Australia’s largest luxury motor yacht builder Riviera, based on the Gold Coast, continues its commitment to fostering excellence by encouraging its apprentice graduates to participate in a new initiative aimed at enhancing their skills and career pathways.

Over a six-month term, graduates of the Riviera apprenticeship program team up with a mentor at Riviera’s Coomera production facility as part of Study Gold Coast’s Kickstart program.

Study Gold Coast has transitioned the Gold Coast Student Hub online allowing students to remain connected and supported during these challenging times. 

The Virtual Hub was created in response to the Federal Government’s COVID-19 social distancing policies with Gold Coast Student Hub moving temporarily online to ensure Gold Coast students continue to receive the services, support and social opportunities that they’ve come to enjoy through the Gold Coast Student Hub.

"I didn’t think I could grow so much professionally in such a short period of time." Shreya Kulkarni is studying her Masters in Marketing at Griffith University. This is her remarkable account of her internship experience at HTG Solutions on the Gold Coast.

Twenty years ago documentary filmmaker John Christensen was shopping in a Seattle market when he heard a loud cheer in the distance. He followed the sound to discover fishmongers throwing fish to each other and their customers in spectacular fashion. While it was clearly entertaining it became apparent to John that these fishmongers, despite getting up at ungodly hours and working long and physically demanding days clearly enjoyed their jobs as they went out of their way to please their customers. When John later returned with a crew to film the fishmongers’ story it became clear to him that there were four simple practices they used that could be adapted to create job contentment, customer satisfaction and increase productivity in any workplace and with that Fish Philosophy was born.

Fish Philosophy has since been embraced by businesses of all shapes and sizes with incredible results. Last week the PST Training Store’s Danielle Peters shared the Fish Philosophy with Study Gold Coast members over breakfast in the Gold Coast Student Hub.  

Local students are setting out to provide delicious BBQ food and coffee to the community via a mobile food and beverage cart through a new incentive designed to take the training conversation to the people of the Gold Coast. 

The Education Coffee and BBQ Cart will create a relaxed social environment allowing employers, current students, potential clients, prospective students and community members to connect over coffee and food while highlighting the advantages of upskilling to enhance employability and canvas work placement opportunities for TAFE students. At the same time hospitality and event students will gain workplace learning experience by developing technical and employer valued soft skills while preparing and serving food and coffee from the cart.

The world is changing faster than most of us can grasp and at an ever-increasing rate. Traditional notions of career pathways and job descriptions are being created almost daily to the point where asking a child what they want to be when they grow up is almost a redundant question. The real question for parents and educators alike is: “how do we give our children the skills they need to not only adapt, but thrive in an increasingly uncertain future?”

Recently Study Gold Coast invited a number of innovators to address the city’s education and training sector to demystify entrepreneurship and why we need to develop enterprise skills within our curriculum to meet the needs of the 21^st century workplace. Leading the discussion was Dr Baden U’Ren, Bond University’s Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship and Leanne Kemp, Queensland’s Chief Entrepreneur.