Study Business with us

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Jason Downs:

Hi, I'm Jason Downs, and I'm the Director of Programs here at the College of Business and Law at RMIT University. First up, I just want to thank you for taking the time to watch this presentation. Today I want to share with you some of our amazing programs and showcase some of the amazing industry-engaged and student-led projects that we love doing here at RMIT. I'm super proud to be part of our fantastic RMIT community, and I hope to meet you soon and welcome you to the College of Business and Law.

Before I get started, I'd like to acknowledge the people of the Woiwurrung and Boon Wurrung language groups of the Eastern Kulin nations, on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the university. RMIT respectfully acknowledges their ancestors and elders, past, present, and emerging. And while we conduct our work remotely, I want to pay my respect to the wider unceded lands of this nation.

One of the things I'm most proud of here at RMIT in the College of Business and Law is our industry engagement. We have a global reputation for engaging in industry and performing at levels of excellence. We cover a wide breadth and depth of discipline areas here at the College of Business and Law, including accounting, business and administration, marketing, entrepreneurship, international business, information systems, supply chain and logistics, economics, and finance. Our academics are highly regarded on a global scale for their research, and I'm super proud of the way in which they bring that research into the classroom to benefit our students directly.

I first want to talk about our three year structure of most of our programs. Students who come to RMIT and the College of Business and Law undertake what we call the Business Common Core. These are eight courses that every business student undertakes at the College of Business and Law in their first year. The eight courses in the common core stretch across the breadth of the disciplines that we offer here in the College of Business and Law. This enables students to get a small taste early on in their program of each of the disciplines, and this can help them when they're choosing their majors or their second majors later in their career.

In the second year of our three year programs, students begin to engage in their discipline major. This is where they dive deep into the discipline that they've chosen to study here at RMIT. And they start to really engage with the theory, the concepts, and really get a sense of what it is that they're here to study. The discipline major is a deep dive into the discipline. Our academics guide the students through the latest research and help the students to contextualize and then apply that theory and research into student led and industry-engaged projects.

Our three year programs are designed to be flexible. Towards the end of the program, the students can elect to take a second business major. So in this example, where we're looking at the logistics and supply chain management program, students who take a second major may choose to take that major in human resource management or economics or accounting. This allows the students to hone and craft their program, to allow the students get the exact program that they want.

However, students don't necessarily need to take a second major. Our programs are flexible in that, instead of a second major, maybe students might want to take two minors. Maybe with logistics and supply chain management, a student might want to take a major in marketing and back that up with a major in HRM.

For an even more flexible program however, students might elect to only take one extra minor. When they do that, they can pair that up with four general electives. Students can take electives from across the College of Business and some electives from across the university.

Providing even more flexibility, our programs allow students to take maybe just one minor and four electives. This allows students to really think about what it is that they're passionate about and maybe chase those passions while they study here at RMIT.

Electives can consist of courses from across the College of Business and Law, or indeed from across the university. If students have a particular passion, in say, Japanese, they can take those language courses to continue with that particular passion. We also offer here at RMIT, applied programs. These are four-year programs where the main differentiation is that students undertake an eight to 12 month internship in their third year.

The program share the same basis. The first and second year include the common core that all students undertaken their first year, and then the deep dive into the discipline major. In the third year, students go out into industry. They undertake an eight to 12 month work, integrated learning internship. This allows students to get amazing real world experience out in the industry, which they then bring back with them into their specialized fourth year. In this example here, in logistics and supply chain management, students get to choose their specialist stream, and then they can take flexible options around a minor or maybe four more electives.

Coming to study at RMIT allows students to get access to some of our amazing facilities and our cutting edge technological solutions. Some of the areas that I'm most proud of here at the College of Business and Law include our RMIT Trading Facility, where students get to trade with real live market data. Our Behavioral Business Lab engages in some of the world's most cutting edge research. And RMIT Activator allows students to get engaged in entrepreneurial projects, while our practice firms give students a real sense of what it's like to work in industry.

Industry is deeply connected to everything that we do here at the College of Business and Law. In our undergraduate program, students undertake at least two courses that are specifically designed to be work-integrated learning ready. Our MIT helps facilitate work placements. Some of these placements are paid and some are unpaid, but students get the opportunity to go out and actually work with industry as part of their program.

Our amazing Fastrack Innovation program gather students from across the university to work with industries on real world problems. Students get to work with industry mentors and work on real world problems that have been pitched by industry. This goes further than just writing business reports. Students in the fast track innovation program, get to work with our industry mentors across the semester. And then at the end of the semester, they get to pitch their ideas directly back to senior executives of those partner organizations.

