Over the course of the last several weeks, my work here in Australia has been keeping me very busy. I have been working on https://experience.tripster.ru/articles/zolotoe-kolco-rossii/ a few projects and I have also had the opportunity to visit some universities here.

Another fellow intern and I were tasked with an assessment project in which we interviewed the resident assistants (RAs) that work for the Federation University Living office (their version of a department of housing and residence life). The purpose of this project was to ascertain what the RAs perceive to be the major challenges and advantages of living in on-campus residence halls at FedUni. We gained some insight regarding the general culture of students who “live on res”. We also gathered information on why students choose to continue living on res after their first year, or why they choose to live off-campus after some time. Part of the purpose of this project was to figure out ways to promote student retention in on-campus residence halls.

I also worked on a project that will hopefully help Federation University’s department of Campus Life optimize their web presence. I did a bit of background research regarding the best practices in web marketing to figure out how to go about making the website better and how to use social media and other forms of multimedia to interact with prospective students, parents, and customers more effectively. I also made recommendations on how to use in-person marketing to increase website and social media account following by discussing the work I do with the Rutgers University Programming Association back in the United States.

My final project for the internship is to author a Federation University Australia ACUHO-I intern manual for the ACUHO-I interns that will be chosen in the years to come. By reading this manual, the new interns can inform themselves of what to expect from the internship, how to prepare for the internship, what to expect about living in Australia, how to travel in Australia, and more.

During my time here, we had opportunities to visit other universities. So far, we have visited La Trobe University, Deakin University, Monash University, University of Melbourne, University of Sydney, University of Technology Sydney, and the Gippsland campus of Federation University. Once I head over to New Zealand in a week, I will also have the opportunity to visit University of Otago, Victoria University of Wellington, and University of Auckland.

I have just one more week left in Australia. My time here has been really enjoyable, and I have learned more than I could have ever imagined. I will be writing one more post at the end of next week, which will wrap up my experience here. Stay tuned!