STEPS - Library - Central Queensland University

Part Three: The student learning journey
A STEPS student demonstrates to her peers how she composes quilts. 233
STEPS also has positive effects on family members. A woman who hadn’t
completed the STEPS program due to personal reasons came back to the
STEPS building one day to say thank you to a maths lecturer for helping
her improve her maths. She was forever grateful as she was able to
understand and help her son with his maths. He would now be a better
student because of her and STEPS. 234
‘The surrender value’ was the intention of the university from the very
beginning. While there was a push to increase the number of adult learners
wishing to study at university, Greg Harper realised that not all learners
would want to pursue university studies, and the program would assist them
in other ways. This is demonstrated in the first press release in 1986. 235
Professor Lauchlan Chipman further supports this notion below:
The STEPS program doesn’t actually bait people to come into the
University; its appeal is really the program in itself, that is,
something where there’s an opportunity to achieve. 236
There are a number of students who, after completing the STEPS program,
have been snapped up by employers because they’ve demonstrated a high
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