Course coordinator Andrea Concher said the university has created a degree that is all about preparing students for the challenges they’ll face in the industry. 

“The way that our degree is designed presents opportunities for students to work on these hands-on projects and also compete with other projects at a national level,” she said.

Four students have proven the success of the degree after topping universities across the state in semester one that participated in the Engineering Without Boarders (EWB) Challenge.

Adrian Hickey, Lachlan Hicks, Amber Thomas and Rebecca Willcox created a compositing system that could be used by people in a refugee settlement in western Zambia. 

Mr Hicks said the people in that settlement don’t recycle their food waste, but this system would encourage them to and present benefits.

“This allows that scrap waste to be converted into compost which can help their sandy soils over there,” he said. “Everything that they compost actually adds back into their micro-nutrient deficiencies.”

The students constructed the compost bin using materials that the local community could easily and affordably access.

“They can’t just go out and buy a Bunnings composting bin like we can; they need to be able to use local materials,” Ms Willcox said.

She said there was hope the compost bin would preform well against projects from other universities, but the win was a surprise.

Another great opportunity has been presented to CSU’s engineering students with a partnership between the federal government and EWB.

Over $120,000 is available to support students to travel to and work in Cambodian communities through the New Colombo Plan initiative.

Ten students will have the chance to go each year.

“Students will have the opportunity to actually go to Cambodia to work in communities and kind of follow similar design process and develop solutions for the Cambodian context,” Ms Concher said.