Alumni News

Our Alumni program is starting to gain traction and develop into a strong community that genuinely enriches the student learning experience, showcasing real-life examples of a range of career paths and more generally, broadening the horizons of students as they consider their career after school.

In May, a small group of year 11 and 12 students attended Ourschool’s Industry Event at EY in the city. They heard from a panel of EY employees who all attended public high schools and spoke about their pathway after leaving school and what their job at EY involves. A great event that showed our students what is possible for young people like themselves. The panel were not the highest academic performers at school, but more importantly, well-rounded individuals with great attitudes and strong communication skills.

Early Term 2 we ran our first Alumni Panel Session with five of our former students speaking to our Year 10 cohort. It was a successful event and students heard about their unique pathways, the challenges they faced and how much they enjoy their job. Despite our students being reticent to ask questions, they were engaged and polite and hopefully went away inspired to strive for a rewarding career.

The first week of Term 3 we welcomed back 2010 alum Jesse Richardson, a Clinical Psychologist, to speak to our Year 11 & 12 Psychology classes about his job at the Royal Children’s Hospital, Cancer centre. Jesse talked about his extensive studies, the skills associated with the job, the challenges and its rewards. Student engagement was excellent, with sessions culminating in robust and relevant questions from students.

The next day we welcomed April Watson back to school to speak to students, specifically in our Year 11 Legal Studies classes. April was our Dux of 2010, has pursued a career in Law and is currently working as a Senior Solicitor Advocate at the Office of Public Prosecutions. The students were very interested in April’s career path into law and curious about the types of cases that she prosecutes. Both April and Jesse are strong supporters of the college and will no doubt visit again in the future.

Our Cranbourne Secondary College Facebook Alumni Group is growing with 252 followers, each of our posts reaches 200 to 1000 people and comments are positive and fun. Our LinkedIn presence is more professional with 110 alumni connections so far.

Further into the term we are looking to secure subject-specific alumni sessions with Studio Arts, Media, possibly a Super Rugby player and more. We have a database of almost 50 alumni, from a range of industries who are very keen to come back to Cranbourne Secondary College to speak to relevant classes about the job that they do, their pathway and to inspire the next generation. Some of them work in business, engineering, media, health and IT industries, just to name a few.

If you’re interested in finding out more about the program and how it might benefit our students, please contact me on: alumni@cranbournesc.vic.edu.au.