New capital works projects

Improvements to the campus facilities

Wodonga TAFE has three capital works projects underway that are designed to improve access to our services and reduce our environmental footprint. These projects are funded by the Australian Government through the Teaching and Learning Capital Fund (TLCF) for Vocational Education and Training (VET).

Childcare extension

The Kids on Campus childcare centre caters for the needs of Institute staff and students enrolled at Wodonga TAFE, as well as ex-students. The building is being extended to increase the physical floor space to accommodate the centre’s growth in demand in areas such as out-of-school-hours care, child care for young mums enrolled at TAFE, and a kindergarten program. The extension will be completed by March 2010.

The centre also provides training opportunities for our diploma and certificate-level children’s services students. The project will include an observation room within the existing facility to be used by these students as a learning tool. The room will accommodate 10-15 students at a time and provide them with the opportunity to observe and study the interaction of children at any time without directly impacting on the children during care.   

New connectivity network

A full wireless area network (WLAN) is being constructed across all campuses to enhance the capability of the Wodonga TAFE facility to provide world-class connectivity and communications to students and staff. This will benefit students by providing them with an enhanced and more flexible relationship with their teachers and fellow students. This technological capability will bring Wodonga TAFE into the 21^st century meeting client expectations of the latest technological approaches to teaching, demand-driven training content provision and flexible approaches to learning both on and off campus.

This project also contributes to the wider Victorian government training and educational goal of high quality education and training for life-long learning contributing to quality job and career outcomes, within a thriving innovative Victorian industry context.

Retro-fitting for sustainability

Wodonga TAFE’s sustainability action plan applies environmentally sustainable design concepts in all new buildings; however, there are a significant number of buildings on campus that are older than five years. As part of the Institute’s commitment to reducing its carbon footprint, a portion of the funding will assist in refurbishing these existing older buildings with:

• energy efficient lighting and automatic energy-saving mechanisms
• installation of rain water tanks plumbed into all existing toilets and laundry
• replacement of existing large-capacity cisterns
• · audit by mechanical engineer to provide a report on existing air conditioning and heating plant with a recommended technology replacement schedule
  • installation of paper waste weighing equipment to reduce paper waste across the institute.

This project is due for completion in February 2010.