And when the college’s board of councillors, chaired by high-profile administrator and author, Paul Dillon, went on the search for a leader who could drive the respected institution’s offering to a new level, the chance to secure Cordingley was also an opportunity not to be missed.
Her experience and success in marrying the hopes and aspirations of skilled - often tertiary-qualified migrants - with the needs of the local business community through tailored educational programs in Parramatta area, spans eight years.
“The Parramatta College is essentially a community college, so it's a college for Parramatta and it's been in existence for quite some time and I knew about it well before I came here – through business dealings with the college in my previous role,” Cordingley explains.
“I managed the Professional Community Programs Unit at UWS College in Westmead for four years and that's where I had my association with The Parramatta College through the college's skilled migrant mentoring program.
“I ran a program called Skillmax for job-seekers, which was a government-funded program and The Parramatta College was the only one that offered the value-add course that UWS College referred its clients to after they did the intensive program there.”
Before starting work at UWS College, Cordingley spent four years in a training and development role at the NSW Aboriginal Land Council head office in Parramatta.
Her experience working with professional migrants in the area with residency, but struggling to get a foot on the employment ladder, will be invaluable to her plans to reinvigorate The Parramatta College.
The Parramatta College has also received federal government funding to offer peripheral training activities for the migrant community in and around Parramatta, including skills in resume writing, pronunciation skills, interview techniques and a little bit of cultural emersion to show them what it's like to work for an employer in Australia as opposed to the country they've left.
“They've all got tertiary degrees and they're frustrated,” she says. “Assisting professional migrants is very much the focus of what we do here because we have English support programs and, we've got the Overseas International Professional Student Mentoring Program and we have an English Pathways Program.”
She cites a range of different aims for the college to realise its potential into the future, including offering more blended learning opportunities, engaging more with local businesses with a view to tailoring courses to meet their needs and adding value to the college’s already-vast offering.
“We run national vocational accreditation programs and we offer them in a certain way, but I think there's a lot to be said for blended learning and online learning and self-paced learning opportunities for participants,” she says.
“I prefer blended learning where possible because I think it's really good for the participants to meet the people who are leading them through the training programs.
“My plan is also to develop as much of it as possible online and allow students to enrol at any time, without having to lock themselves into scheduled classes during a day or evening, it's whenever they want to do it.”
Cordingley says a new streamlined website website showcasing the college’s courses, venues and options would go live before the end of the year is now live, and this would be followed up in the New Year with a concerted effort to engage with Parramatta’s business community.
She says the college has formed a closer relationship with the Parramatta Chamber of Commerce with the college coming on board as a sponsor of the 2013 Western Sydney Awards for Business Excellence (WSABEs).
“We've got a lot on offer here on our scope, in the management and business skills area, which I'd like to take to the Parramatta businesses, to see what we can do to tailor programs for them,” Cordingley says.
“There's a lot of contextualised training or skills sets we could put together for businesses. We could manage to, for example, go in and do a capacity assessment on their staff and just find the learning gaps and develop a program that suits any particular type of enterprise.”
She says the college is proud to provide the Training and Aassessment qualification which is the benchmark of all training qualifications. Cordingley says it is the type of qualification that would be taken up by a lot of businesses in Parramatta who may have their own internal enterprise training function.
“It's only recently been upgraded and changed, so it's fairly new and the diploma in vocational education is a new mandatory requirement going forward for people offering enterprise training within an organisation,” she says.
“So we're offering that. We're one of very few people around town who've got both qualifications that on our scope, so we're unique in that way. And we have that locally, offered to Parramatta.”
Approaching local business about the course offering would assist the college with its strategy of leveraging the various value ads it could offer. But bolstering the college’s business and vocational and professional development programs would not come at the expense of an impressive variety leisure courses it continues to make available.
“We do aqua-aerobics and Zumba and ballroom dancing, Ukulele lessons and all sorts of wonderful things where the local community can get involved with each other, so there are several strings to the bow,” Cordingley says.
“My aim is to continue engaging with Parramatta’s migrant community to look at their needs and their aspirations and how the college, through its programs, can realise them.”
She believes it’s important to take maximum advantage of government funding available to make those courses available to migrant communities because members of the rich and diverse ethnic communities in the area “felt a little bit isolated” from the mainstream activities in Parramatta only because of the language barriers.
“Our aim is to try and find the opportunities and run programs to break down the barriers, to assist, because it helps everybody,” Cordingley says. “If the community is engaged, they're happier community, they're a healthier community and they're an employed community.”
