Student Highlights
Building practical skills for a flexible career

While originally from Tamworth, Josiah spent his childhood in Maitland and attended Maitland Grossman High School. Josiah enjoyed most subjects, but held a particular fondness for both science and mathematics.

When it came time to determine his next steps, Josiah was keen to continue his studies.

“Being local and having heard of the University of Newcastle’s reputation for STEM subjects, attending the University of Newcastle was a clear choice.

“Not being able to choose between pursuing science or mathematics, I chose to enrol in a Bachelor of Mathematics/Bachelor of Science,” he said.

In his first year of studying, Josiah was awarded a Vice Chancellor’s Award and Scholarship for Academic Excellence in Year 12. He is currently in his third year of study and hopes to continue with an Honours program after graduation.

A key highlight of Josiah’s studies so far includes the SCIE2002 Interdisciplinary Challenges subject.

This program requires students to explore how diverse science disciplines can come together to generate new understanding and solutions to challenging problems.

Students work for a University client on a real-world problem and must work together to provide recommendations to the client in a professional report.

“My team was tasked with contributing to the culture of the University of Newcastle through the partnership of Indigenous and Western Science.

“While discussing the task, one of my teammates noted that their fellow international students had limited knowledge of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture. As a team, we then decided to survey international students as our major output,” Josiah said.

While researching the project, Josiah came across a mathematical tool called a Fuzzy Cognitive Map (FCM). FCMs are particularly useful for analysing the perspectives of a group of people.

“Working alongside my international teammate, I built on my work in my applied mathematics courses to construct an FCM representing the perspectives of international students at the University.

“We looked particularly at how international students perceived the impact of cultural awareness on their studies and whether they thought a festival would be an effective way to learn about a new culture.

“I used the FCM to model the changes to several different factors over time including cultural awareness, distraction and general university experience,” Josiah said.

The team’s final report was highly successful, and included recommendations that were realistic, engaging and likely very successful based on the team’s data analysis provided.

For Josiah, this project highlighted the importance of exposure to a wide variety of disciplinary information and the benefits that diversity has on creativity.

“SCIE2002 was a wonderful opportunity to work in a proper team environment.

“In high school, teamwork often felt forced and unproductive. But because SCIE2002 was designed with teamwork in mind - and a large portion of the theoretical content is on teamwork - I came away from the course feeling that I had been equipped with practical teamwork skills,” he said.

Josiah has also had opportunities to complete work integrated learning opportunities with researchers at the University.

Josiah also had the opportunity to take part in MISG 2022 (Mathematics in Industry Study Group) where Mathematicians, Engineers, and students from a number of universities were provided with a problem by industry representatives.

“I’ve only had these experiences because of the commitment of the academic staff at the university to ensure that the best is given to their students.

“They make sure that we have lots of opportunities to engage meaningfully in experiences supplementary to our degrees,” he said.

While Josiah is leaning toward focusing on mathematics over science, he still plans to complete all of the core science subjects as they are designed with a strong emphasis on job readiness and transferable skills.

“I am thankful for the opportunity to have tried both sides and the skills and knowledge gained in the process will be invaluable moving forward.

“The opportunity to work in a meaningful and well-structured team environment has been a particularly valuable experience – which can be difficult to find elsewhere.

“The Bachelor of Science is unique in that it doesn’t just teach disciplinary skills, but also has a strong emphasis on key transferable skills – such as teamwork, communication, literature review, and problem solving,” Josiah said.

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Josiah Murray

Through high school, Josiah enjoyed most subjects, but held a particular fondness for both science and mathematics. The flexibility of the Bachelor of Mathematics/Bachelor of Science allowed Josiah to pursue both interests and build his practical skills.

The Bachelor of Science is unique in that it doesn’t just teach disciplinary skills, but also has a strong emphasis on key transferable skills – such as teamwork, communication, literature review, and problem solving.