EIT Graduates Celebrate Their Success
Napier will be ablaze with colour this week as jubilant graduates gather in traditional academic gowns, satin-lined
hoods, sashes, korowai and tasselled trenchers for EIT’s annual capping and downtown parades.
EIT is celebrating two graduation highlights. The number of higher qualifications to be conferred overall – including
for those not attending graduation is an institute record – up 22 percent on last year. And the 447 who are turning out
for capping make up a record number for the traditional event.
In total 879 diplomas, degrees and postgraduate qualifications are being awarded, compared to 851 in 2015.
Not all those who completed EIT qualifications last year are able to attend graduation, as they mobilise to bring in the
harvest or manage other work commitments in jobs secured locally, throughout New Zealand and overseas.
The proportion of younger people gaining higher-level EIT qualifications remains steady, with 37 percent of graduates
under 25. Women make up 70 percent of the total.
For the third successive year, the graduation ceremony will be staged as a two-day event in Napier’s Municipal Theatre.
To handle the growing number of graduates, the capping will once again be managed in three ceremonies.
Business, computing, primary industries, tourism and hospitality and viticulture and wine science will be represented
this afternoon (THURS), visual arts and design (ideaschool), education, social sciences and Māori studies (Te Ūranga
Waka) tomorrow morning and health, sport science and nursing in the afternoon.
Ollie Powrie, company viticulturist for Villa Maria Estate and an EIT graduate himself, will be the guest speaker on
Thursday. Apryll Parata, a deputy secretary in the Ministry of Education, will deliver her speech on Friday.
Honoured valedictorians Andrew King, graduating with a Bachelor of Computing Systems, Tara Cooney (Bachelor of Visual
Arts and Design) and Melanie Gregory (Bachelor of Recreation and Sport) will represent their classmates in delivering
addresses.
The graduates will include the first cohort to study EIT’s Bachelor of Teaching (Primary). The first of its kind to be
offered by a New Zealand institute of technology, it breaks new ground with the level of practice-based learning
included in the degree. Launched with six partnering schools, it now encompasses 22 Hawke’s Bay schools.
Another graduation high point will be mother and daughter Kate and Georgie Robson of Hastings, who will both take to the
stage to be capped with their Bachelor of Business Studies degrees.
This year’s Master of Nursing cohort is a particularly large group. Eighteen completed the degree last year and 14 of
those are attending this week’s graduation.
Napier is hosting today’s parade at 4pm while the second will set off at 12.30pm tomorrow.
Local authority leaders and the Napier Pipe Band will join EIT council members, senior executive and academic staff in
celebrating the graduands and graduates as they parade from Clive Square up Emerson Street to the Sound Shell on Marine
Parade.
ENDS