From the Principal
We always say one of the many gifts of a Pymble education is the ongoing connection and support of our community throughout your lifetime. ‘Once a Pymble girl, always a Pymble girl’ is our way of saying you will always be a cherished member of our Pymble family who we take great pride in championing and supporting as you embark on and travel through each new life stage.
Thank you for giving back
It has been wonderful to see the different ways our ex-students have been involved in championing and supporting others in Semester 1 of this year. To all those who have engaged with the College recently to connect with and advise our current students and younger alumni members at various careers-focused events, please accept my huge, heartfelt thank you for your gift of time and commitment to giving back. To our young alumni who are attending these events to learn and grow from our wider Pymble community, what fabulous decisions you are making for your careers.
Our most recent such event was the Alumni Networking Event held in May. You can read more about the background to this wonderful initiative in your ESU President’s column but I couldn’t resist sharing these reflections from our fabulous guest speakers on the night, who perfectly sum up the inestimable value of our Pymble Network in this video of highlights.
“…the one constant throughout [my career] has been relationships. So often in life, when we want to change, when perhaps things aren’t working out, we put that energy out into the universe and call on our network and, from that, magnificent things can happen.” – Felicity McVay (Carr, 1995)
“Sharing all of our career journeys and paths and mistakes, that was the big thing for me. When you’ve got the right people around you, like the Pymble network, anything is possible.” – Alena Bennett (Schedlich, 1997)
“What we talked about tonight was don’t have any fear, reach out, people are always happy to help and you already have a network, an amazing Pymble Alumni community.” – Evie Murdoch (2012)
“We shared a lot of information… so a wonderful, incredibly successful night where I think everyone walked away with something.” – Sarah Di Lorenzo (Cassimatis, 1990)
Each year, the College hosts a number of events for current students and alumni, where ex-students and members of our professional community share their experience and knowledge as mentors, speakers or panellists. In addition to our Alumni Networking Event, these include:
Careers Expo
In April, Pymble students in Years 10, 11 and 12 were fortunate to be joined by 40 ex-students representing a wide range of interesting professions, including architecture, audiology, communications, education, engineering, firefighting management, geology, law, medicine, nursing, politics and policy, publishing and research but to name a few. Our students also appreciated catching up with recent Pymble graduates representing residential colleges of the universities they now attend as undergraduates. Seeing familiar faces goes a long way to making a step into the unknown world of university a whole lot less nerve-racking, I’m sure you will agree!
emPOWER Lunch Series
This is a new event where guest speakers join Pymble students for lunch to share insights and promote a greater understanding about their work. Gabrielle Mullen (2016) kindly agreed to be our inaugural emPOWER Lunch speaker in May when she returned to the Senior School Centre to share her experience of studying and working in the field of engineering with our Senior students. Our next two lunches are scheduled Monday 25 July and Monday 5 September and we would love to hear from potential speakers (see below for contacts).
Future Careers Insight Evening
Held towards the end of the School year, this event is hosted in conjunction with St Ignatius’ College, Riverview for students in Years 10 and 11. Alumni from both schools lead group sessions designed to shed light on industries and areas of interest for our students as they embark on their Senior School studies and set their sights on a future beyond school.
There are so many different ways you can help to change the world for our students, past or present. If you’d like to be involved in our emPOWER Lunch series, Future Careers Insight Evening, or other careers events or mentoring opportunities, either online or in-person, please let us know what you are interested in and we can place you in the appropriate program.
Your best contacts are Alumni Relations Manager, Mrs Katrina Corcoran (1987) and our Director of Futures and Partnerships (K-12), Mr Andrew Kozyra.
Exciting plans for Pymble’s future
You may be aware that the College is undertaking a program of building work predominantly focused on improving the academic facilities at the College. Of course, being Pymble, we are doing due diligence to ensure our plans tick all the boxes: optimal for learning, sustainable, world-class and future-proof. I am looking forward to using my impending enrichment leave to visit a number of exciting new STEM-related buildings and modern libraries in the USA and England to bring ideas back to the College and help inform the build.
In addition to scoping out world-leading architectural design of learning spaces, I will be using my time on leave to bring back new knowledge and ideas from:
- Attending the Global Forum on Education in Boston, along with our Head of Junior School, Mrs Kate Brown, and Rev Punam Bent, who are presenting their work on our upcoming ‘Kindness Convention’ and ‘The influence of social media’ respectively.
- Undertaking an Oxford Initiative War and Peace Series course at Oxford University. The Oxford Initiative is part of the Global Women’s Narratives Project to amplify the voices and experiences of women who have lived through and risen above situations of conflict in order for storytellers, policy makers, scholars, lawyers and human rights advocates to effect positive change. I am especially excited about viewing this work through the lens of our Social Intelligence pillar, to better understand the lives and strengths of women affected by conflict and war, whether that’s as a first or subsequent generation.
- Meeting with our partners at University of California, Los Angeles. UCLA trained our academic staff to deliver a new Data Science Course for students in Years 9 to 11 – a first for any school in Australia. It is with enormous pride that I will share this overview of the work our girls are doing, and staff and student feedback, including our ultimate aim to develop an Australian version of a UCLA/Pymble IDS curriculum that can lead to mentorships, internships and externally-recognised credentials.
- Meeting with our partners at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as we work towards establishing a NuVu Innovation Studio at Pymble to empower the next generation of young designers, entrepreneurs, makers and inventors – another first for Pymble, NuVu’s only partner school in the Southern Hemisphere.
This is an exciting time of innovation and growth for the College, with our Watch Us Change the World Strategic Direction in its second year of implementation and plans underway to enhance the on-campus experience for all students with innovative new learning precincts and facilities. To help support our vision, we have established a Pymble Foundation. If you are interested in supporting this development or any of the exciting new STEM programs highlighted above, please contact our new Associate Director of Development, Ms Alexandra Wright (Dillon, 1993), who would love to take you through our plans in further detail. Alex can be contacted via email alwright@pymblelc.nsw.edu.au or on 02 9958 7792.
Signing off for now with gratitude and best wishes for all our former students, wherever you are in the world today. Stay safe, stay warm (if you are in NSW or anywhere else where we are freezing!) and, please, stay connected with each other and the College. Our enduring bond is one of the many special aspects of our Pymble community for which we are truly blessed.
Dr Kate Hadwen 