| Siena Catholic College | |
|---|---|
| Location | |
| Sippy Downs, Queensland, Australia | |
| Information | |
| Type | Co-educational |
| Established | 1997 |
| Principal | Graeme Hight |
| Vice principal | Mark Thornton |
| Enrolment | ~750 |
| Campus | Suburban |
| Website | www.siena.qld.edu.au |
Siena Catholic College, Queensland, Australia is a co-educational Catholic day college situated at Sippy Downs on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. Opened in 1997, it caters for students in Years 8-12 and has an enrolment of approximately 750 students.[1] The college shares its campus with Siena Primary School, a Prep -Year 7 school.
The College is an Archdiocesan College administered by Brisbane Catholic Education and has close links with the Stella Maris Parish, having S. Catherine's Catholic Church situated on campus.
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Bryan Baker was the foundation principal of the College. He held the position from 1996 until three weeks before his death in 2004. One thousand people attended a speech in honour of his service. The Brisbane Courier-Mail described the college as one of the "most acclaimed institutions in the region and a jewel in the crown of Catholic colleges throughout the Archdiocese of Brisbane".[2]
On 7 December 2003 a 13-year-old student at the school, Daniel Morcombe, was abducted as he waited for a bus. That year and for years afterward, the school repeatedly organised various memorial events to allow students to pray together for Morcombe and to express their concern.[3][4] Australian news organisations covered the case extensively "in a massive media appeal that [...] lasted three years" until at least November 2006. The boy was never found. "Daniel's chair", a special timber bench at the school, was dedicated to him.[5]
In the 2004-2005 school year, a group of teachers led by Paul Baker devised a 90-minute learning project for students in ancient and modern history classes. In the project (titled, "Are you going to be my Tyrant?") students used Web sites to read about Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and other dictators, examining their childhoods for similarities that might help explain their characters. The school was one of 12 that won grants from the Queensland state government for history projects in that school year. The state Department of Education, Training and the Arts featured a description of the project as a "good practice" section of the department's Web site.[6]
In the 2007 Queensland "Tournament of the Minds" problem-solving competition, the Siena Catholic College team took both first place and second place honours for the Maths/Engineering section and first place in the Language/Literature section.[7][8]
The college is involved in an exchange programme with the Fijian schools St Thomas High School in Suva, Mount St Mary's in Nadi and St Thomas in Lautoka. In 2007, the college donated barble sacks totalling about $5,000.[9]