Annual Swinburne Scholarships

A number of Melbourne Community Foundation donors have established ongoing scholarships or awards with tertiary institutions, either to commemorate family members with a link to the institution, to  support  particular target groups of students ( Indigenous, disadvantaged)   or those who  are undertaking studies in the area of the donors’ business or other interests.

Highlighted below are three of the scholarships awarded in February 2011.
 
The June Shenfield Poetry Award commemorates the work and life of June Shenfield. June was a poet, playwright and performance artist who graduated from Swinburne in 1980. It is an annual award, given for the best piece of poetry written by a Swinburne student from any faculty, as judged by a panel of professional writers and editors. In 2010 there were 72 entries.
 
Richardson Award. Antoinette Richardson taught Auditing, Accounting and Taxation for over 20 years at Swinburne. She was a committed teacher and the award commemorates her commitment to, and passion for, her students. The Award is made to the top achieving student in the second year of financial Information systems.
 
Unico Swinburne Equity Scholarship is provided to an undergraduate student from a low socio-economic background, who has successfully completed the first year of their 3 year Information &Communication Technology course. Provides contribution to living costs, textbooks and mentoring/tutoring.  Unico is a technology consultancy and services company.
 
Outcomes sought and indicators of success
Each of these awards aims to support students to achieve the best they can in a particular area of endeavour and to reward them for doing so. In the case of the Richardson and Unico grants, the students need to have successfully completed part of their course to qualify and the progress through their course can be tracked. In the case of the poetry award, the two successful poems each year are published on the Swinburne website and in several cases the winners have continued with their involvement  poetry writing and performance.