High schoolers learn important industry skills

This was the key message of the recently held two-day Project Management Winter Camp, designed for, and attended by, selected senior high school students in years 10–12 interested in becoming the project managers of tomorrow.

The annual fun-filled event held on 13–14 July introduced participants to the versatility of a project management career, as explained by leading experts in the field, and required them to complete several case study projects that could only be completed by working in teams.

The high school camp was rounded off by an industry site visit to enterprise software company Atlassian, where each participant witnessed firsthand how project management tied into managing the resources, people, risk and budgets associated with the myriad projects in action.

“Project management is such a dynamic and growing field; it was pleasing to see so many ambitious high school students attending our Winter Camp and exploring project management as a possible career choice,” said Dr Kenneth Chung, Director of Project Management Undergraduate Program.

“The Winter Camp itself is tailored towards developing the important transferable soft skills such as leadership, communication and team dynamics needed as a project manager in the workforce.

“The site visit to Atlassian reinforced what had been taught by our experts over the two days, with students seeing for themselves the principles of people, technology and process management being applied within an industry environment.”

The Winter Camp is one of 20 hands-on outreach activities offered under the Faculty of Engineering and IT’s exciting Propel initiative. The Winter Camp allows high school students to learn about project management as well as programming, robotics, project management, technology and engineering – all while having lots of fun.

It also serves as an introductory component of the overarching Project Management Program within the School of Civil Engineering. A career in project management can open a window of job opportunities across a wide range of industries including infrastructure, sporting and concert events, manufacturing, mining, computing, finance, law and consultancy.

The Bachelor of Project Management is available at the undergraduate level while both the Master of Project Management and Master of Project Leadership is available at the postgraduate level.

From 2018, a project management major will also be available via the new Bachelor of Advanced Studies for studies in Arts, Commerce, Design Computing, Economics, Science and Visual Arts.