Central Queensland University Bachelor of Engineering/ Diploma of Professional Practice Co-op Course

The course I am currently taking is the bachelor of Engineering/ Diploma of Professional practice co-op course. this course has one main benefit over tradition engineering courses as it integrates two six month paid work placements in to the program. This means that at the end of the degree you not only exit with text book knowledge and skills, but real on the job training. The contacts gained during these placements are very benefiting and often lead to employment at the end of the course.

This particular course is open to students wishing to specialise in mechanical, electrical or civil engineering, and is a four and a half year course but as 1 year is devoted to work placements it is only 3 and a half years in the classroom. The first year of the degree is a generic program and all strands of engineering take the same subjects, and then specialise in the second year. Work placements occur in the first semester of third year and again in the second semester of forth year.

The biggest benefit I see out of taking the course through CQU is that they have an incredible link to industry, and out of every student who has every taken the course through Gladstone has exiting the course with a job, and some with multiple job offers. This course leads to incredible opportunities and I would recommend it to anyone looking at doing engineering.

Another note to make on studying engineering is that paid vocational placements are offered during every holiday, and in an industrial centre like Gladstone there are too many placements and not enough students to take them. Every student my cohort that applied for work got a placement, some with multiple offers of placement. Engineering has so many opportunities from the beginning that it makes it a very good option.

The other benefit of these placements is that it eases the financial pressure that is usually felt during university degrees, and being paid for an entire year of study makes it that much easier to be able to support yourself.

First Year Summary

Looking back over first first year of uni I realise that it was a very rewarding and enjoyable experience. The projects we undertook as first year students were incredibly interesting and challenging. The best of these was the industry based project where local industries gave groups from the university real world projects that they would use our recommendations to base there initial research on. The project my group was given involved developing a system for the detection and removal of coal hang ups from coal wagons during there unloading stage and NRG limited, our local power station. The hang ups were were dealing with were between 10 kg and 50 kg and being small made finding a detection system, as well as a means of removing the hang ups from a moving wagon was a particularly difficult problem. We were also required to design infrastructure to hold the rig, develop costings and in the end construct a report with a recommendations. This was an incredible opportunity as we were giving the chance to visit the sites and come within arms length of wagons whilst they were unloading. The following link is to a video interview that I was in after we presented our findings for the project to an audience of some of the most senior and important engineers from the Gladstone region. http://www.youtube.com/user/CQUninews#p/u/29/WuKzK1vlZhM

The thing that surprised me the most about this project was a liaison with the power station was the highest ranked engineer on site, and that he was willing to give his time to invest in the next generation of engineers. The amount of support out there, in Gladstone particularly, for engineering students just blows your mind. Whilst on site an unloading coal wagon was slowed down to about a fifth of the speed it would usually be unloading at just so we could see it better, and in the process NRG would have had to pay for using the rail corridor for longer than required. I guess the biggest thing this project showed is that there are allot of people out there willing to invest allot of time and money into the next generation, and this is incredibly encouraging and reassuring.


Although this was the stand out experience to do with my studies of the year, there were also many other events that made the first year memorable. The single best part of first year was being awarded the Queensland Resource Council scholarship for CQU students. This scholarship is a very sort after has large monetary and networking rewards. I feel incredibly privileged to have been awarded this scholarship. This scholarship just goes to further back up my point that there is a huge amount of support for people taking up engineering degrees.