SA Student Compendium – Bigger & Better
The 2023 Student Compendium was launched with a great vibe on Thursday, 30th March 2023 to a crowd of 60 people with a 50:50 mix of 1,2,3rd year University students and professionals from various ag sectors.
Kindly supported by 5 major funding partners and over 30 sponsors, the compendium continues to be a collaboration between Ag Institutes SA Division and the Adelaide University Agricultural Students Association (AUASA).
The Student Compendium was created to address the 'Capacity Building' pillars of the South Australian Agricultural Industry Blueprints. The initiative aims to foster passion for South Australian agriculture in the next generation of leaders by promoting further learning and development. It champions a collaborative approach to highlight the opportunities available in agriculture, to build a strong and capable primary industries sector that has access to an inspired and skilled workforce, and our students will have clear and meaningful pathways, and are positive about primary industries careers.
High School, Vocational Educational Training and Tertiary students are encouraged to use the 2023 Student Compendium as a 'one-stop-shop' to assist their professional development by sourcing opportunities that align with their interests and goals.
The effort afforded by, and the confidence gained of the six Interns has been duly acknowledged. A critical success factor has been that they all had varied and diverse backgrounds, skills and interests, which assisted in the collection, collation and compilation of over 230 opportunities. In addition, new features and improvements on last year’s edition have been applauded, namely; a new cover design, 6 new content sections, an index by organisation, key words, 3 short focused editorials per page, sponsorship logo and adverts dispersed throughout and the perfect binding.
The Compendium has rated higher than last year, with the value of connecting students to industry at 4.8 out of 5 points, which you might be forgiven for thinking it’s already perfected, but the current working group have identified areas of continuous improvement and growth for next year’s Interns to explore.
The value of connecting industry to students at 4.6/5 is equally important as The Compendium is providing a simple, open and transparent pathway for industry to get their opportunities in front of students and engage them. Many students and early career professionals are affording themselves of 5-10 or even more opportunities from within the Compendium.
The Interns are very proud of this legacy resource that they’ve developed for their student peers and industry alike, and are very honoured and yet humble to have had such an experience through the Internships to help them grow as individuals, build their skills and confidence.
“My role involved stakeholder engagement and relationship management via telephone, face to face meetings and luncheon’s, writing funding applications, monitoring and evaluation, reports, the actual compilation of the 2023 edition into its new format, mentoring the other Interns and all of these skills have transferred well over to my role as President of AUASA. We’ve produced numerous publications and presentations, for example, we’ve presented a 1 page paper at the AAAS Conference in Cairns in July’22, written a 5 page paper specifically about the Internship process in the 2022 Ag Institute Journal and we’ve submitted an abstract and been invited to present a 40 minute workshop on the whole Compendium process at the PIEFA Annual Conference in Canberra in May’23, which may open further doors for the development of Compendium’s in other states.”
“The actual experiences and skills that I have learnt through my involvement in the Student Compendium has been invaluable to my professional and personal development. The biggest improvement that I have felt has been in my confidence, which has transferred amazingly well into every area of my life. This development has stemmed from being able to give things a go in a very supported environment from my mentors. This has allowed me to go forward with the confidence in my abilities to acquire new scholarships, internships and committee roles. I have gained a great appreciation for the bigger picture of the agricultural industry and now better understand how people at all different levels work together to enhance the prosperity of our industry. This has made me realise that I enjoy engagement across the industry and working with a wide variety of people to understand where we can help each other, and I look to continue this kind of work in the future.”
“The South Australian Grain Industry Trust (with 3 years of funding from 2023-25) has been generous to support the 3 Undergraduate Interns, (with their current interest in brackets), Aleah Bakota (Soils, Lab & Research), Charlotte Poker (Livestock) and Emma Knowles (Horticulture, Overseas Development) to reach out to agribusinesses and collect and collate entries. The SA Sheep Industry Fund (2022-23) have supported an inaugural Communications and Social Media Intern, Grace Moloney (Agronomy, Adoption, Communication) , to further develop the e-culture of the Compendium and Grace was also supported by the SA Cattle Industry Fund (2023) to develop “4 champion videos. James Easter (Cereals, weeds, education, Industry development & Capacity Building) is the 2023 Sponsorship Coordinator, following on from his role as an Undergrad Intern for the 2022 edition. James has made an outstanding effort this year to attract sponsorship and provide input into Strategic Planning, all while juggling an Honours project with Elders and the University of Adelaide and his role as a Graduate Policy Officer at Primary Producers SA.”