Elevation is an event held annually in Australia where they run a circuit of universities to elevate the engineering students’ career and present to them an event where they can build their connections. Masterclass on the other hand is an event where the students are shown a skill and are given the opportunity and guidance to master it. In June 2018, Dr Elammaran Jayamani, the Advisor for Engineers Australia Swinburne Sarawak Students’ session (EASSS) and Syed Azizur Rahman Lukhman, EASSS president began with the motion to improve the engineers outlook for jobs in Malaysia and elsewhere. This met with the Engineers Australia’s objective to hold a masterclass outside of Australia for the first time, which led to this event.

The main objectives of this event are to improve chances for Swinburne students at landing a job and to improve Engineers Australia’s presence in Swinburne University. The marketing department of Engineers Australia made the document ‘Frontier Student Elevation 2019 Swinburne University Sarawak’, and this was used to promote the event towards companies as well as the students, where some were printed and handed out, a few were pinned up as posters in all available spots in the university. We had a stall in Ground floor of Building G, Swinburne Sarawak for registration from the 12th to 22nd of March 2019, excluding the weekend.

The event was initiated by Mr Astley Pung, the Engineers Australia Regional Business Development Manager at welcoming anyone interested or any later comers to join this event. It was given to the first speaker later, Mr Liew Wui Sen, who is a project manager at Sarawak energy and an alumni of Swinburne University.

He set up the pace for the rest of the event, his presentation consisted of only a few slides, as in his words ‘so that you focus on me’. He talked about his beginning steps of his career when he stepped out of Swinburne and became more summarized towards approaching where he is now. He was open to questions and spending extra time in finishing his speech. The certificate was presented to him to thank for his precious time spent in sharing his experiences in this event.

The second speaker was Ir Feirooz Mohammed, a chartered structural engineer at Robert Bird Group, he shared his policies in taking in fresh graduates and interns, things that he values in the intake and the skills that matter in career. He shared some information about himself as well, and carried the mood set by Mr Liew Wui Sen very well. His points were easy to understand and resourceful that draw a lot of attention in the networking session.



The event continued with the briefing for the networking and interview session. The interview session was held in the tutorial classroom with 10 groups or 20 attendees of this event. Networking section was conducted by Mr Astley Pung himself at slow pace. Then the groups switched the activity and proceeded to the lunch. 

Lunch was the extended networking session where all the volunteers and the students got to network over food and coffee. It received good feedback, the certificates are presented to Dr Choo Chung Siung, Volunteer-interviewer and Ir Dennis Ong, volunteer-speaker and interviewer after the lunch.



The speeches continued with Mr Hariprashanth PVS, volunteer speaker in sharing his experience, and the lessons he learnt in Swinburne. As a student, his struggles and his drive to move forward and succeed that led him to his final semester. He talked about the importance of doing what needs to be done to be accomplished and get good grades. Another important part of his speech was time management.

Also, Mr Deshan Anselam Benhur, another volunteer speaker spoke about his overall experience, his speech bore semblance to Mr Hariprashanth’s speech as they are close colleagues, he talked about the risks he took to accomplish his work, the heights that he managed to achieve and the recognition that came with it.

Finally, the event ended with a bit of a discussion about the event and future improvements. Also, it provided some valuable time with all the volunteers informally to connect with them better.  The event received positive feedback as the networking activities and interview were brilliant part that the students wish they had more time in the session. The event itself was amazing and share valuable experience as one of the potential future events to encourage more participants including Swinburne Engineering students to join this kind of event.