This post is part of our series about the individual experience of studying with UNE Business School – we’ll be talking to current students, graduates and alumni over the coming months. If you have a story to share, or know someone who does, let us know via email.

Hazel Fowler

Master of Economics, 2015 – October 2017

Hazel recently completed her Master of Economics with UNE Business School – one of our hard-working online students with a diverse background of academic and industry experience.

Originally from Wellington, New Zealand, Hazel studied at Otago University, completing a Bachelor of Consumer and Applied Sciences (Hons) with a major in Consumer Food Science. The combination of psychology, marketing, anthropology, sensory science and sociology units gave Hazel the foundations to look at human behaviour from a few different aspects. From university, she took a job as a social scientist at Food Standards Australian New Zealand (FSANZ) – which called for a relocation to Canberra.

Working in this role involves the study of how people interact with food, often looking at how people use and understand food labels – a combination of conducting literature reviews and commissioning original research.

Hazel’s curiosity around economics started with aspects of her role at FSANZ – she shares that she ‘dabbled’ in some economics at work, as well as listening to some podcasts and reading more around the topic. Having decided to test the waters of returning to academia with an introductory Microeconomics unit at Swinburne, she realised this was a good fit for her, and started a graduate diploma with Monash University.

Hazel found her way to UNE in her decision to move into a Masters – a degree that allowed her to study on-line – as UNE were able to credit her previous study for advanced standing, and in light of her experience and prior study, didn’t call for an undergraduate degree.

Once I started studying through UNE, I was really impressed with the quality of the lectures and materials provided online, as well as the opportunities for connecting with lecturers and other students (e.g. Adobe Connect).

Hazel shares her enjoyment of Introductory Macroeconomics with Dr George Chen, where the material was challenging but George’s mode of delivery was engaging – with the added student support for this unit, as well as assistance from a tutor, her ability to learn online was supported.

Hazel also notes the completion of her dissertation was particularly rewarding – supervised by Professor Derek Baker, she found great guidance and support through his responses to her many questions and drafts during the process.

While studying, Hazel has also been traveling through Chile and Peru, obtained a promotion, and bought and moved house with her partner. She shares with us the enjoyable experience of using her learnings from ECON371 – Introductory Econometrics to the house hunting process – putting together a regression model to predict house selling prices.

Now, Hazel is able to enjoy a little of those post- graduation time to read books, spend time with friends and work in the garden.

Up next for Hazel  with hopefully include more work in economics within the government.

In particular, I enjoy looking at how economics can be used to better design government policy and regulation. Hopefully in the long term I could test out my skills in another area of policy, such as education or the environment. I enjoy demystifying (or attempting to!) economics for other people. So a role that incorporates that would be ideal.

 

We wish Hazel all the best with her qualifications and look forward to meeting her for Graduation in 2018. We can’t wait to hear more about where she takes her Masters next!