Welcome to Banksia

From Head of College - Fiona Crowe

Welcome to our mid-year Banksia which we are trialling as an electronic communication. So many of our Alumni have let us know how much they appreciate the updates and how proud they are of what St Cat’s is achieving. We’d love your feedback so please take a moment to let us know what you liked, what you didn’t and what you would like to hear more about.

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Impact and opportunity

The past 18 months have been immense for the College as we endeavour to keep our residents safe, motivated and feeling confident in their academic pursuits whilst navigating a constantly changing and often financially challenging environment. Higher education has been hugely impacted by COVID-19 and the College residential market has felt that pressure in so many ways.

The systems and processes of the College were very much put to the test with the discovery that a short stay guest had tested positive to COVID-19 on his return to Melbourne after staying in the College for three days. The guest had contracted COVID-19 while in quarantine at the Mercure Hotel in the Perth CBD. After testing negative in the standard testing regime he spent a couple of days with friends before booking into St Catherine’s on Park for three nights.

The College was contacted two days after his departure regarding a positive test result on his arrival home in Melbourne. The further test was triggered by his proximity while in quarantine to a family that tested positive for the Delta Strain.

What ensued was an extraordinary effort by the staff and students of the College to respond in textbook fashion to the requirements of the situation. The Executive worked around the clock with the Department of Health to identify all possible contacts of the guest while in residence and facilitated the testing of over 90% of residents. Staff activated all necessary protocols including lockdown cleaning, full meal service to over 200 students self-isolating at a given time, and ongoing pastoral checks. Communication with all stakeholders was maintained throughout the response period.

The College was congratulated by the Department of Health and by UWA for our immediate and professional response and my thanks to the Board, the staff and all our students for pulling together and achieving such a fabulous response to the event. Good humour and common sense prevailed in the face of outrageous fortune and for once negative results were celebrated!

Our team put together a small video to encapsulate the past Semester and there was an opportunity to look back and laugh at what was a very unique experience. I hope you enjoy it.

St Catherine’s at Curtin

Four years of hard work and persistence is drawing to a conclusion with St Catherine’s College due to open at Curtin University in January 2022. This will make us the first College in Australia to be on two campuses at two different universities and we are incredibly proud to be able to share what is so wonderful about St Cat’s at UWA with future Curtin students. We will feature more about the new College in the November issue of Banksia when we receive handover of the building and begin admitting the first students. Please see below for more images of St Cat’s at Curtin.

I would strongly urge you to consider making a gift to the College this year to support us in helping as many students as possible to attend St Cat’s. The scholarship requests have doubled in the past year partly due to more regional students wanting to study in Perth and partly due to changing financial circumstances created by COVID. Our ethos of equity of access to all students remains as strong as ever and your contribution will make a truly enormous difference.

I look forward to hearing from you so please feel free to reach out to me.

Fiona