19 other students.
“We need more people in agriculture and we need to support our farmers,” she said.
“If we don’t have food, we have nothing.”
Nine students from across Victoria yesterday arrived for orientation day at the recently opened CSU Wangaratta campus.
Agriculture and agriculture business management courses are taught via distance education from the Wangaratta GOTAFE Tone Street building.
By April next year, a new CSU building to house the agriculture study centre, will be opened.
Before the CSU Wangaratta centre, the closest university offering agriculture courses was Wagga. The next closest was in Melbourne.
CSU agriculture and wine sciences course director Yann Guisard said the agriculture courses and new centre came at a time where the need for agriculture graduates was “huge”.
“There are six jobs a graduate at the moment, the gap between the number of graduates and the demand is huge,” he said.
He hoped the courses would boost the number of graduates in the region, starting with the 20 who started their course journey yesterday.