Canadian students (pictured top from left) Brian White, Panayiota (Yiota) Tsentouros and Tyler Meakin have followed the sun to CQU Rockhampton to turn their undergraduate degrees into postgraduate teaching qualifications.

Checking the website for Canteach Educational Consultants, they found the costs of moving to Rockhampton for an entire academic year comparable with those of moving elsewhere in Canada or the United States.

The added bonus is that they feel like they are on a tropical holiday, having left the cold of Ontario.

Brian (a psychology/philosophy major) is from the city of Owen Sound, Tyler (a health sciences major) is from the neighbouring town of Meaford and Yiota (a physical education major) is much further away in Kenora. All three plan to return to Canada to seek primary school teaching positions.

The Canadians were this week among more than 140 students in a residential school for the first cohort of CQU's Graduate Diploma of Learning and Teaching.

The GDLT is a pre-service education program and graduates will be eligible to apply for provisional registration with the Queensland College of Teachers (and comparable education systems overseas).

GDLT students will gain 56 days of work experience in schools and undertake a 6-week graduate internship, on top of their academic studies across 2 full-time terms (or 4 terms part-time).

Also among this week's inaugural cohort were graduates from CQU's Bachelor of Performing Arts (BPA) degree.

The GDLT gives them a full-time career pathway, while still enabling the pursuit of auditions and performance roles.

Those seeking to become high school teachers (in specialised areas including drama, dance, music and English) were (pictured from left) Jennifer King, David Christensen, Stacey Crimmin, Rhani Ashford and Vikki Bell.