Principal

On Monday this week the Senior School met to congratulate our academic high achievers from 2024 at our annual Scholars’ Assembly. A highlight of the assembly was the address by invited guest Professor Andrew Campbell (OC 1977) who spoke about his remarkable career in agriculture and science partnerships and research, and gave some excellent advice to our students drawing on the lessons of his career.

Professor Campbell spoke about the importance of engaging with and responding to great global challenges and the real benefits that can come from cooperative initiatives, such as the local Potter Farmland Scheme, which led to the creation of Landcare networks across Australia. His advice to students about their careers and pathways clearly resonated with our students. He argued:

• that your career can be non-linear and will likely follow a range of different interests and paths over a lifetime;

• that you should do what interests you – take a gap year after school if you want to, but not just because your friends are;

• that you should seek to develop a ‘T-shaped’ character and skills profile. Develop real expertise in one key area of knowledge and skill, staying up to date with changes to understanding – this is the vertical stem of the T. And then broaden out your personal, problem-solving, innovation and collaboration skills – this is the horizontal top of the T and should be as wide as the vertical one is deep. 

While he didn’t use these terms, Professor Campbell’s T-shaped skills profile is a good analogy for the College motto, ‘Knowledge and Wisdom’. Develop deep knowledge in an area of specialisation, but broaden and round this out by adding flexible, transferable and personable wisdom about how to know yourself and relate to others. 

I am grateful to Andrew for coming back to College and speaking at Scholars’ Assembly; it was a fabulous speech. If you would like to engage further with Andrew’s ideas, I recommend his 2023 address to the National Press Club.