We offer electives around business internships. A student can elect to work one or two days a week as part of an internship elective and have that count towards credit towards their overall program. This is an amazing way to get some real world experience, while studying your business program at the College of Business and Law.

There's something always going on here at the College of Business and Law. Students can take part in business competitions, business forums, hackathons. Our program managers are always seeking to engage industry into our programs. And of course we offer a broad range of support, including the ability to be mentored by real industry professionals, as you complete your program.

I just wanted to highlight three of our industry projects as an example of the kind of work that we do here at RMIT. I'm so excited about the partnerships that we've established here in the College of Business and Law. We work with some amazing partners from across both industry and not-for-profit sector. In one of our recent projects, our marketing students worked with the Australian Red Cross blood service to drive positive social change.

One of the relationships that I'm most proud of is our ongoing and strong relationship with the Australian Grand Prix corporation. Every semester, groups work with the Formula One in bringing projects to life in one of Australia's premier events, focusing not only just on bringing innovative ideas forward, but also on how they can be implemented in a real world context.

Melbourne is a thriving city, and as the city shifts, grows, and develops, RMIT students are working on projects to help that growth. We've partnered with Metro Trains to look at the intersection between the micro and the macro, from a management HRM, leadership, cultural, ethical perspective, to come up with solutions to the modern issues that our growing city faces.

The College of Business and Law has deep and enduring partnerships and relationships with organizations from right across the spectrum of business. We work with a range of for-profit organizations, government institutions, and of course the not-for-profit sector. Our authentic relationships allow students to really explore what it's like to work in one of these organizations, and to get a real sense of what it's like in that particular industry.

These relationships are invaluable to students as it allows them to contextualize the theory and the concepts that they are learning in the classroom, and to understand how they get applied in the real world. We've been working with industry for many years. It's one of the things that RMIT is known for. Our reputation for deep and authentic engagement with industry sets RMIT apart. It's what we are known for and what we excel at. It's both one of the reasons that students come to study at the College of Business and Law, and it's why industry chooses to work with us year after year.

RMIT has an amazing global reach, with partnerships all around the world. We've got partnerships in the Americas, in Europe and in Asia, and in fact, we've got 215 partnerships with universities all around the globe. These partnerships provide amazing opportunities for students to travel and to study all around the world. And even when it's not possible to physically travel, our students use technology to connect with our partners all around the world.

Right now, we've got students here in Melbourne, partnering up with students all around the world to solve practical business problems. We use technology to solve the problem of physical distance while building the capabilities of students, to be able to live and work in a global environment in the 21st century. With our global partnerships all around the world, it almost doesn't matter where you travel.

Earlier, I talked about our relationship with the Australian Grand Prix Corporation and the Formula One. I'm so proud to be able to offer this partnership to our students and to hear what wonderful experiences they have working with the Formula One. Our deep and enduring relationships allows our students unprecedented access and the opportunity to really understand how their study connects to the real world and to their future careers.

No matter how you come to RMIT, we provide you with a range of choice and more than one way to get the qualification that you want. Operating as a dual sector university, students that come to us through our vocational education and TAFE sectors are given the opportunity to pathway through to our higher education programs, if that's what they want to do. I'm so proud of the way in which we have the opportunity to be able to offer these pathways. It allows students to undertake the qualification that they want, and should they feel that they wish to upgrade later, we make it easy for them to do that.

We have such a diverse range of programs here at the College of Business and Law and multiple ways in which students can engage with those programs. Students can come from all around the world, and so our entry requirements for both domestic and international students can vary program to program. I would encourage you to visit the link on this slide and explore the entry requirements for the program that you want to study.

2021 is just around the corner, and I would want to highlight some of the important dates for both our higher education and our vocational education sectors. February is a big month in vocational education with orientation and classes beginning on the 8th of February, and the last day to enroll for semester one on the 15th of February. Later in February, we have orientation for our higher education sector. Classes begin on the 1st of March and our last day to enroll for semester one is the 8th of March.

Thanks very much for listening today. I really hope I've managed to encourage you to explore further what we offer here at RMIT. I've been working at RMIT for over a decade now, and I've seen lots of changes. I'm so proud of the way we engage with our communities and how we are constantly developing our programs to meet those changes. So with that, I thank you for listening, and I look forward to hopefully meeting you on campus soon.

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