Beginning an EA club/society at Monash University, Australia.
Hi everyone. Effective Altruism has played a major role in my life and is the core reason I went back to school after initially dropping out and now university. So I was quite shocked to see that there hasn’t been an EA club made at Monash University yet—the 2nd best university in Victoria!
I’m only a first year science student and haven’t had much experience in being a part of a club at all but really want to found an EA club at Monash as this would be an excellent opportunity to do good. So I’ve made this post to reach out to any potential Monash or neighbouring university students who may want to help me form this club or anyone who would lend some advice.
Bear in mind I don’t intend on rushing in to this as I know this could increase the chances of mistakes which could for example lead to negative perceptions of the movement. My idea is to first read through the EA Groups Resource Centre page (https://www.effectivealtruism.org/get-involved/start-an-ea-local-group) and then go from there! Please let me know what you think.
Are you in contact with EA Melbourne?
You may also want to get in contact with the CEA groups team at: groups@centreforeffectivealtruism.org
I agree that it would be good to start an EA group at Monash. Unfortunately, I am at the end of my Monash journey and have only been introduced to EA myself more recently and can’t directly help in the starting of a society/club.
I think the best place to get information about starting an undergraduate student association at Monash is by contacting the Monash Student Association. Alternatively, if you’re interested in also having a graduate student association then contact Monash Graduate Association. I could see there being a good amount of value in including graduate students as they may be able to tailor their research toward social impact or gain skills/experience that could help them have a greater impact in the future. However, my personal experience being a post-grad student is that I haven’t had much time or inclination to be involved in student associations, but I don’t know how generalisable that experience is. Perhaps starting with an undergraduate society should be the first step, then down the road, a post-grad component can be added once enough undergrads in the society get to that stage.
One additional idea I’ve had is that a Monash EA group could work with some of the organisations/groups within the Monash research infrastructure to provide pathways to summer research projects or post-graduate research/work. In particular, I have the Monash Data Futures Institute in mind as they appear to have a focus on doing socially impactful research and industry engagements. Things like sponsored events, Q&As and competitions come to mind
If you’re interested in discussing ideas further, please feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn.