Excellence in education

Since opening in Southbank in 2012, the Holmesglen City Campus has helped reinforce Holmesglen’s name as Victoria’s leading vocational education and training service provider.

The institution was the recipient of a number of awards at the Victorian International Education Awards last month including the Premier’s Award for International Education Provider of the Year and the Excellence in International Education (TAFE).

In addition to its older campuses at Moorabbin, Chadstone and Waverley, City Campus co-ordinator Maria Quinto said its St Kilda Rd location had helped boost Holmesglen’s growing reputation.

“I think having a city presence has definitely lifted our profile,” she said.  “We have a customer connect centre where all of our enquiries go and a lot of our calls are ‘do you offer this course in the city?’ so I think the fact that we are in the city now is a big thing.” While the campus is limited by space, its state-of-the-art learning facilities caters to a broad range of courses, which are tailored for a number of more city-focused careers.

Courses offered include building design, construction management, early childhood education, a range of languages, masters of professional accounting and, exclusively to the city campus, fashion design.

Maria said the introduction of fashion design to its portfolio had been a huge success, as the course offered a unique and attractive industry-focused program based on pattern engineering.

“To have the actual garment made up they needed to be able to engineer the pattern, which is different from some of the other providers that just do the visual display,” she said. 

“That was an industry-focused program and it’s been very successful.

It’s a bachelor program for three years and we probably get around 25 students starting that at the beginning of every year.” With fashion, business and construction being very prevalent in the inner city, Maria said Southbank was the perfect location for students to be able to tap into industry.

And being a smaller campus, Maria said students were provided with round-the-clock access, which helped facilitate a strong community atmosphere.

“We’ve got a huge open learning area here called the learning commons and we offer that from 8am in the morning until 10pm at night so they can relax and stay here until late at night if they need to,” she said.

“We tend to have small classes as well and I think students get to know each other and they build a bond and forge those relationships.” With the campus having only operated for five years, Maria said many of its dedicated staff had been there since the beginning and were passionate about their workplace.

  “A lot of the staff have worked here since day one and this is sort of their baby as they’ve nurtured the students through,” she said.

“Because they have a little bit more control over the areas and who they teach they tend to look after them and make sure they get the most out of them.

They just love teaching and dealing with students on this one on one basis.” Holmesglen City Campus is located at 332 St Kilda Rd, Southbank.

The campus hosts open days on the third Thursday of most months.