Both Chantelle Walsh and Eva Kent have been elected onto the Online and Albury Wodonga SRC’s respectively. I had a chat with them both to find out who they are and what is in-store for the students who are your voices for Charles Sturt University.
Chantelle Walsh – Online SRC
Who are you and what are your passions:
“I am a first year Bachelor of Arts student and I am fully online, even before COVID, I was a online student. I currently work with a Dutch company called Enza Zaden where we produce and experiment with different species and hybrids of vegetables which is very interesting.”
Why did you decide to join your SRC?
“I joined my SRC because I was a prominent member in high school. Being on the Online SRC is really important for me to understand where I sit and how I can improve the student body in ways where we can all connect socially instead of being face-to-face. This is really important in these times as we are all social distancing and away from each other.”
Are you excited for the future within your SRC?
“I am very excited about the future plans that we have for the Online SRC. This includes improving and affiliating ourselves with other online clubs, such as the Law Society which is about to be launched at the end of this month. That is exciting, along with everything else is really exciting and important.”
What are you hoping to achieve and what would you like your SRC to focus on?
“Since being an online student is very isolating by itself, and not having many classmates that connect with ourselves socially, my purpose is to be a voice for someone who needs it, be active as a committee member and and to be someone you can talk to about any problems that I can push forward to the higher executives.”
“With the Online SRC, our goal is to keep all students connected, whether it be on campus or online students as we are all a student body.”
“So overall, try to keep us all connected, motivated and positive about any type of study we are doing, whether its res school, full time or part time, and to keep everyone encouraged to keep going in their studies.”
What do you hope you will get out of being a member of your SRC?
“For me personally, I would love to get my voice out there as someone who is part of a minority of a major student body, I think it is very important for the little voices to be heard.”
“So for me who is part of an unseen background that many people have probably never heard of, I think it is important for the small people with voices like me to get our opinions out there as well which is good.”
Eva Kent
Who are you and what are your passions:
“I am a first year Occupational Therapy student on the Albury Wodonga campus, currently studying online due to COVID, but that is where I hope to be next year, back on campus.”
“I live in Wodonga and it’s pretty close to campus so that is pretty nice to have my family close by. I also work in disability and I am really passionate about helping people and I hope that I get to continue working in disability or even paediatrics or something like that.”
Why did you decide to join your SRC?
“I was inspired to join my SRC because I had people in the Social Club encouraging me which was always nice. Also, I just the thought of being able to impact positively on the students especially during these times and being able to give a voice when we are having all of these scary budget cuts and all these things and helping students figure out what it means for them.”
Are you excited for the future within your SRC?
“I am extremely excited for whatever we can do. I know we have all got some pretty cool plans up our sleeves so hopefully we will be able to help those come through.”
What are you hoping to achieve and what would you like your SRC to focus on?
“I think overall, doing what I can to support the students in these times as we are returning onto campus and back to studying in as normal a way as we possibly can. I think doing whatever I can to help out with that.”
What are you hoping to achieve and what would you like your SRC to focus on?
“I think in particular, just providing services and figuring out alternatives, like for example our next year Orientation Week might look different, different social distancing, we aren’t really sure yet as it changes every day. We have to figure out what we can do to still keep the really fun things.”
We also have gotten really good feedback from people through the Hardship Scholarship applications we received so we want to keep on top of that and implement the things that people want.”
What do you hope you will get out of being a member of your SRC?
“I think it will help me to grow a bit socially, and also just to help me stay involved and connected in the studying community. When you are involved in the community, it really does help you stay motivated in your studies and for what you want to do. And I get to work with some pretty cool people too.”
