Susan Meli on a winning streak takes out another prestigious award
01 November 2002
Susan Meli, a mature-age horticulture graduate of Kangan Batman TAFE, has been named the National Vocational Student of the Year at the 2002 Australian Training Awards held at Sydney on 14 November 2002.
The Australian Training Awards are hosted each year by the Australian National Training Authority(ANTA). They are the national finals of training awards presented in every state and territory and recognise Australia’s best training providers, students and enterprises and acknowledge their contribution to vocational education and training and skills development in the workforce.
This is not the only award Susan Meli has won this year. After being named Kangan Batman TAFE’s Student of the Year, she went on to win the Student Ideas and Design Competition at the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show. In August, Susan was named the Outstanding Vocational Student of the Year in the 2002 Victorian Training Awards from where she went on to represent Victoria at the national levels.
After 20 years as a nurse, 43-year-old Gisborne resident, Susan Meli decided to try her hand at Horticulture. Horticulture started as a hobby for her, but has now become her vocation.
After completing her Certificate IV in Horticulture – Landscape Design on a part-time basis at Kangan Batman TAFE’s Broadmeadows campus, she now works part-time for Melbourne based Garden ridge Landscapes and has also started her own garden design business, Fundamental Garden Design.
Her rise to stardom began when she was inspired to enter the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show’s Don Fleming Student Ideas and Design Competition. Susan’s design that was based on the literary masterpiece – A Midsummer Night’s Dream- won the competition.
As a winner of the competition, Susan received the Don Fleming Student Award, provided by Fleming’s Nurseries. Her prize, valued at around $9,000, was a trip for two to England to attend the Chelsea Flower Show.
Looking at the future, Susan plans to complete the Diploma of Garden Design at Kangan Batman TAFE and to do a small business management course at a later stage.
“I am truly amazed by all the fuss. This all started with me entering a competition just to see how I would go. The idea was to get my work judged. It has all snowballed from there and I am still in a daze with all the nominations and the prizes I have won this year.”
“When I first qualified in peri-operative nursing, I swore I’d had enough of study, but then years later here I am, just finished studying and learning something new and loving it,” she says.
“I hate hearing other people my age saying ‘I wish I’d studied such and such when I was young’, I tell them to just go ahead and do it, because life’s too short to have regrets.”
Susan won the first prize in the Australian Training Awards after beating eight other finalists, one from each state and territory to win the title of Australia’s top vocational training student.
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.
Kangan Batman TAFE was named Training Provider of the Year in the 2001 Victorian Training Awards.
