It was a busy yet rewarding year for the University of Southern Queensland chapter of the Golden Key, putting in almost 1,700 hours of community engagement and partnering throughout 2012.
Each year Vice-Chancellor Professor Jan Thomas invites high achieving students to become USQ
Golden Key International Honour Society members.
Those who take up the challenge then aim to, as Chapter President David Smith explained, “Responsibly transfer their knowledge through leadership into our communities”.
Members can include students, staff, alumni, tutors, peer-leaders, and support workers and others.
“We have approximately 1,300 members on the books, with about 300 of them active in our student and alumni communities at the moment,” Mr Smith said.
“They often go unnoticed but they are quietly weaving a rich tapestry of inclusiveness.”
“We aim to develop leaders and leadership within the student community and enable both high achieving students and those who engage with us.”
Mr Smith said Golden Key took a long look at problems they found within the student community during 2012 and found stress and mental well-being were big issues.
As a response, Golden Key helped to bring “Study-Safe R U OK?” day to USQ to encourage people to check on the wellbeing of their co-workers, fellow students and friends, as well as their continued support of Mental Health Week and National Psychology Week.
The many achievements of the USQ chapter of Golden Key were recognised during the recent Asia-Pacific Golden Key Conference held in Adelaide, where they presented a workshop titled “Enabling a Phoenix to Rise”.
The chapter was awarded a “Gold Standing”, the highest possible international standard for a Golden Key International Honour Society Chapter.
Mr Smith, as peer-representative of the leadership team, was awarded the Golden Key International Honour Society’s Asia-Pacific Leader of the Year 2012.
“It was great to have our leadership team’s efforts recognised and the awarded simply reflects the willingness of our students to be guided to the best they can,” Mr Smith said.
“In 2012 we went to an international Golden Key conference held in Atlanta, Georgia and talked to the CEO and Founder of career-coachers Interview of Stature.
“We managed to get him from Washington to USQ and QUT to present workshops on how to take your job search to a new dimension, something that was well-attended and helped a lot of students improve their CV writing and job interview skills immensely.”
The workshops helped the USQ Chapter win the Best Golden Key Asia-Pacific Region Professional Development Event for 2012.
Mr Smith said USQ Golden Key’s plans for the next year involved working closely with Phoenix Central as well as a series of lectures on leadership featuring Australian and local role models.
“Key to what we do is a revolving calendar of events where the previous year’s Leadership Team prepares the program for the coming year,” Mr Smith said.
“2013 is set to be just as busy as last year, if not, busier.
“There is a lot of goodwill that comes from and is given to the USQ chapter of Golden Key and we appreciate that and are honoured to serve the university’s communities.
“All we’re doing is trying to do what we usually do, just a little better each time.”
Media contact:
Callum Johnson, email: callum.johnson@usq.edu.au, Phone: 07 4631 1856
Jim Campbell, email: jim.campbell@usq.edu.au, Phone: 07 4631 2977.
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