The programme aims to raise Māori participation and achievement in the areas of science, technology, engineering and maths by engaging with secondary school students from years 11-13. Last year, NCEA pass rates for Pūhoro STEM Academy students surpassed nationwide averages. Participants represent 75 iwi throughout Aotearoa and involved schools from Manawatū, Bay of Plenty and Horowhenua regions.

Now that success is set to spread to the South Auckland, including students from Auckland Girls’ Grammar, Manurewa High School, Alfriston College, Mangere College, Rosehill College, Pukekohe High School, Onewhero Area School and Tuakau College.

Student selection into the programme is based on their desire to join the programme and commitment to undertake the additional requirements including the tutorial/mentoring sessions. Students who are already excelling in science are not chosen; instead those who are on the cusp of success or who need extra help are admitted into the programme.

The South Auckland programme has a strong health workforce focus and is supported by Counties Manukau District Health Board and the Tindall Foundation. It is driven by Pūhoro Navigators, who work within schools to complete a tutorial/mentoring session for one hour each week. Once each term, all participants meet at Massey’s Auckland campus in Albany for an interactive field trip or wānanga, which explores hands on science linked to their NCEA study.

Director of the Pūhoro STEM Academy programme, Naomi Manu says that Counties Manukau DHB and Tindall Foundation resourcing made it possible to expand into South Auckland.

“What we have is a scalable model that increases Māori student engagement and achievement in STEM programmes. This programme has the potential to build a critical mass of Māori scientists who will change the science and technology landscape.

“We want them to experience aspects of science and engineering that they would not usually see in their school environment. We want more Māori students progressing into tertiary education by building a skills pipeline to support the Māori economy,” Ms Manu says.

This Friday’s wānanga will involve year 11 students going into biology labs with Monika Merriman from the Institute of Natural and Mathematical Sciences to complete DNA extraction of their own cheek cells.

The other session involves Professor Meihana Durie, head of Massey’s School of Māori Art, Knowledge and Education, Te Pūtahi-a-Toi, and the school’s academic coordinator Hone Morris who will speak about their learnings from the world of their ancestors and the modern world of Māori, through the medium of Kōrero Pūrākau (story telling).

The programme is funded by Massey University and the Our Land and Water National Science Challenge with support from Te Tumu Paeroa, Callaghan Innovation, Google, New Zealand Qualifications Authority and Palmerston North City Council.

Earlier this year Pūhoro become an official partner of the Āmua Ao programme, joining forces to run the largest bilingual STEM challenge in the country, involving three one-day science and engineering challenges involving around 250 year 9 and 10 Māori students at each event being held in South Auckland, Rotorua, and Palmerston North, later this year.

Behind the scenes, Bonnie Erickson has created characters that have winkled their way into the hearts of entire generations as a key collaborator with The Muppet Show; she takes centre stage at Massey’s Wellington campus on Friday for a talk about her time with the internationally popular programme.

As a member of the original design team she created crowd favourites such as Miss Piggy, the hilarious theatrical hecklers Statler and Waldorf and multiple other characters across a range of Jim Henson productions.

She will share memories of her design and storytelling work, discuss the impact of Jim Henson’s vision across puppetry, television, film, special effects and media technology, as well as offer insights from her time as a creative director for the product division of the Jim Henson Company and Children’s Television Workshop. Ms Erickson is also credited with creating caricatures of Henson, Frank Oz and Jerry Nelson for the Country Trio. She went on to become creative director of the product division of Children’s Television Workshop for 13 years. She is visiting New Zealand as a special guest of the Jim Henson Retrospectacle, a celebration of the legendary puppeteer Jim Henson, his legacy, his collaborators and his much-loved characters.

Designer and typographer Associate Professor Anna Brown from the College of Creative Arts says its especially apt that Ms Erickson is visiting Massey’s School of Design at the Wellington campus.

“The audience will be full of design students studying areas as diverse as digital and interactive media, film and television, visual effects, animation, game development, web and interactive development and fashion and textile design. For students studying the art of creative studio practice, story-telling and character development – what better place to start than with the creator of icons such as Miss Piggy and Statler and Waldorf.

“The appeal for this event has been extensive with not only our students, but also the wider creative arts sector in New Zealand and Muppet fans generally. Bonnie will be in conversation with Duncan Sarkies, a New Zealand screenwriter, playwright, novelist, stand-up comic and short story writer – best known for his film Scarfies. Duncan is the perfect person to let us get to know these peerless characters: how they were born and how their individual personalities made each and every one a firm friend – eventhe bad-tempered ones,’ Ms Brown says.

Massey is grateful to Nicola Marshall and the Square Eyes Film Foundation, who have made this project happen.

New Zealand soldiers – from heroes to conmen – who served in other countries’ armies during WWI is the topic of a public seminar on April 17 by eminent historian Professor Glyn Harper.

He opens a five-part series running for the third year in a partnership between the Alexander Heritage and Research Library, the Whanganui Regional Museum and Massey University’s W. H. Oliver Humanities Research Academy. 

Professor Harper’s talk, For King and other Countries: New Zealanders at war 1914-1919, is a taster for his new book due out next year. The series, titled Home and Away, includes new and established historians talking about their research on the environment, immigration, war propaganda and naval history.

Professor Harper will share some of his latest research findings, including that a much higher number of New Zealanders than previously thought – more than 10,000 – enlisted in foreign armies during WWI, for a variety of reasons. Around 4000 joined the British army, often those from rich, middle-class families for the prestige. A further 4000 joined the Australian Imperial Army because it was easier to enlist, especially for younger, or older and infirm men who did not make the cut for the New Zealand army. Others joined armies of France, Canada, India and South Africa, and several even enlisted in the German army.

