Meet two Monash students helping solve world problems

Miguel Cases has just completed the 10-day intensive educational unit known as the Sustainable Futures Challenge at Monash University – it has been his greatest learning opportunity at university to date.

“I expected this course to be quite interesting, but this course made me rethink what education should be,” explains Cases, who is currently studying for a Bachelor of Business, majoring in Business Management and minoring in Human Geography.

“It was a very enriching experience. Communication in university classes is very linear, with a top-down structure. But this class not only bridged my geography and business knowledge, it also created a safe space that challenged my critical thinking, a skill I haven’t trained throughout my degree.”

The course forced Cases to step out of his comfort zone and think critically.

“My critical thinking was challenged at a level it never has been,” he says. “It helped me understand what real education should be.”

The 25 participants in the course were split into groups of six, and told they’d be working with ESCAP. The real-world problem they’d have to research and solve was two-fold.

First, they had to identify the key strategic risks inherent in ESCAP’s approach to supporting resilient water systems in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Palau and Samoa. To obtain information for the research, the students would set up meetings with ESCAP team members, who could also critique student thought. 

Second, the groups of students would need to propose policy innovations and modifications that ESCAP could incorporate into its work to address these strategic risks in the future.

On the final day those solutions would be presented to ESCAP.

It was a big ask of small groups of university students who’d had little to no experience in the workplace, let alone in the realm of international relations and policy making. And they had just a fortnight of research and collaboration to identify and develop real solutions that ESCAP may implement over the coming years.

Course convenors: On building leaders for uncertainty

The project-based course focuses on experience rather than tutorials, to reflect the world in which graduates will work.

“To meet the complex challenges of the future, the world needs business leaders that thrive in complexity and lead through uncertainty,” Professor Nicholas McGuigan, an educator and innovator in the Department of Accounting at Monash University, says.

“This requires a completely different focus on how we engage our students and facilitate their learning experiences. We knew we had to find a radically new way to educate, something that would prepare our graduates for uncertain, rapidly changing, complex business environments.”

In delivering the Sustainable Futures Challenge, the Monash Business School works collaboratively, in a first-of-its-kind, multi-sector partnership, with ESCAP, the IPA and the research organisation Incept Labs.

Professor Philomena Leung, IPA Group Director of Education, brokered the introduction of Monash Business School to ESCAP.

The broad focus is to promote economic and social development in the Asia and Pacific region in alignment with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

A recently signed memorandum of understanding between the four partner organisations will provide a platform for immersive educational experiences for the next three years. Successive cohorts of students will have the opportunity to address complex problems impacting the Asia Pacific region.

“During the two-week program, multidisciplinary teams collaborate to undertake independent research, create stakeholder analyses and find holistic solutions to the problem,” McGuigan says.

In doing so, the students interact with real-world clients, experiencing ambiguity, uncertainty, collaboration and autonomy in real time.

The IPA also provides all participants the opportunity to earn a new micro-credential, the Global Certificate of Public Accountants (GCPA).

“The GCPA framework identifies the soft skills and professional skills required by accountants of the future. These skills, such as communication, handling uncertainty, problem solving, are linked to indicators we measure during the Sustainable Futures Challenge,” Leung says.

“We use this challenge to assess a student’s capability and competency. So, this year’s students are the first who, once they pass their assessments, will get this micro-credential from IPA. There is ample literature and research that shows you don’t need an accounting undergraduate degree, or to be a qualified accountant, to be able to solve problems that are accounting-related.”

Participants: On a transformative education

Cases says the immersive, two-week educational experience designed to turn graduates into leaders has been a great success.

“There’s real significance in how they construct this course. The way they orchestrated it was beautiful. It’s like no other class I’ve done,” he says.

“The way they force students to think, and give them independence, and put them in a space where they’re trusted to be productive on their own, really makes you feel as if you’re being prepared for the workforce.”

Elyse Twee, a final-year Business and Commerce student on exchange from Monash University Malaysia, was part of a project team whose solution involved the development of new building standards in Palau. The standards would apply to organisations that build water infrastructure for the tourism sector, such as hotel chains.

The standards, the group suggested, should require water infrastructure capable of supplying 20% to 50% more water than is required by the hotels, so they can also provide for the people of Palau. The standard acts as an upfront water tax, and the organisations become part of a solution benefiting the communities in which they operate and from which they profit.

“I’m very proud of our work,” Twee says.

“The way this class was conducted was very different. There were a lot of new techniques that I learned in terms of how I think.”

“I won’t lie – I struggled with it in the first week. I was out of my comfort zone because I had never worked directly with a client. We had so many variables to consider. We had to think about the future and then figure out what we have to do right now to get there,” she says.

“The idea of getting the micro-credential was really good, too. I wasn’t expecting such a powerful outcome. I will be using it in the future.”

Cases’s group’s solution also leveraged the tourism sector, but focussed on expanding eco-tourism in Samoa to reduce water usage. Each tourist, his group discovered, uses eight times more water than a local does. Decreasing the number of tourists but increasing eco-tourism would help balance the environment and economy.

“There are so many things this course has taught me, including how to facilitate communication in a multicultural environment,” Cases says.

“I think the thing that will stick with me the most is my new ability to think critically in a group setting. That is something I will carry into my future career.”