STUDENT REPORTS

As part of our Youth Service program Aadi Seth and Olivia Paruscio, students at Auburn High School, attended the Santos Experience program at Melbourne University. This included study over three days across a range of STEM disciplines including IT and data science, chemistry, health sciences, environmental science and engineering.

Before introducing the students, the Assistant Principal at Auburn High School Ross Pritchard thanked Hawthorn Rotary for making the Santos Experience programs available and commented that the school places great emphasis on science and STEM subjects, and that they consider the Santos Experience programs to be a very worthwhile extension of what they do at the school.

Aadi said that he has always been interested in science and that the program was most insightful and something that he would definetely recommend to others. He particularly  enjoyed meeting others at the course.  Olivia was most  interested inthe museums at the University and was attracted by the feeling of a community immersed in what they are doing.

Photos: Ross and Olivia - right, and Aadi - left.

There are further Santos Experience programs coming up later this year and we will be contacting the school  to ask them if they can identify other students who are interested and who they think would benefit from attending the various programs available. These include ;

Swinburne University -  July

Marine and Freshwater Discovery Centre Queenscliff -  September and January

Melbourne Uni Dookie Agricultural campus - November

RMIT - January

MUNA

MUNA or Model United Nations Assembly is a Rotary sponsored debating program that aims to improve students speaking and debating skills by representing a nominated country and debating a United nations resolution from the point of view of that country.

The debates are to be held at North Melbourne on June 18 and 19 and Hawthorn Rotary are sponsoring Sophie Newman and Ruby Robertson who will be representing  Auburn High School. This is a new initiative for Hawthorn Rotary, at least in recent times.

MOCK INTERVIEWS

Something that has been a much more regular activity for Hawthorn Rotary over the last 7 years is our support of the "Essentials for Life " program at Auburn High School. The year 9 and year 10 students spend a term learning about the world of work, resume preparation and updating, developing an accompanying letter and making application for a job. The culmination of this is a simulated interview conducted by Hawthorn Rotary members, partners and friends of Hawthorn Rotary and this lasts for 10 minutes with 3 minutes of feedback.

The result of this partnership is that students ae better prepared and more confident when it comes to the real thing.

Twenty interviewers gave up their morning on April 6 or 7 to partner with another member to interview 97 mostly engaged and impressive Year 10 students and the Principal, Maria Karvounis and Assistant Principal both dropped by to say how worthwhile the program is, and how they appreciate our help.

Thank you again to all those who participated.

We are scheduled to interview 130 Year 9 students in September and it is a reflection of the growth of the school that this will amount to around 130 students, by far the greatest number to date.

This means that we will need to find 26 interviewers which is a quite a challenge and so I take this opportunity to ask members who have not yet been an interviewer to make themselves available for a morning if they possibly can. It is certainly not a difficult task as most of the questions we ask the students are from a printed list and yet it is very satisfying to help young people in this way.

I won't be asking for volunteers until around August but in the meantime if you haven't interviewed before please give it some thought and talk to me if you have any questions.