Philippines I Paul "Marty" Fuentes

After completing an undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering in the Philippines, Marty sought a postgraduate degree with a prestigious world-ranking. Australia emerged as an attractive education destination after Marty learned that several universities hold top world-rankings. To save up and finance his studies overseas, Marty worked as an engineer in the Middle East. This time helped him understand the direction he wanted to take in his career and solidify his study plan.

“With a joint Master of Engineering Management (MEM) and Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree, I would hit two birds with one stone: a degree on my core discipline in engineering and to complete an MBA—three letters I had been seeing a lot in the calling cards of managers I had the opportunity to meet while working in the Middle East.”

Marty received offers from three universities—including UTS and two in Melbourne. Although he was holding an offer for a Group of 8 (Go8) university, Marty ultimately decided to enrol at UTS and pursue a joint Master of Engineering Management (MEM) and Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree.

I picked UTS because it was the top university outside of the Go8 and it offered the MEM/MBA dual degree. My decision boiled down to the course, the tuition cost wherein UTS was cheaper and my research on the better weather and lifestyle in Sydney as compared to Melbourne.

Since Marty had completed his undergraduate engineering degree in the Philippines, he noticed the cultural differences in teaching and learning at UTS.

“The major difference was that at UTS, there are a lot of collaborative, group projects. In my undergraduate degree, my grade scores were based mainly on my sole efforts. At UTS, and perhaps embedded in Australian teachings, a chunk of my grade had to come from group works. This collaborative environment I also observed working in the country. There's a lot of promotion of working with a team or a group and my exposure to UTS in this kind of environment actually helped me in my professional life.”

The MBA side of his degree helped Marty complement his engineering studies with the soft skills to be an effective colleague and leader.

“As an engineer, I'm a data person. I rely on numbers and factual data to support most of the decisions I make whether in the corporate or the real world. I try to be as objective as possible. With the MBA, I learned how to navigate making decisions not solely or mostly based on numbers. I got to know and learn about soft skills—how emotions play a role in making decisions. It opened my mind to this idea and to become more of a leader than a manager in how I approach my direct reports at work. I learned about the importance of taking care of your people rather than just managing tasks.”

In the middle of his studies, the COVID-19 pandemic struck and Marty found himself at a challenging crossroad.

“I stopped my studies for a while. During that break, I lost interest in coming back to UTS. I contemplated completely discontinuing my studies in order to not burden myself with the financial challenges that go with it. It's no secret that Australian education is costly. That hiatus allowed me to recover and prepare financially, for the time when I had to decide to come back to UTS. To stay motivated in my studies, I remembered the time when I felt fortunate and grateful that I had the chance to study at an Australian university - my feelings at that time and my ambitions. I had to channel this energy and enthusiasm to the present to re-ignite that drive in me to go back to my studies. So I decided to continue.”

After returning from a hiatus in his studies, Marty finally graduated from UTS with his MEM/MBA. Today, he works as a Senior Manager Planning with Transport for NSW. In his role, he leads a team of project planners who are responsible for overseeing the scheduling of the state’s road and infrastructure projects. Thinking back on his time at UTS and the challenges he overcame to get to his career, Marty says,

“I feel like completing my degree at UTS is one of the milestones of my life. Being able to work in a beautiful city like Sydney is a blessing. I have the opportunity to live in a place that most people consider as a tourist destination. I consider Sydney now as my home and I'm thankful that I have a good career here as well.”

Although his days as a student are behind him, Marty is still hard at work with academic pursuits that enhance his development as an engineer. He’s currently working with Dr. Kaveh Khalilpour to publish his first academic journal about solar photovoltaic energy adoption in Australia. With Dr. Khalilpour’s help, Marty taught himself to create a PowerBi dashboard on the subject.