The power of student events

Tess Worley (Year 12) delivers her speech on the insidious allure of cults entitled ‘Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid’ at the recent Gen+ Talks event.

At MLC, students are encouraged to become masters of their own learning through a wide variety of student leadership roles and opportunities that hone innovation, creativity and engagement. In 2022, a collection of Senior School students took the initiative with the creation of two large-scale, professional quality student-led events, to rival TEDx and the Royal Society. Year 12 students, Luvena Liang and Nadine Lim are the President and Vice-President of the student club, People Really Into Science @ MLC (PRISM), who, together with the rest of the PRISM executive team, pulled off the inaugural MLC Science Conference, after two years of frustrating event postponements. “PRISM Science Club is a great place to find like-minded students to get the wheels turning, and the Science Department is always open to new ideas and initiatives,” Luvena says. “From its conception in 2019, our aim for the MLC Science Conference was always to give secondary school students the opportunity to engage with the world of scientific research, as told by the experts themselves.” The conference, with a focus on biomedical research, invited science-inclined students from all over Melbourne to attend on MLC’s campus, with four accomplished industry keynote speakers and twelve more breakout presenters. Topics included the production of vaccines, genetic sequencing, and brain maturation.

“With the heightened relevance of biomedical research in recent years, we felt it was fitting to focus the event on this area, informing students about its ground-breaking developments and potential careers,” explains Nadine.

Meanwhile, Year 12 student Amy Le Mai, jumped at the opportunity to keep an established student event going: Gen+ Talks. Modelled on the TED talk format, the all-day event brought together an incredible line-up of students and teachers presenting talks on thought-provoking topics - from the political system, atheism and even the hidden nature of cults! For the first time, presentations were also made by some students from Scotch College, and we welcomed special guest speaker, Professor James Tatoulis, with his talk, “Medicine: our greatest treasure”. “After attending the very first Gen+ Talks back in 2019, I instantly knew that I wanted to contribute to its longevity at MLC,” says Amy. “Witnessing my peers and teachers having the opportunity to share in their ideas and passions inspired me to strive to replicate that atmosphere for the newer ‘generations’ of MLC students.”

For Amy, events for students, by students, just makes sense in the context of MLC:

“MLC prides itself on educating the future leaders of our society, and student-led events such as Gen+ and the PRISM conference provide students with the opportunity to develop and demonstrate their leadership skills and learning the complexity of running events,” says Amy. “Student-led events highlight MLC’s student-led culture, where students have the opportunity to shape their experience at the school.” Nadine agrees: “If you have an idea, start talking to others about it; our conference felt like an insurmountable task at first but split between six of us it became manageable and fun!” “If we want to promote ourselves as enabling students to become worldready, we need to be true to that and provide students with opportunities to do real things that take them into the real world. I think that GEN+ Talks and the PRISM Science Conference both fit the bill perfectly here. “Students are having to organise events from the ground up – they are meeting all the challenges head on and having to solve their way through them.”

– Jennifer Bailey Smith, Head of Senior School

PRISM Executive team members (L-R), Ashleigh Hughes, Amy Le Mai, Stephanie Liang, Nadine Lim, Jacqueline Li and Luvena Liang, with Head of Science Mrs Miriam Beasy.