Science Gallery Melbourne and Chartered Accountants partner to raise youth engagement with STEM

Virtual tour of Science Gallery Melbourne’s SWARM, as part of STEAM Careers Online Forum: Emerging Tech. Image: Eloise Coomber.

Science Gallery Melbourne has entered a wide-ranging partnership with Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CA ANZ)  to increase school students engagement with STEM, that includes several innovative activations.

Launching with a series of three STEAM Careers Forums for secondary school students earlier in 2022, the partnership also encompasses sponsorship of Science Gallery Melbourne’s popular Friday Night Socials, and a competition for the University’s engineering, accounting and mathematics and statistics students to program content for the  award-winning media architecture, Digital Bricks - the largest combined pixel display in the Southern Hemisphere.

Science Gallery Melbourne Director Dr Ryan Jefferies highlighted the value the partnership with CA ANZ offers in delivering these educational activations and events, and said: “This important partnership enables a shared vision to ignite creativity and discovery in young people at the intersection of science and art and highlights the value of innovation in finding solutions to real-world challenges.”

Simon Hann, Group Executive of Education & Marketing at Chartered Accountants ANZ, said: “By partnering with the Science Gallery, we aim to help STEM students not only build these skills, but show that combining their careers in science, technology, engineering and maths, with a CA qualification can open a world of opportunities they might not have previously considered,”

“Traditionally, accountants have been misinterpreted as ‘number crunchers’ but this new partnership will show that Chartered Accountants of today are much more than that. They are valued advisors who help businesses to improve and grow as well as delivering better value for their customers and the community.” said Hann.

Alongside Careers Forums, STEM Centre of Excellence school workshops are also being rolled out, supported by the Victorian Government, providing further opportunities for secondary school students to learn about the array of skills used by chartered accountants across their career.