Year 12 student Samara McLeod has successfully completed the Australian Catholic University (ACU) Step Up course.

Samara commenced the course in the 2021 September school holidays and it continued through the 2022 January school holidays. The Step Up course is an intensive course of learning, but at the conclusion, Samara had completed two university units. The units are taught and graded to university standards. Samara has now successfully completed units in Sports and Exercise Science as well as Nutrition and Exercise Science while still a high school student.

Samara learned and applied for this course through an information evening held by ACU back in the 2021 June/August period. In her application, she needed to state why she wanted to enrol in this course, why she would be the right candidate and what her future goals were.

The lectures are delivered face to face on campus, which for Samara were held in Fitzroy, though due to COVID many lectures took place on zoom but Samara said they “were still delivered flawlessly with immense amounts of support”.

Samara thought that she wanted to do a bachelor of nursing/paramedicine double degree to hopefully one day become a paramedic, but she was still tossing up the idea that she may want to pursue a career in exercise science, looking specifically at exercise physiology so she thought it would be a good idea to get a wider knowledge and an insight into what the course would be like, which ended up being exactly what she needed.

ACU provided students with a support team of student ambassadors that helped her navigate this new Uni experience, they also provided support when submitting work by showing how to reference and check work for any possible errors, as well as how to correctly turn in assignments to the lecturer.

Sports and Exercise Science was one of three courses students could choose from. The courses that Samara has completed count as units towards her degree, and can also transfer over to different courses with the same content, meaning that students will not have to complete a unit that was already provided in the Step Up program.

Congratulations Samara, your hard work in completing these University units is an impressive achievement and we hope you are very proud of yourself.

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