Rotary Club of Maleny Special Bulletin for 29th July 2015

"THE RANGE"  Vol. 57 No. 3

WEDNESDAY 29th July 2015

THIS WEEK'S MEETING
Maleny Hotel at 6:30 for 7:00pm for a Club Meeting without a Guest Speaker.

APOLOGIES
Apologies to Bernice before noon on Tuesday.

DUTY ROSTERS
                          29th Jul        5th Aug           
                   
Duty Officer     FCFS           Michael G                 
Assist DO        FCFS            Sherryl G                    
Registration     FCFS            John McL     
Fellowship       FCFS           Bernice Mcl        
 
SAUSAGE SIZZLE ROSTER
1 August
John and Bernice McL (Leader)   Lionel T

15 August
TBA

MEETING OF 5TH AUGUST
The purpose of this bulletin is to provide advance notice of our very special Guest Speaker for this meeting.  Brody Foy has just been awarded the Rhodes Scholarship for Queensland for 2015.  This is a singular honour.  Each year about ninety Rhodes Scholarships are awarded worldwide; of these nine are awarded in Australia - each state awards one and there are three for Australia-at-large.

The first Australian Rhodes Scholars took up residence in Oxford in 1904, and since that time many hundreds of Australians have been awarded this prestigious scholarship.  They have pursued a variety of careers in public service, academia, business, law, and medicine, amongst others.  Many have achieved notable distinction, including:
Former Governor-General Sir Zelman Cowen  
Current Prime Minister Tony Abbott
Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke
Former Leader of the Opposition Kim Beazley (now Australian Ambassador to the US)
Malcolm Turnbull, also formerly Leader of the Opposition, and currently Minister for Communications
Nobel Prize winners Sir John Eccles and Lord (Howard) Florey
Pioneer in evidence-based medicine Anna Donald
Justices of the High Court of Australia Hayne and Heydon,who currently heads the Royal commission into Trade Unions, and
Justice Elizabeth Hollingworth of the Supreme Court of Victoria.

QUT issued the following press release:

Brody Foy was one of the few students who loved mathematics at his high school. And that sometimes made him feel a bit odd – mathematics was not considered a “cool” subject. “It was definitely quite hard at the time being so interested in something, but feeling like I shouldn’t be because no one else around me was,” he said.

Growing up in Maleny, a small town in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland in Queensland, he knew there was a perception that students from regional areas didn’t usually go on to do “big things”. So when he attended Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane for his undergraduate degree, he was happy to be surrounded by others who were as passionate about maths as he was – even though it took him some time to adjust to the size and scale of life in the big city.

Now Brody – who has completed an honours degree in computational mathematics at QUT – is learning to adjust to the size and scale of his life once again as a recipient of Queensland’s 2015 Rhodes Scholarship.

The Rhodes Scholarship, considered one of the world’s most prestigious and competitive, is an international postgraduate award whose scholars have demonstrated exceptional academic achievement, leadership and moral character.

It’s no surprise that Brody was selected: his undergraduate career is brimming with years of intellectual accomplishment and civic service.
   
Brody was a QUT Vice-Chancellor Scholar, part of the Science and Engineering Faculty’s Dean’s Scholar Program, as well as QUT Student Leader of the Year and QUT Volunteer of the Year in 2013. He was active in campus life where he served as a student ambassador, re-launched the university’s mathematics society, was co-founder of the music society and mentored first-year maths students. He also spent time volunteering and getting involved in local and national organisations outside of university.

And on top of all this, Brody was receiving the highest possible marks in all his subjects.

Brody is the seventh Rhodes Scholar to graduate from QUT – and the fourth in the past five years. He was excited to receive the honour.

“I think it’s really cool. It definitely made it more intimidating in the interview process [to apply for the scholarship], but I think that made getting it even better. I’m really glad to have the opportunity to represent QUT like this, because I honestly think it’s a great university.”

The scholarship will take him to the University of Oxford next year where he will pursue a PhD in computational biology, an emerging field that blends athematics with biology and medicine.

This meeting will be a Partners'Night.  Please confirm attendance to Bernice.

A NORMAL BULLETIN WILL BE ISSUED NEXT WEEK