History

The following article was written by Stuart Prescott in January 2011 to commemorate 20 years of YSA as an organisation.

Happy 20th Birthday, YSA!

Yes, you read it right… as odd or amazing as it seems, by my calculations, YSA is 20 this year (2011). And by any stretch of the imagination, that makes it time to celebrate!

The actual details have descended into the mists of time and what we are left with is some sort of creation myth. What I can tell you is as follows, to the best of my recollection and obviously based upon the events that I was involved in …. Curiously, almost all of the significant events in YSA’s past turned into a case of “it’s not what you know, but who you know”.

YSA was founded by a group of NYSF (then NSSS) staff who went to the Canada Youth Science Fair in 1989, met a group called the “Young Scientists of Canada” and liked what they saw. They came back and decided to see what they could come up with in Australia. Rod Jory (NSSS director) and the NSSS provided some initial administrative support for these guys to set up a group that would work with young people interested in science and (partly) to act as an “alumni” group for past NSSS students. Through 1990, there was a lot of discussion (by letter, of course) about what YSA could be and should be, before in October (I think it was) 1990, the decision was made that there were enough people interested in being involved and also prepared to spend the time making it all work that YSA could really exist.

I believe YSA came into being early 1991 with chapters in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra (there may have been others too — there were certainly people interested in several other capitals). Over time, some chapters flourished, new ones were set up and the Canberra and Sydney chapters faltered.

I became interested in YSA when I went to NSSS in 1995 and when I returned, I tried to join the Sydney Chapter. I filled in a membership form, I wrote, I sent them a cheque, I wrote again, … but there was no response. During 1995, I also went to the ISS at Sydney Uni and found out from others there that YSA Sydney had folded a while back but might re-emerge the next year. People kept in contact, and in January 1996, a group of us met up in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney held an “AGM” and YSA Sydney was (re)founded.

At this time, YSA was a collection of 3 completely independent associations (Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane), none of whom had any legal status other than being a group of like-minded people who did stuff together. Most of the executive members across all chapters actually knew each other already as they had all been to NSSS together. We organised a few socials in Sydney during the year and contemplated how we could sustain this enterprise.

There were rumours that the other YSA chapters had obtained legal status through incorporation in Melbourne and Brisbane and so we started to investigate if that would be possible in Sydney too. I was able to convince a family friend to help us through some of the legal bits and drafted a constitution for YSA Sydney. Over the coming months, we polished that and found some public liability insurance (another family friend) and suddenly YSA Sydney Inc existed. By this stage (1997) YSA still looked a lot like a bunch of people who had been to NSSS together and the “national conference” was a reunion at someone’s house somewhere mutually convenient. But we were most definitely aware of the Siemens Science School and volunteers were staffing various SSSs around the country.  (I don’t know when YSA started doing that… there weren’t any YSA people around when I did SSS in 1992, but I believe YSA Melbourne and Brisbane were staffing SSS soon after. YSA Brisbane quickly assumed the position of running the SSSs across the Brisbane area.)

And so during 1997, YSA Sydney managed to talk its way into the SSS at Macquarie, UNSW and Sydney as well as the International Science School at Sydney Uni. By the time we’d finished with these schools (particularly at Sydney Uni), we’d become a fixture. At the end of the 1997 International Science School, the Head of Physics said “I love what you guys are doing! How can I help? Can I join?”…. and so the (not so young) Prof Dick Collins became a member of YSA and continued to renew his membership each year for years to come. Dick’s continued to be a very good friend of YSA until long after he retired. One of the things that we suggested he could do to help was to provide us with some computer facilities as the idea that we could register an internet domain had recently surfaced amongst the exec. In mid-1997, ysa.org.au was born, originally starting on one of the desktop computers in Chemistry at Sydney Uni and soon migrating to Physics where our “server” sat on a spare desk in Applied Physics for many years (it’s now in a network room just down the corridor).

From then on, YSA history starts to look a lot like the YSA you know today — staffies at various science schools across the country, national conferences every couple of years and various big projects like the Biofutures in Brisbane and the YSA Science Challenge as part of National Science Week in Sydney. However, the make-up of YSA also started to change a lot at this stage; it wasn’t just NSSS/NYSF alumni at any more as the friends of NSSSers were starting to join, and as we did more and more science schools and recruited the students from these science schools (the moniker “wiffen” didn’t exist yet), the membership base progressively became younger. YSA was no longer recruiting from NSSS but sending members to NYSF. What a change!

YSA continued to get involved in new projects and there was one “science school” of particular note in the way it restarted inter-chapter relations that had weakened since the committees were no longer a group of people who already knew each other. The event was the International Chemistry Olympiad that was held in Melbourne in 1998 and both YSA Sydney and Melbourne brought quite a few people in to help as team guides and to run activities for the participants. Many long-standing friendships (and several marriages!) came out of that event.

There is of course a lot more history to come beyond 2000 and I do not mean to trivialise the dedication of those who worked so tirelessly since in skimming over them. Keen volunteers tried starting an Adelaide chapter to have it fold a couple of years later, for example, but from this point on, I think the organisation is reasonably familiar. The details change as to precisely which science schools YSA helped with, who organised what, how many thousand students YSA worked with each year, but the overall theme remains much more similar up to the point where I can no longer comment on what was going on and very retired to the backrooms of the YSA internet server where I am still known to lurk.

Most importantly though, there were a huge number of YSA members who gladly gave up their time, many of whom spent countless hours organising and running activities for students at science schools they didn’t know and at the same time, had an absolute blast doing so. YSA had grown up from a social group for NSSS alumni into what the original founders had hoped — a service organisation that promoted science to the youth of Australia while at the same time providing a great social and support network.

The YSA that that kept me busy on a daily basis from 1996-2002 is an organisation of which I am immensely proud, but I am even more proud of the YSA of today that continues to grow, to learn and to nurture. But that’s only 20 years down — what are the plans for the next 20 years? I can’t wait to see.

–Stuart Prescott, January 2011
[message_box type="info" icon="yes" close=""]Stuart Prescott was a committee member of YSA Sydney from 1996 to 2000 and of YSA Melbourne from 2001-2002. He (still!) looks after YSA’s internet server and is now a lecturer in polymer chemistry a the University of Bristol, UK.[/message_box]

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