“We’re a blue chip investment,” says CoRE Learning Foundation co-founder and lead, Suzy Urbaniak, a geologist and former school teacher whose belief in the power of primary and secondary school students to change the future of the mining industry is inspired and inspiring.

“The resource in the Centre of Resource Excellence isn’t just the Earth, it’s the human energy: the students,” she says.

“They’re our future leaders.”

The 2016 Prime Minister’s Prize winner and feature host and presenter in this year’s expanded IMARC NextGen program has been vigorously promoting the value of contemporary Earth science education for the past 20 years and channelling her knowledge and distinct talents through the acclaimed CoRE foundation for the past seven.

Urbaniak said at last year’s World Mining Congress in Brisbane the Australian mining industry, with its rich resource endowment, was expected to play a key role in the 21st century global energy transition. “But the natural gift of resources can’t be realised without a robust STEM [science, engineering, technology and mathematics] talent pipeline,” she said. “It is critical that … more primary and secondary students become familiar with the role that the resources sector plays and the diversity of careers on offer.”

Connection and engagement with Gen Alphas needed a “significant shift” in curriculum development and CoRE’s Gamifying Earth Science approach met part of that need while also being aligned with digitised future resource-sector work environments.

More than 110 national and international students field trips for more than 4000 primary and secondary school students have been another primary component of CoRE’s immersive teaching and learning approach, which today extends to over 20 schools. About 70 schools around Australia use the foundation’s game modules. 

CoRE’s Gamifying Earth Science Initiative and Urbaniak’s collaborative classroom and field science teaching style will both take centre stage at IMARC.

“It's a good platform to celebrate our achievements and to give companies and people an opportunity to understand what we’re doing,” she said.

“We have a booth on the floor and we're going to have nearly 400 students go through and play our games on the floor.

“On the middle day we will have 160 or 170 students from nine schools involved in the Resources Engagement Day, with half the kids spending time on the expo floor and playing our games, and half hearing about career opportunities from industry people in a roundtable area: a career speed-dating type thing.

“This is an international conference with over 120 companies and 9000 delegates. The current federal minister for science, innovation and technology, Ed Husic, will accompany the students into the Gamifying Booth in the afternoon.

“This is amazing exposure for CoRE.

“It’s hard to put a value on this type of national and international platform.

“We’ve had international interest in our program. I do see CoRE growing and evolving; I see us changing our business model. We are dependent on donations and sponsorships. We've got a number of industry companies that support us wholeheartedly and that has been fantastic.

“CoRE has been successful in creating a channel of students that otherwise wouldn’t have been exposed to the industry or even know anything about the industry, and then delivering an integrated learning model that is about future-proofing the workforce.”

One thing that doesn’t faze Urbaniak is the prospect of trying to engage with a new cohort of students, and educators, in Sydney. 

“That’s the blessing of being an educator, because for so many years you had to, every hour, you had a bunch of 30 new students come in that were different, had different moods on, and you had to learn to adjust and wing it and facilitate the relationship,” she says.

“Where does it start? My name is Suzy, I love rocks and I climb volcanos in my spare time. I love the Earth.

“Nothing happens without a relationship. You need to have trust and to remember that anything that comes out of your mouth, even if it’s one statement, it is something that can be absorbed and maybe reflected on later.

“I’ve got to engage them and demonstrate by the end of the session that, yes, I'm a scientist; yes, I was a miner; yes, I promote the industry; and yes, we need the industry to sustain our lives. We do need to do what we do in a way that is sustainable and has governance over it: environmental governance and social governance.”