Four high-achieving graduates from the CQU Sydney International Campus received Campus Director’s awards at the Graduation Ceremony at the Sydney Town Hall this week.

The students, Iveta Kocurkova from Slovakia, Ryan Ebardo from the Philippines, Olga Kornijenko from Estonia and Chong He from China, said they enjoyed making friends with students from other cultural backgrounds.

Iveta Kocurkova, who is graduating from the Master of Accounting program, was working as an accountant in a small company in Slovakia when she decided she wanted to change her life as she was bored and wanted a challenge.

She chose CQU as she was able to fast-track her program by studying in Term 3 and she wanted to finish as quickly as possible.

While studying, Iveta worked in aged care to support herself through her studies and found this to be a very rewarding experience. Her goal is to become a CPA and work in the accounting or banking industries.

Ryan Ebardo, who is graduating from the Master of Information Systems program, worked as an IT professional in security in the Philippines.

He wanted to study his Masters degree overseas, but hadn’t made up his mind where to study until he came to Australia for a holiday. While in Australia he visited universities, and after returning home decided to apply to return to study. Ryan believes “education will shape the nation” and this can minimise the gap between rich and poor in his home country. He wants to teach and has already been offered several jobs at universities in his home country.

He wants to teach the less-advantaged who do not always have access to education. He is particularly interested in data mining and knowledge management as he stated these courses are not available in the Philippines and he would like to introduce these to the curriculum there.

Chong He, graduating from BIT with Distinction, had no interest in coming to Australia and only came to visit because his mother was here.

He started Year 9 in Brisbane and then moved to Sydney where he enrolled in a Bachelor of E-Commerce degree at another university.

He decided to change to CQU as he had friends here and didn’t like the structure of the degree he was studying as it was too fundamental and not challenging enough. He enjoyed the CQU program and is thrilled at his results as he never expected to perform so well.

Olga Kornijenko, graduating from the Bachelor of Accounting degree, came to Australia in 2001. She had wanted to visit Australia for many years and came to study English and a Diploma.

She chose CQU as she had a friend who studied here and was impressed that she could fast-track her program and commence her studies in November.

Olga worked as a bookkeeper before coming to Australia and also travelled to the United States for 5 months, joining a study and travel program. She likes to learn about other cultures and loved CQU-SIC’s multicultural mix of students.

Olga has been working in an accounting firm in Australia for the past 18 months but has decided she would like to move into the fashion industry.

All the students had a common goal to make the most of their opportunities and do the best that they could for their future.

All view the Campus Director’s awards as a step in the right direction.

SIC Campus Director Barbara Abou-Lehaf formally congratulated them and presented them with their award at the CQU-SIC Graduation Ceremony today.