Awards

The teaching staffs involved with QUTopia have won numerous awards that recognise the innovative teaching practices that inspire, engage and motivate students to learn as well as prepare them to be effective marketers in the real world.

Office of Learning and Teaching

Citations are awarded to those who have made a significant contribution to the quality of student learning in a specific area of responsibility over a sustained period, whether they are academic staff, general staff, sessional staff or institutional associates.

Marketing Plan Competition

Each year between 2008 and 2012, the peak body for marketing professionals in Australia ran a student marketing plan competition.  QUT was the winner for four of these five years with a marketing plan from QUTopia.  These awards are an endorsement of the real-world relevance of the assessment demonstrating that theory does indeed work in practice.

2012, 2011, 2010, 2008 Australian Marketing Institute Annual Award for Best Student Marketing Plan

Recipients: 4 Student businesses from the QUTopia simulation

QUTopia team wins award at Australian Marketing Institute

In 2008 a group of students from the QUT Business School won the Australian Marketing Institute’s Marketing Plan Competition.

The five Marketing Planning and Management students developed the top plan for their mock business Secret Garden while undertaking the marketing simulation called QUTopia, developed by Associate Professor Rebekah Russell-Bennett, where business students invent a product and prepare a marketing plan for it.

Professor Russell-Bennett said :
“the winning students, Renee Robbie, Gigi Brown, Brittany Downes, Elise Harper and Lili Huang, saw a niche market for gift plants and herbs, which they ‘sold’ to other students during two simulated market days.”

“Secret Garden was the most profitable business in QUTopia for the semester achieving 94.91% profitability, she said.”

“QUT is one of the only universities in the country where students actually make the product they write the marketing plan for and record business outcomes.”

“Because the plan has to be implemented, I believe that this encourages the students to be accountable and think realistically about marketing”

“The students were also required to include marketing metrics which are very important in the marketing industry and were a unique feature in the QUT marketing plans according to the AMI judges.”

The all-girl team worked very hard according to their tutor, Sandy Sergeant, who said:
“it was a pleasure to see students of this calibre working hard on real-world marketing
strategies.”

QUT awards

2010 Semester 1 QUT Vice-Chancellor Performance Fund Award (individual award)

Recipient: Professor Rebekah Russell-Bennett

2010 Semester 2 QUT Vice-Chancellor Performance Fund Award (team award)

Recipients: Professor Rebekah Russell-Bennett, Dr Kerri-Ann Kuhn, Frederic Fery, Sandy Sergeant, Naseer Choudhry, Rory Mulcahy, Cameron Mackay, Andrew Golledge