Project management study can lead to rewarding careers across construction, IT, business and beyond. Laura Stinton was working for a bank when she enrolled in the Master of Project Management at UTS. Could Project Management study work for you too?
The UTS Master of Project Management is the first Australian program to receive accreditation from the global Project Management Institute (PMI), and one of few to also be accredited by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). But they're not the main reasons the degree stood out for Laura. Rather, it was the highly practical focus of the degree that she was immediately drawn to.
"I could see it was going to be a lot more hands-on than some of the other courses I’d considered," Laura says.
I wanted to develop my skills because I really enjoyed the work.
So I thought, why not do it with a master’s?
Course content is delivered primarily in block mode where students attend classes in ‘blocks’ of two to four days, rather than on a weekly basis. This approach creates an intensive learning experience that enables students to draw rapid connections between their theoretical learning and its practical application, as well as often being easier to manage in the busy calendars of full-time working professionals.
"It can be a little bit daunting seeing that you’re going to be in class for four days solid, but it’s really worth the experience. You get the chance to interact with people who work on a really wide variety of projects."
Standout experiences included practice-based learning in planning and project organisation with an emphasis on resource management, as well as a subject that introduced students to risk management in the context of a real-world event: Sydney’s New Year’s Eve fireworks. It’s large, real-world examples such as these that prime UTS project management graduates to not just perform at a high level but to communicate holistically throughout their organisations – up to and including board level.
"I’ve always looked at risk from a very IT-centric point of view," Laura says.
"This subject got me to think in a different way and consider risk from different viewpoints and from other people’s viewpoints as well."
Even being in the classroom surrounded by other project management peers was a learning experience, Laura says.
"Hearing the different methods that my classmates were using in their projects really helped to give me different ideas of how to treat various situations in my own working life." she says.
Today, Laura is a project manager – and, nearly four years after completing her master’s degree, she still finds herself calling on the things she learned at UTS.
"Some of the theory and some of the techniques that we learned during the course definitely led me on the pathway to be able to move into the IT project lead space," she says.
"I was able to build on those experiences as I worked through different projects and build them into what I use today in this role."
