The power of asking ‘why not?’

Posted by UNSW Business School

This time, last year, UNSW Business School celebrated the success of our students at the GradConnection Top 100 Future Leaders Competition. With two-thirds of our 28 finalists from the UNSW Business School, our UNSW Accounting Society taking out the ‘Most Engaged Student Society’ title, and UNSW winning the  ‘Most Employable University Award’, it’s fair to say we started 2020 with a pretty strong start.

By March, life would change. Not just for us - for everyone. Our students. Our academics. Our industry partners. And let’s not forget - the whole world. 

Despite the uncertainty and anxiety of a pandemic, one thing remained across us all: our community and our commitment to building authentic, career-focused learning experiences for our students. 

There’s a saying at the UNSW Business School: “Good minds ask why. Great minds ask: why not?”. This ethos is at the heart of the faculty’s values, reflecting a pioneering attitude, a determination of spirit and a focus on innovation and progress. 

Shifting 18 000 + UNSW Business School students online saw this ethos in action, giving us daily opportunities to refocus, redesign and redeliver. The result? Doubling our industry and student engagement reach in 2020. 

Local and global internships online? Why not. Our COMM2222 Industry Experience Program, COMM22333 Industry Consulting Project and COMM3020 Global Business Practicum flexed its 2020 best and reached industry and students across the globe. 

Industry networking and skill-up workshops? Why not. Our Business Insights and Industry Extra workshops in collaboration with our industry partners continued online. These sessions saw our industry check-in from anywhere from their humble home, whether it was in Sydney or Singapore. 

Industry mentoring programs? Why not. Our Career Mentoring Program connected 100+ industry partners and Alumni with our talented pool of undergraduate students in our penultimate to final year. Our Australian Business Essentials informed and engaged our postgraduate international students on Aussie work culture, with practical skills and workshops to prepare them for their next steps into the Australian workplace. 

Working with our student communities? Why not. With 26 student clubs and societies formally affiliated with the UNSW Business School, connecting and collaborating with our communities amplified more than ever before. We saw our societies deliver 200+ industry events and skill up sessions, reaching new audiences locally and internationally online.

And for our 2020 award-winning UNSW Accounting Society, every planned event continued to be delivered, including the annual Mock Recruitment Process - a series of career-focused workshops to prepare students for the graduate recruitment process. This included Assessment Centres, which were delivered in collaboration with UNSW Business School’s Career Accelerator and Development Beyond Learning (DBL). The mode? Online, in Zoom. The result? Higher engagement and better feedback on the previous year’s face-to-face option. 

And while 2020 is now behind us, we look to 2021 with the same innovative mindset - with a redesigned Bachelor of Commerce leading our current students into the brave new world of the future workforce. What that may be, we are yet to know. But what we do know, is that there is only one way to do business in the face of uncertainty. And that’s to simply ask the words: why not?

Why not: connect with UNSW Business School in 2021. Contact us at [email protected] 


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