NEWS
Education in full bloom during Spring Symposium
The innaugural Spring Symposium launched this year with a strong turn out from staff, students, and guests; all interested in education and business topics. Lectures from guest speakers and research staff were supported by research presentations from students and interactive cultural workshops. The event marks the first step in establishing a new place for staff and students to promote their research as well as receiving valuable feedback from peers.
Keynote speaker Chris Beard, Executive Officer of International Education Association ISANA NZ, addressed Symposium participants on the topic: International education in New Zealand: Exploring challenges and opportunities. He challenged listeners to consider their own identity when engaging with other cultures and to contribute to evidence-based research by and for international education practitioners in New Zealand.
The Symposium demonstrated the wide-ranging disciplines covered at IPU New Zealand. Research presentations included topics such as:
- Exploring the professional identity and positioning of internationally qualified nurses as they participate in workplace interactions with colleagues in New Zealand healthcare settings
- The Short of it: Student Perceptions on the Use of Short Films in the ESL Classroom
- The role of social determinants in health outcomes: The Indian indentured labour system
- Logographic Writing Systems: Why some change and some don't
- Pax Europaea in the 21st century—The influence of the political referendum on EU membership of the UK in 2016 on the cultural integrity of modern Europe
- How to ignite practical actions for supre small enterprise in Vietnam.
The Spring Symposium also hosted the award ceremony for the Japanese Studies Aotearoa New Zealand national speech competition, in which IPU New Zealand student Alisha Elliot won first place. The prize is round trip tickets to Japan sponsored by Nisuikai, Auckland—Japanese Business Chamber of Commerce. Other student placegetters from Victoria University and Ara Institute of Technology were joined by JSANZ executive members, supporting Japanese language lecturers at the prize giving ceremony.
