I love my job.

The past two days has had so many highlights I can’t list them all, but here are two to share:

Bond Alumni are Awesome

Hugh Minson (now at Salesforce) and Tristan Cameron (Google) are aspirational examples of engaged students who have spread their wings and are living the dream. I remember them distinctly from our classes together in the early part of this decade, and we have remained in touch ever since. Effervescent, curious, highly intelligent with an intense desire to achieve, Hugh and Tristan openly shared their time and experience with the Bond SVST crew. The younger students came away enthused and in awe of the achievements of these two superstars, at the same time recognising that these types of graduate outcomes are achievable and attainable. Our postgraduate students were energised by the ways in which Hugh and Tristan have gone about developing themselves and their “careers”, as much as we can continue to talk about a career in the traditional sense. Connections were made and stories shared. The Bond Alumni network is in full swing.

Experiential Education is Critical

My time at Stanford and Northeastern University in 2014 exposed me to the immediate need to drive experiential and entrepreneurship education throughout our curriculum, with 97% of C-Suite US executives calling for this revolution. I have seen first-hand in just the past two days the relevance this provides to students for their academic studies. First year students Issy and Kate, who just completed the inaugural Business Model Generation class in their first year of studies, told me they were so pleased to have come on this tour because it made the frameworks and theories introduced in class make so much more sense:

“they are exactly what we’re seeing here”

“it’s not just from a textbook”

Although I like to think I provide a pretty relevant classroom experience, coupling it with the site visits on this tour cements the concepts in the students’ brains. They really understand now.

Equally satisfying was hearing my former students relate their work experiences to frameworks from our class: 5,6,7 years ago! The frameworks have stuck and they assist in making decisions today.

These are but two highlights of the tour thus far. Follow us at #BondSVST and I’ll post again in the coming days. What a privilege it is to be a teacher.