Employability is not just about work
At Torrens University, our Employability Strategy revolves around setting our students up for life and preparing them for a journey through careers they love.
This means we provide our students with the optimum combination of qualifications with currency and relevance, transferable soft skills, and invaluable industry immersive experiences and connections – allowing our graduates to establish their careers and transition into others over time.
We work closely with industry to ensure our students graduate with just the right balance of attributes. Importantly, throughout their journey, we ensure our students do not study in isolation from the world of work.
Each student is mentored by industry practitioners and success coaches, ensuring they make choices based on personal strengths. Industry and career experts regularly deliver presentations. This is how we are committed to ensuring our students are ready for their professional paths and succeed in their career choices.
Industry Connected
Our relationships with industry groups and employers ensure our graduates will meet the workforce demands of the future and make contribution to industry. This is what sets us apart from traditional universities.
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Industry led curriculum design
From conception, our academic curriculum designers collaborate with industry experts who articulate the needs of the workplace.
This is how we ensure that we develop courses relevant to jobs of the future.
It does not stop there.
The inclusion of industry experts in our course advisory committees ensures that industry remains at the forefront of our quality assurance processes, as we build and improve structured curricula. -
Industry authentic places of learning
When our students come on campus, they learn in environments which resemble real-life industry and workplace.
Lecture halls are conspicuously absent. Instead, learning takes place in immersive environments.
Students enter spaces which include design studios, hotel layouts, clinical environments as well as restaurants and practice health clinics. This is where our students work and study. -
Showcasing our students and graduates
We host activities throughout the year to ensure industry is aware of the best our students can offer by way of skills, expertise, innovation, leadership and commitment to contribute to society.
These include our annual INTRO Graduate Exhibition which presents our Billy Blue School of Design Students to industry leaders and future employers and career expos. -
Special speaker and guest presentations
Throughout the year, industry experts provide our students valuable insights into their own stories of career journeys, their approaches, industry assessments, their success, inspiration, overcoming challenges and making an impact.
The presentations range from in-class appearances to keynote events such as the Torrens University Speaker Series which profiles industry leaders and influencers from diverse areas including sport, business, entrepreneurial and food backgrounds.
Work-Integrated Learning
At Torrens University, it is a non-negotiable that every student goes to work. This means that every student undertakes Work-Integrated Learning, Placement or Live Brief during their study.
Every graduate also has an opportunity to volunteer – reflecting our commitment to Be Good.
This is how our graduates obtain their employability skills, make critical connections, learn the value of networks, begin building their soft skills and establishing their reputation.
Torrens University itself has fully functional and operational businesses and community centres which provide competitive services to the public, as well as providing our vocational students critical industry and public interaction experience and skills building platforms.
They include:We also provide our students opportunities to build real world work skills via platforms such as InsideSherpa. It offers short-course like virtual internships designed by global companies and government organisations.
Future proofing careers with soft skills
We place just as strong an emphasis on the development of soft skills as on hard, technical skills which formal education and training is focused on.When we prepare our graduates for the workplaces of the future, soft skills are at the forefront of considerations. The array of skills include leadership, negotiation, resilience, decision making, creative thinking as well as attributes such as global citizenship, communication across cultural groups and distinguishing between ethical and unethical practices.
These are skills which are transferable between industry and occupations, which will enable our graduates to transition into careers over time.
They will provide our graduates the confidence to make critical decisions about their careers during their professional journeys.
Graduate Attributes embedded in our curriculum
Our curriculum is designed with our Graduate Attributes embedded into our courses. These ensure that our graduates are imbued with soft skills and attributes which empower each to make impactful decisions in their lives – beneficial to their lives and importantly, society.
The attributes are mapped in curriculum. In so doing, we provide an environment where all students are encouraged to take responsibility for:
- Distinguishing between ethical and unethical practice, and articulating the impact of their discipline or profession on local and global communities
- Describing their discipline or profession in the contemporary global environment, including the forces that have shaped the past, are driving innovation today and are taking it into the future
- Applying research skills appropriate to the level of the qualification
- Applying cognitive skills and dispositions necessary to be perceptive, analytical and creative in identifying and solving problems
- Demonstrating the interpersonal skills and dispositions of an effective team member and leader in complex situations
- Communicating effectively across diverse cultural groups
- Displaying leadership qualities to be a future leader committed to social justice and human rights
Success Coaches
Our Success Coaches are industry specialists who provide guidance and mentoring to our students as they navigate their studies while making important decisions about their future careers.
Their support is critical to the journey each student takes to ensure their employability at graduation.
Our Success Coaches come from industry as well as the education space so they understand the intersections students find themselves at. They understand the demands of study on students as well as the importance of connecting our students to industry.
They help students prepare for Work-Integrated Learning as well as providing lifelong employability skills such as preparing and tailoring resumes, writing job applications and navigating professional options.
Planning ahead – work of the future
As we come to terms with the reality of the current global pandemic, we are very much focused on envisaging what the world of work will look like in the future.
For Torrens University, it is more critical than ever to engage with industry to work out where industry is going and what the response to the global pandemic will be. As an education provider, we are focused on building a workforce which enables industry to operate in a post pandemic world.
This is critical as prepare our students and build their capabilities for this future.
Among our key considerations is ensuring all our courses are relevant in a digital world. We will ensure our students possess the flexibility to work in a virtual world. This will include preparing our students for the realities of virtual job interviews.Our Employability Steering Group
At the centre of our efforts to ensure that each of our students has the best plans in place for their future is our Employability Steering Group – led by Kath Curry, our General Manager for Health and Education.