Kangan Batman TAFE stars in top TAFE awards!
23 August 2002
L-R: Minister Kosky presents Susan with her award.
Susan Meli, a mature-age horticulture graduate of Kangan Batman TAFE, has been named the Outstanding Vocational Student of the Year in the 2002 Victorian Training Awards.
The Victorian Training Awards, now in their 51st year, are the State Government's highest awards for the training sector, recognising Victoria's leading students, training organisations, teachers and employers.
The awards were presented on Thursday 22 August, 2002 by the Hon. Lyn Kosky MP, Minister for Education and Training at a Presentation Dinner in the Palladium, Crown Towers.
Susan beat five other finalists from across the state to win the title of Victoria's top vocational training student. These finalists came from NMIT, RMIT, and William Angliss, Sunraysia and Box Hill institutes of TAFE.
Susan's prize is a $10,000 travel scholarship, which she plans to use to explore design ideas for small gardens, to be put to good use in her garden design business.
"The average suburban block is getting increasingly smaller and people are generally time-poor and wanting low-maintenance gardens. So there's a great need for clever design for small gardens", Susan explains.
"I'd either like to travel to Japan, because Japanese gardens work really well in small spaces, or otherwise see what's happening around the rest of Australia and New Zealand".
Susan was a nurse for 20 years before enrolling for the Certificate IV in Horticulture - Landscape Design, which she completed over four years on a part-time basis at Kangan Batman TAFE's Broadmeadows campus.
Now that she has completed her studies, Susan still works one day-a-week as an operating theatre nurse, but divides the rest of her week between running her own garden design business, and designing gardens for Gardenridge Landscapes in Box Hill.
Susan has previously won other awards as a result of her studies, including Kangan Batman TAFE's Best Horticulture Student Award and the institute-wide Student of the Year Award.
In April, she also won the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show's Don Fleming Student Ideas and Design Competition.
The competition required students from Australian and NZ to design a garden based on the theme of 'A Living Masterpiece'. Susan's design, entitled A Midsummer Night's Dream, was one of four selected to be constructed at the flower show. As winner of the competition, she received a $9,000 trip for two to England to attend the Chelsea Flower Show.
Despite these earlier successes, Susan says she was "surprised, but thrilled to win a Victorian Training Award. It feels like confirmation that I'm achieving something."
"I see myself as being in a consolidation phase of my new career. I've done the bookwork, now I have to 'do the time' and apply and develop my skills."
Kangan Batman TAFE also had finalists in the following categories of the 2002 Victorian Training Awards:
- Kangan Batman TAFE's Nursing/Aged Care Program Coordinator Gaye Witney, was one of three finalists across the state in the running for the Outstanding Teacher/Trainer of the Year Award.
- Qantas employee Anthony Chisholm, who is a graduate of Kangan Batman's Certificate IV in Aeroskills - Aircraft Maintenance Engineering - Structures Maintenance, was one of six finalists from across the state in the Apprentice category Outstanding Student of the Year Award.
- Kangan Batman TAFE's Aboriginal Footballers' Development Program was one of three finalists across the state in the running for the Innovative Training Award.
- Kangan Batman TAFE, in partnership with Whittlesea Secondary College and the North West Work Education Development Group, was one of three finalists from across the state in the running for the VET in Schools Excellence Award.
Kangan Batman TAFE was named Training Provider of the Year in the 2001 Victorian Training Awards.
Kangan Batman TAFE is a multi-discipline TAFE institute with 24,000 students across six campuses in Broadmeadows, Moreland, Essendon, Richmond, Coburg and Avondale Heights.
To contact Susan Meli and her business, Fundamental Garden Designs, email sjmeli@bigpond.net.au
