The 2008 VALA student Award for a student at RMIT University goes to Alice Fahey.
The top student at RMIT in the Graduate Diploma in Information Management, Alice told us that she would have to say that she fell into libraries/information management. She started working as a Customer Service Officer at Darebin Libraries towards the end of her Arts Degree (Linguistics and Japanese). It was only half way through a second undergraduate degree (Speech Pathology) that she decided she might actually prefer a career in libraries.
She chose to do the Graduate Diploma of Information Management at RMIT because she wanted to study face-to-face rather than online and the course seemed to have a practical focus. She really enjoyed the breadth of the course and thinks it provides great preparation for work in a variety of library and information management contexts. She believes that enthusiastic and knowledgeable staff and classmates were also one of the most valuable aspects of the course.
At this stage she is not exactly sure what she hopes to do in the future. She has loved working as a customer service officer in a public library but she is also looking forward to getting stuck into the more technical behind-the-scenes tasks in her new job at Deakin University. Congratulations, Alice!