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YESTERDAY marked another milestone for graduating students from Charles Sturt University and a step on the path to their futures.
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A wave of black mortar boards were poised on the heads of more than 250 proud graduands ahead of two ceremonies in Albury.
Charles Sturt University’s head of Albury- Wodonga campus, Professor Julia Coyle, acknowledged students from the education, science and arts faculties and the years they had committed to becoming qualified in their chosen fields.
“This day celebrates everything we are about,” she said.
“There is a right to education for all and we are opening doors and opening opportunities.
“Today is a culmination of that.”
About 84 per cent of Charles Sturt University domestic graduates find employment within four months of completing their degree and Professor Coyle said 70 per cent of those who studied in a regional area, stayed.
“We train them here and they will stay because we have a strong regional university,” Professor Coyle said.
“We make the students work ready and it builds a strong rural community.”
She said tertiary studies were vital, especially in regional areas.
“People in these areas are 50 per cent less likely to go to university than those in metropolitan areas,” Professor Coyle said.
“We are doing a lot of work to show school students there are opportunities and raise their aspirations and pathways to higher education to solve some problems we have.”
Assistant Minister for Education and Farrer MP Sussan Ley offered her congratulations to the graduates.
“Be inspired by something, dream the biggest dream you can and then step into the unknown to see what happens next,” she said.
Ms Ley was especially pleased to see the number of people graduating with a degree in early childhood qualifying them to teach those aged 0 to five years.
She said those graduates would be part of a government campaign to generate greater understanding in the community that education in the early years starts from birth and early education and care systems were vital for the future development of children.
Professor Peter Doherty, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1996 with Swiss colleague Rolf Zinkernagel for their discovery of how the immune system recognises virus-infected cells, also addressed the graduates.
Ceremonies will be held again today for students enrolled in the science and business faculties.
More than 700 people will graduate from the Albury-Wodonga campus this year.
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