To begin, I have two sincere messages of appreciation: the first is to Lynda Murphy, who did an extraordinary job holding both the Academic and Careers & Employability Spaces together for the last few months of 2023. This allowed my daughter to finish her first year at school, as well as my family to get organised for a big move, something I will forever be grateful for. The second is to the entire King’s Community. As a new staff member who had moved my family a significant distance to Brisbane, there were trepidations about what the role may actually entail. I have been absolutely blown away by the welcoming nature of every single student that I have interacted with so far. There certainly seems to be something special about this King’s community and I am very much looking forward to the remainder of 2024. For the returners – please don’t be a stranger! There are still many of you that I haven’t met, and I would love to be able to get to know each of you over the next few weeks.

Building off the back of an already successful academic space here at King’s, there are some changes that will come into effect this year. The first that I would like to outline here is the change to academic progression. We do have academic requirements to remain a Collegian here, and as spots become increasingly competitive, a solid academic standing will be a key part in your application to remain at King’s, and to return next year. I have changed our progression levels to move more in line with those of UQ, and they are now as follows:

• None (this is the starting level for our 1st years)
• Satisfactory
• Progression Alert
• Progression Intervention
• Improved Progress

A move to progression alert/intervention will be triggered by: not maintaining a GPA of 4.0, reducing your study load from full-time without direct permission, or failing a course/subject for the second time. Please note, the intention here is solely to ensure that we at King’s are doing everything we can to support you in your studies. I will be meeting all those Collegians on both Progression Alert and Progression Intervention levels over the next two weeks, to try and ensure success for Semester One.

For all those students not attending UQ – it is a requirement of King’s College that you share your enrolment details as soon as possible. For the beginning of the semester, this is vital to ensure that I can arrange appropriate tutorial support for all courses. When it comes to the end of the semester, you need to share your results within 2 weeks of them coming out. Failure to do so will result in your place at King’s coming under review.

Finally, thank you all for your patience in the start of the Tutorial Program for 2024. There are many instances where you need to see something in action before you can know what best practice might look like, and the Tutorials are certainly no exception. Once all the tutorial chat groups are up and running, you will see the timing and frequency of these tutorials move to suit your needs – which is always our priority. If you need more, less, or different tutorial support, please reach out as soon as you can. It is one of my main goals for the year to provide some sort of tutorial support for every one of our Collegians that wants it (associates included!).

Key dates:

UQ/ACU/Griffith census date 31st March

QUT census date 22nd March

Mid-sem break 29th March