If you are a new international IT student looking to make new friends, a good place to start is to sign up for the Buddy Scheme. Organised by the Faculty of Information Technology for its undergraduates, the program formally matches new international students with Australian students Christopher, a Data Communication undergraduate from Singapore met his buddy, Ivana through the program. He enjoys their weekly meetings together, where they catch up with one another on the latest news. Ivana, a part-time IT undergraduate in her second year became a buddy not only to broaden her horizons, but because she believed in the importance of providing support to new students.
Students are usually more comfortable in approaching fellow students for advice.
Mark is one of the many IT undergraduates who have enrolled in the Faculty of Information Technology's Cooperative Education Program, which offers 10 to 12 months paid industrial experience with organisation. His responsibilities include Unix system administration specialising in security and web-hosting, installing the new Sun Solaris operating system on a test machine and new software packages such as web server administration and Usenet news server, and running these packages for evaluation purposes. The industrial experience gives students the opportunity to apply the knowledge they have acquired in a work environment, and to develop work skills giving the the competitive edge when they graduate. Eligibility criteria apply for entry into the Cooperative Education Program. International students undertaking the three-year degree in Information Technology are permitted to participate in Cooperative Education, subject to meeting the entry requirement.