UQ Ipswich student Tom Keenan has just three subjects to finish for his Bachelor of Business Communication degree - and he's going for a perfect overall score of seven.
He has earned a seven (the highest grade possible) for every subject since enrolling in 1999.
He's also been working, first for Bendigo Bank and now as a University tutor and research assistant. And in his "spare" time he sings with the Queensland Pops Orchestra (QPO) and the Ipswich Orpheus Chorale.
Tom's work as a professional baritone with the QPO has included touring Australia and New Zealand with Scotland the Brave and performances at the Sydney Opera House, where the group appears as the Australian Concert Orchestra.
His career as a soloist includes winning the prestigious Courier Ballad Contest in Ballarat, following in the footsteps of past winners like Dame Kiri Te Kanawa.
He is Treasurer as well as a singer with the Chorale, a community Eisteddfod choir whose pedigree includes winning all eight sections entered in the 1998 Queensland Eisteddfod.
Its wide repertoire ranges from charity concerts to theatre restaurants - including catering. The next big drawcard is The Merry Widow at Ipswich Civic Hall in October.
Tom, 26, was born and bred in Ipswich where he says his family has lived for 160 years.
He was Dux of St Edmund's Christian Brothers College in 1992, then spent a year studying arts/law at the University?s St Lucia campus before taking a job with First Provincial Building Society.
The Society eventually became Bendigo Bank and the process of change awakened his interest in organisational culture, and change and knowledge management.
"The mergers resulted in some very bad experiences for staff," Tom said.
"We all knew things could have been done better. I decided that I wanted to go back to university to discover how organisational change could be handled effectively. The Bachelor of Business Communication here at UQ Ipswich has certainly shown me that."
A self-confessed "wilful child", Tom says he was also a late starter as a singer.
At six years old he refused to go to singing lessons. But in his mid-teens, when short-sightedness began to thwart his enthusiasm for rugby and cricket, his mother (a teacher specialising in music) "tricked" him into taking part in a musical by the Orpheus Chorale.
He also got involved in school musicals performed by students from St Edmund's and St Mary's, partly, he says, because as a teenage boy at a single-sex school he discovered it was "a great opportunity to meet girls".
For more information, contact Tom Keenan (telephone 07 3381 1037) or Moya Pennell, UQ Communications (telephone 07 3365 2846)
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