Sugden Institute Oration with Dr. Michael Stepniak

We are pleased to invite you to the first Sugden Institute event for 2025.

This is not a Lecture: The Weight of Seeing, the
Courage of Asking
with
Dr. Michael Stepniak

Thursday 10 April 2025
5:30pm arrival for 6pm oration followed by drinks and canapés
Junior Common Room, Queen’s College

RSVP by Monday 7 April at rsvp@queens.unimelb.edu.au to Michele Mulder.

No onsite parking:
Uber, taxi, trams recommended.

Synopsis
We rush, we scroll, we consume; mistaking motion for meaning, speed for wisdom.

This evening is not about productivity, consumption, or certainty. It is about the courage to engage with a wild openness of heart.

The invitation? To pause, to look, to listen, and, perhaps, to speak with deep honesty.

This is not a lecture. It is an experiment in attention and truth-telling; a moment of playful attentiveness before the world sweeps us on.

What to expect
You will be invited into two carefully structured activities, including an art-centred experience grounded in research in developmental psychology, aesthetics, and art.

The evening will draw on the interplay of imagination, cognition, and emotion.

The offered outcome? A deeper connection, with each other, with ourselves.

About Dr. Michael Stepniak
BA, MMus, MMus, EdM, EdD
Master & Head of College, Queen’s College, The University of Melbourne
Honorary Principal Fellow, Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, The University of Melbourne

Some people pursue knowledge; others pursue meaning. Dr. Michael Stepniak, former Dean & Professor of Music at Shenandoah Conservatory (USA), has spent a lifetime chasing both. A musician, scholar, and academic leader, he has built a career at the intersection of art, education, and human flourishing; a space where the arts are not merely performed but engaged with as catalysts for insight, empathy, and transformation.

Now, as the 9th Master and Head of College at Queen’s College, University of Melbourne, he invites students, alumni, Fellows, and friends to join him in an evening that is not a lecture but an exploration.

A globally travelled concert artist and award-winning graduate of Harvard, Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins, and Northwestern, Michael has led dynamic educational communities, shaped transformative initiatives in higher education, served on international arts education boards, and challenged entrenched ideas about the role of education and the arts. He has performed on concert stages worldwide and wrestled with a deceptively simple question: What kind of arts encounters are truly capable of transformation? His conclusion? Ones that involve not so much admiration as structured, active engagement involving deep seeing, brave questioning.