CQU Cairns celebrates record graduation
CQUniversity Cairns has celebrated its biggest-ever graduating cohort, with 150 excited graduates crossing the stage.
Held at the Cairns Convention Centre on Thursday 18 April, the sold-out event saw hundreds of Far North Queenslanders gather to congratulate the happy group and celebrate exciting new careers.
Earning qualifications and degrees across a wide range of disciplines, the inspiring cohort are skilled up and ready to be the region’s next teachers and nurses, accountants and pilots, business leaders and IT gurus, lawyers and sports coaches, paramedics and psychologists, midwives and medical professionals, engineers, social workers and more.
CQUniversity Chancellor Graeme Innes AM officially welcomed the gathering and said the event highlighted the University's commitment to community.
"We are a university of changemakers that values the power of place and supports people to study in their own communities," he said.
"The qualifications you receive today unlock your future careers and your future achievements, but also create huge potential for your communities, and your world."
As well as presenting graduates with their testamurs, Mr Innes also announced an honorary Doctor of the University, Jenuarrie Warrie, a proud Koinjmal Woman from the eastern coastal plains of Central Queensland, and Cairns resident for more than four decades.
The First Nations leader and artist is also a CQU First Nations Cultural Consultant, and Mr Innes outlined her impact through her work.
"She is renowned for her ceramic techniques and visual art pieces, described as a deeply connected expression of her knowledge passed down to her from Elders and garnered by time spent on Country."
Two doctoral graduates also earned their PhDs at the ceremony:
- Founding Director of Many Tracks and CQU academic Dr Katrina Rutherford, who examined the post-schooling transitions of remote Indigenous boarding school graduates, and how they experienced competing values of Indigenous and Western worldviews and geographical constraints
- Midwife and researcher Dr Simone Naughton, who explored how midwives provide woman-centred care for women with complex pregnancy. The Midwifery Capabilities Theory describes how explored how midwives enact a woman-centred approach that enables women to develop their capabilities as they move between models of care, health professionals and health services, improving maternal-infant outcomes.
Paramedic Science graduate Eryn Vicary delivered the graduate response, with a moving account of her tough journey from high school and through university.
Accounting and Financial Planning graduate Stuart Hentschke received the School of Business and Law Medal for his outstanding 6.9 GPA.
CQUniversity Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Nick Klomp congratulated all graduates, and challenged them to "be the changemakers, the trailblazers and the visionaries that will make a better future for all."
