Ballarat Grammar graduates Kaitlyn Hancock and Hannah DeBuhr are making the move to study at universities in Melbourne with the help of the ACCIONA Waubra Wind Farm Education Scholarship. 

 A $5000 scholarship will help Ms Hancock study a Bachelor of Science at the University of Melbourne.

She said she hoped to move into environmental science, conservation or sustainability through science studies. 

“I think the issue with the environment has always been an underlying presence in our society,” Ms Hancock said. 

“I am leaning between working in sustainability like at ACCIONA on a wind farm or with solar panels, developing sustainable technology, or the other option is conservation and protection of endangered species.”

Hannah DeBuhr was awarded a $2500 scholarship on behalf of the Waubra Community Benefit Fund to assist her move to study a Bachelor of Industrial Design at Monash University. 

Ms DeBuhr said she hoped to create innovative sustainable and eco-friendly products through industrial design. 

“Products are purposely made to become obsolete, that means they won’t work anymore. That shouldn’t happen, it is just creating another environmental problem,” she said. 

“I am not so interested in how things look, I really want to focus on the function of things – creating things with multiple functions so it doesn’t end up as waste in the end. If one function doesn’t become helpful anymore there should still be other multiple functions which means it can survive.” 

The Waubra Wind Farm Education Scholarships have been offered to students in the Ballarat region since 2013.

 Waubra Wind Farm site manager Cameron Stowe said job prospects within the renewable energy sector were constantly growing.

“The technology is always new, so we need young people to be able to work with it and create that new technology, to be able to make it more efficient, and more sustainable for the long term,” he said. 

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