UOW PASS Leaders and staff who represented UOW at the recent National...

Ms Sally Rogan pictured with the Australasian PASS Leader awards Meli...

PASS Program enjoys a perfect award success rate

Accolades for the University of Wollongong PASS (Peer Assisted Study Sessions) Program just keep rolling in.

Following recent successes, PASS Leaders and staff have now won every individual and program award at institutional, national or international level in which they are eligible to nominate.

Two UOW Leaders, Melissa Stephen and Kate Vanzino were successful in the 2010 Australasian PASS Leader Awards which were recently judged in the United States. This is the third consecutive year UOW Leaders have been successful in these awards.

At the same time, it has recently been announced that PASS at UOW has been recognised by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) through its 2010 Australian Awards for University Teaching.

UOW received the award in the ALTC’s “The First-Year Experience” category.

The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Gerard Sutton, and the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) Professor Rob Castle, congratulated the entire PASS team on its achievement.

The PASS at UOW team will be formally recognised at a ceremony at Parliament House in Canberra in November.

In regard to the Australasian Leader awards, Head of Student Support and Peer Learning and PASS National Trainer, Ms Sally Rogan, said there were 35 nominations from around the region with the standard particularly high this year.

Kate, who supports philosophy, and Melissa from Creative Arts, were successful in the New and Senior categories respectively.

Their awards were presented at the National PASS Forum held recently in Queensland.

One of the American judges congratulated Ms Rogan and her team “for the outstanding work in Australasia and the establishment of a national centre based on exceptional quality standards for the dissemination of PASS”.

Earlier this year, the UOW PASS Program was awarded the ‘Most Outstanding PASS Program’ in the world – the first time the award has ever been given outside of the USA.

Ms Rogan said PASS was the cornerstone of the ‘first year experience’ at UOW with the program on offer to 95 per cent of first year students.

PASS is an academic support program that targets historically difficult courses or assists in building learning communities. It offers regularly scheduled, out-of-class review sessions to all students enrolled in a targeted course. PASS study sessions are informal “super group learning” in which students review notes, consolidate their understanding of lecture topics, develop organisational tools and prepare for examinations.