Postponed due to lack of funding

The Royal Society of Victoria’s Young Science Ambassadors program involves selected students participating in an intensive week long science program in Melbourne, designed to expose young science students to a range of scientific studies and scientific careers. Each student ambassador is given an understanding of science courses and rewarding scientific careers. On return to their schools they take on an ambassadorial role and talk to their junior forms and the wider school community about their experiences in the program with a view of encouraging students to consider the study of school science subjects and ultimately follow a career in the sciences.

Unfortunately the Royal Society was unable to obtain sponsorship for the planned January 2011 program, and is now hoping to reschedule it for 2012, or possibly 2013. The 2011 plan was for a program with a Burke and Wills theme -

The theme for the planned program is “The Sciences of the Burke and Wills Expedition”. The program exposes students to scientific activities in a variety of organisations in Melbourne, including CSL, CSIRO, Melbourne Water, the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, the University of Melbourne, the Synchrotron at Monash University, and the Herbarium at the Botanical Gardens.

In addition to participating in this intensive science program in Melbourne, students will travel to outback Australia to study the sciences which were part of the Burke and Wills Expedition 150 years ago, and to examine the role of science in the outback environment today. They will make a field trip to Broken Hill, the nearest large town to Menindee, where the Supply Party of the Burke and Wills Expedition were camped from October 1860, and from whence they departed for Cooper Creek in late January 1861. Activities in Broken Hill and the surrounding areas include learning about indigenous nutrition, navigation and astronomy, about mining, geology and geophysics, about inland river systems and irrigation, and visits to a Research Station and a cattle station.

On their return to Melbourne, the students attend a reception at Government House as the finale to the program.