Niko Tominiko (centre) with Pava Saifoloi, Community Engagement Advisor and Lani Mikaio, Pacific Administrator and Project Coordinator
The Pacific team has launched their five-year success strategy – and we’ve all got a role in it.
The Pacific Success Strategy 2018-2023 is about tracking and monitoring the progress of our Pacific students, helping them to succeed and complete their programmes.
Director of Pacific Success, Niko Tominiko explains that our monitoring of Pacific student success was one of the areas that came under particular scrutiny in the 2016 EER assessment, although Pacific and Māori students were grouped together within that review.
Niko said that we’ll be encouraging the assessors to look at the way we track, monitor and evaluate Pacific success separately in November’s review, and the new strategy will address some of the issues that the NZQA reported last time.
Pacific success is a workstream in our Category 1 project and Niko says, if we get things right, we can definitely be the ‘go-to’ tertiary provider for Pacific students.
“That’s the vision of our strategy so it’s at the centre of everything we do. We’re aiming for Unitec to be: ‘the world-leading institution for Pacific prosperity and the tertiary institution of choice for Pacific peoples.’
“I think that’s totally doable.”
So, how will we achieve that?
We have approximately 1370 Pacific students and only three members of staff in our Pacific Centre. That means broader collaboration is essential.
Niko says: “The key to our strategy is all staff working together, monitoring and sharing information to support our Pacific students.
“I’d love to see every Pathway assigning someone the priority of looking after this group – that’s what success looks like to me!”
There are some concrete areas to work on too:
- Developing more Pacific course content to encourage more enrolments
- Growing our Pacific research capability
- Encouraging more Pacific students to go into post-graduate study with more scholarships
- Connecting more with Pacific programmes and organisations in the community
So what can everyone do to support the strategy?
- Become a Pacific champion. These are volunteers within each Pathway who provide a link between the Pacific Centre and the Pathway.
- Let the Pacific Centre know when a Pacific student is struggling so that you can work together to support the student
- Share success stories of Pacific students who can help to inspire others.
- Become part of the Pacific Success Framework, which sets out the six groups that have been set up to deliver this strategy. If you have an interest in any of these areas and would like to join a group of volunteers working to support our Pacific students, please email askpacific@unitec.ac.nz
- Head along to the Pacifika Fanau Evening on 14 March, which is for first-year students and their friends and family to meet Unitec staff. Join them in room 023-1016 at 6pm.