Faculty Report

What an honour and a privilege it is, reflecting on the Humanities faculty, its achievements and the manifold changes it has undergone since the end of the last academic year. Firstly, an important acknowledgement: Mr Nicholas Young's ascent to the position of Dean of Digital Pedagogies has concluded a truly great tenure at the head of the Humanities. As Humanities Co-ordinator for the better part of a decade, he has been a stalwart champion of our subjects and our mission; to facilitate powerful, worldly and highly skill-focused learning on the part of our students. Stepping into Mr Young's shoes and following in his footsteps will be incredibly difficult and I will admit to being daunted by the heady responsibility of taking the faculty forward into the uncertainty that lies ahead. However, like Mr Young, I am blessed by a truly great team of motivated, passionate and extraordinarily capable teachers. Their support will be invaluable and, of course, absolutely necessary to our continuing success.

On that note, the faculty welcomes our new teachers - Mr Nathan Fallon and Mr Marcus Coburn - into the fold. Mr Fallon's historical, political and legal expertise is already making itself felt, as is Mr Coburn's immense strength in Geography. Our teaching team is lucky to have this much talent at the College's disposal. 

We are also - naturally - blessed with students who continue to amaze us all with their capacity for transmogrifying skill and content knowledge into concrete results. In 2023, the Humanities' (Geography, Politics and History) U3&4 cohorts achieved superlative results across the board, led by Dominic Kaka's stunning 49 in Global Politics. Sean Iyer was in close pursuit, with a 48 in History Revolutions. Micah Tennant led the Geography cohort with an immense effort culminating in a subject score of 46. There were other achievers at the highest level; Ryan Perera and Antonio Di Giovine also managed scores of 46 in Revolutions, while Dante De Palma performed at a similarly high level and secured a 45 in Global Politics. These results signify endless effort and commitment on behalf of the aforementioned students, and we proudly celebrate their success. 

Our cohorts, as a whole, managed a faculty median of 36, which really speaks for itself. We could not be happier with our results for last year and ardently hope that 2024 is just as fruitful. There are certainly some big changes in the offing to look forward to, both in this calendar year and beyond. The new Victorian Curriculum will no doubt spur a great deal of curricular development and will help us to refresh our offerings in Years 7-10. We are expecting to roll out the refurbished curriculum in 2026, which will help keep Mazenod College at the forefront of learning and teachings for years to come. I, for one, am certainly excited to see what tomorrow will bring, privileged as I am to be leading a faculty loaded with world class talent, and teaching students possessed of so much potential.

Mladen Spasic

Faculty Head Humanities