Alumni stories: G-I

Since graduating in 2004, Shelley worked briefly as a Marketing Associate with St Vincent's Hospital in Toowoomba. She was soon lured to work for another large reputable organisation, Heritage Building Society, where she has worked as a Sponsorship Coordinator for the past two and a half years.  Her primary role is to assess, make recommendations and negotiate sponsorships as well as plan and execute corporate events.

Shelley was recently promoted to Senior Sponsorship Coordinator. Shelley is also a qualified JP and obtained a Certificate III in Financial Services. Shelley especially enjoys working with sponsorships and hosting corporate events. 

Since graduating from USQ with first Class Honours in Visual Arts Ann-Maree Hanna has received widespread acclaim and strong demand for her artwork. She has received rave reviews in Vogue Living and The Australian. Monument: architecture and design magazine ranked her in the top ten Australian design graduates for 2005. Despite this, Ann-Maree's feet remain firmly on the ground. For her, art is simply a form of self expression.

Ann-Maree's artwork, Phoenician Prayer, was included in the touring exhibition, Pattern Recognition. Phoenician Prayer is an embroidery installation work, that explores aspects of hybrid identity, personal position and interrelationships within her personal, Australian/Lebanese, socio-cultural environment. The text piece reflected her husband's Lebanese Maronite Catholic traditions and her own Anglo-Australian Roman Catholic background. The construction took over 1200 hours to complete. The embroidery installation work started its national tour at the prestigious Object Gallery in Sydney and traveled to Queensland where it was exhibited at the Craft Queensland Gallery.

Deborah Hartman has been an educator for over thirty years.  She has taught primary aged children in Queensland, NSW and the Northern Territory of Australia, where she worked as a teacher, teacher educator and curriculum developer with Aboriginal communities.  Deborah is the mother of two boys and has an interest in the care and education of boys both as a teacher and parent. 

A USQ alumnus, she was in the first cohort when the Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education began taking education students.  Her first posting was with Education Queensland to Kingsthorpe State School, which was a two teacher school at the time.  Deborah taught the infants section which had twelve students, eight of them boys.
She is currently the Manager of Research and Dissemination at the Family Action Centre, University of Newcastle, where she specialises in boys' education issues. She developed and has been the coordinator of and lecturer in the Graduate Certificate and Masters programs in Educating Boys.  She now supervises post graduate students with an interest in educating boys and is completing her doctoral study.

She is the author of I can Hardly wait till Monday - Women teachers speak about what works for them and for boys and co-editor of Leadership in Boys Education, with Richard Fletcher and Rollo Browne.  She is the editor and contributing author for Educating Boys, the Good News and convenor of the editorial committee of the Boys in Schools Bulletin, a practical journal for teachers.  Her most recent resource for teachers is the 2nd edition of the Being a Man Photopac, developed with Victoria Clay and Lindee Hahn.

A graduate of Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia, Magda completed all previous studies in Spanish. She gained a graduate degree in Industrial Engineering in 2002 focused in Organisational Management and Quality Assurance.

In 2004, Magda put her work and family back home behind her and came to Australia to begin her Masters on campus with USQ in Toowoomba, and graduated in April 2007 from a Master of Business Administration (International Business). Since then, Magda has been working with the International Office at USQ, dealing with the accreditation and registration of USQ programs offshore and onshore. 

Lorrie is happily enjoying her retirement after teaching at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Primary School for 16 years and being an itinerant English language teacher at the Sunshine Coast for 10 years. Lorrie is now the Secretary of the Australian Motorcycle Council. She has just completed 6,000 solo motorcycle rides following the Murray River from Goolwa South Australia to Jindabyne New South Wales.