Becoming a professional partner with Social Inquiry
At UTS we are interested in engaging our students in 'real life' professional practice.
As part of this, our third year students undertake one of three subjects - Parliamentary Placement, Professional Placement and Applied Research Project. The aim of these capstone subjects is to enable students to independently put into practice in professional settings the research, advocacy, media, writing and presentation skills they have developed through the degree. These subjects are offered through professional collaboration with Partner organizations.
Projects undertaken by Social Inquiry students on behalf of partner organizations have included:
- a report on withdrawal rates for apprehended violence orders for the Redfern Women's Domestic Violence Court Assistance Scheme
- web content for www.actnow.com.au for the Inspire Foundation
- a report for the NSW Reconciliation Council on outreach into regional NSW
Why professional collaboration?
In Social Inquiry, we believe that collaborating with professional partners in our teaching benefits our students' capacity to be 'work-ready' and to enable them to understand the professional application of the practical and intellectual content of their degree.
For Partner organizations, the benefits they gain include:
- Access to the skills, abilities and critical perspectives of Social Inquiry students
- Increasing the mentoring and capacity building of their staff
- Increasing the professional development of their staff through supervising students and student project management
- Exposure to a source of potential employees.
The quality of the work produced by these students can be outstanding.
Feedback from organizations has included:
"We cannot be enthusiastic enough about Linda's performance. She was always professional, well-prepared, enthusiastic, confident, motivated, patient and involved."
(Combined Pensioners & Superannuants Association of NSW Inc.)
"We particularly appreciated the high quality of work Julia produced, her enthusiasm and interest in social justice issues and her commitment to fulfilling the work within the allocated timeframes ... the work she did and the report she produced has been extremely useful for the sector."
(Combined Community Legal Centres NSW)