MUSSE

The first students enrolled in of the Bachelor of Arts Extended.

Gemma Naylon, a new student at Queens College, was roused from her bed at the crack of dawn on the first day of Orientation Week, and, with her fellow first-years, ran laps around the University. That night, she won first prize in the dress-up-as-a-transvestite competition.

This is part of the normal O-Week celebrations, but what is remarkable about it is that Gemma is one of the first students attending the University as part of the Bachelor of Arts (Extended) program, which has been introduced specifically for Indigenous students.

This program is the first of its kind in Australia, and involves an extra year of foundation studies before students commence the Bachelor of Arts. It is mandatory that the students live on-campus in the colleges, to develop their own community and to fully experience life at the University.

The new students come from places as diverse as Bruswick and Bendigo, and from further afield Broome and Perth.

“It’s a diverse group, with different qualities,” Michelle Earthy, Project Officer/Coordinator for the Bachelor Arts Extended, Centre for Indigenous Education, explains. The group of 13 comprises eight women and five men and includes an ex-army cadet, a mature-age student from Cape York, and a former corrections officer All were chosen for their potential, their “likelihood to succeed”.

“We are about academic excellence – we don’t apologise for that,” Provost Peter McPhee said at the launch of the program last month.

These students will be helped to achieve that excellence, taking bridging subjects for their first year of learning, with small classes and specialised teaching to prepare them for the whirlpool that is first year in the mainstream Bachelor of Arts cohort.

The Bachelor of Arts (Extended) is about more than just academic achievement – these students will take what they have learned back to their communities to be future leaders. “And we’re talking government, parliament,” Michelle says.

The program for the foundation year will include subjects such as ‘Academic Literacy’ and ‘Ideas and Society’, which will expose students to the ideas of the 21st century – postmodernism and feminism, and the theories of Foucault and Derrida.

Students will also study a compulsory Arts mainstream unit in both semesters during their first year, to get a better feel for what the mainstream Bachelor of Arts is like.

However, the Bachelor of Arts (Extended) is about more than study; it’s about “building good networks and opportunities”. These networks, it is hoped, will increase the University’s opportunities to recruit Indigenous students for the program in 2010, as well as helping the students to grow their personal networks and to become the leaders the University knows they can be.

“We chose the students based on their potential to succeed,” says Michelle. And with the education and experiences they will have at Melbourne, they will leave the University of Melbourne not only with a Bachelor of Arts degree, but also with leadership skills, personal networks, and ideas that will help them to become tomorrow’s leaders.