Professor Harper’s talk also touches on New Zealand war heroes in foreign armies, such as Alfred Shout – a New Zealand-born and Australian recipient of the Victoria Cross, and other distinguished soldiers and servicewomen, as well as the occasional conman or rogue whose stories he has uncovered.

The series aims to raise awareness of the presence of history in the local community as well as celebrating students embarking on careers in “the rich field of New Zealand historical research,” says the series coordinator Associate Professor Kirsty Carpenter. 

Professor Harper’s talk highlights the link between local and global history, she says. “Whanganui’s link to this was by correspondence with relatives and connections to the Whanganui Collegiate School, where a number of the soldiers who Glyn is going to talk about had been students.”  

Small events encapsulate grander stories

Local history is never just local – it fits into a much broader picture about what happened and how we understand the past, says Dr Carpenter, a specialist on the French Revolution who lectures in the School of Humanities at the Manawatū campus.

She says the key inspiration for the seminars is; “raising awareness of the value of our own history in the locality, and how local history and local archives fit and filter into national history and national archives –likewise to international history and international archives.”

“What has small beginnings can end up as central to the history of continents and empires. All the pieces of the puzzle are important, and they begin with people valuing their own family history and local history enough to preserve it and the documents that come into their possession. Only in this way can we arrive at histories of the local communities, towns and provinces of New Zealand.”

Dr Carpenter says the seminars in this series have “played a role in uniting people with interests, either as future university students, or adults interested in their family connections and local history with professional academic historians and trainee historians.”

She is currently working on a book – with local and distant links – about refugees during the French Revolution, including one who stowed away to New Zealand under an alias, married a niece of Te Rauparaha (chief and warrior of Ngati Toa who played a lead role in the Musket Wars), with which he had eight children, leaving a trail of New Zealand descendants right down to the present day. 

Venues: Alexander Research and Heritage Library, or the Davis Theatre, Wanganui Regional Museum. 

Tuesday 17 April, 5:30 pm, Davis Theatre

Glyn Harper: For King and other Countries: New Zealanders at war 1914-1919.

Glyn Harper is the Professor of War Studies at Massey University. He has been the Massey Project Manager of  the Centenary History of the New Zealand and the First World War, and is published widely – most recently; The Battle for North Africa. El Alamein and the Turning Point for World War II.

Sunday 29 April, 2.00 pm, Alexander Library    

Jess McLean: You can count on a good round of applause: Propaganda and the New Zealand public during WWII 

Jess McLean has completed her Master’s on ‘Propaganda and the NZ public during  WWII’ supervised by Dr Rachael Bell (Massey History Programme).

Tuesday 15 May, 5.30 pm, Davis Theatre

Catherine Knight: Our Rivers: complex histories, hopeful futures.

Catherine Knight is an independent historian living in the Manawatū. She is the author of New Zealand’s Rivers: An Environmental History, and contributor to Rachael Bell’s NZ Between the Wars (Massey University Press, 2017).

Sunday 27 May, 2.00 pm, Alexander Library

Gail Romano: ‘Generous action’ and ‘ministerial muddling’: Managing a Royal Navy battlecruiser tour in the Dominion in 1913.

Gail Romano is writing her history master’s on the 1913 visit of battlecruiser HMS New Zealand to this country and what the visit can tell us about ourselves in that pre-war period. She is supervised by Dr David Littlewood (Massey History Programme).

Sunday 10 June, 2.00 pm, Alexander Library

Sue McCliskie: The Nelson NZ Company Emigrants: How Family Histories can shed light on issues  of connection and mobility in New Zealand.

Sue McCliskie is doing a history master’s, supervised by Professor Michael Belgrave, on the Nelson New Zealand Company Emigrants, 1841-50 (Massey History Programme).

The divergence between Central Otago Lakes and the rest of the country has reached record proportions.

House prices are the main driver of affordability

The report, which covers the period from December 2017 to February 2018, shows fluctuations in median house prices were the main driver of changes in affordability across the country. Most regions saw a quarterly decline in median house price but there were increases in Northland ($25,000), Hawke’s Bay ($29,950) and Central Otago Lakes ($53,500).

“When you look at the year-on-year changes in house prices, however, there has been a national increase of $35,000 in the median house price value,” Dr Squires says.

“We saw a resurgence in house prices for many regions last quarter, followed by a fall-back for some and a rise for others in this quarter. The very different sub-market characteristics of regional property may play a role in this regional volitility – particularly when we look at Hawke’s Bay and Central Otago Lakes compared to the dominant market of Auckland.”

Central Otago Lakes breaks all records

The country’s most affordable regions (Southland, Manawatū/Whanganui and Taranaki) remain unchanged, as do its least affordable regions (Central Otago Lakes and Auckland).

“The surge in house prices in Central Otago Lakes means the region is now a record 81 per cent less affordable than the rest of the country,” Dr Squires says. “The region’s median house price is now 15.4 times its average annual wage, compared to Auckland where house prices are 13.1 times annual wages.”

While affordability concerns are growing in Northland and Hawke’s Bay, house price-to-income ratios in these regions – at 8.0 and 7.4 respectively – are still considerably more favourable than Central Otago Lakes and Auckland. 

“While the situation is changing from quarter to quarter, it is clear that New Zealand home affordability is still a national and regional problem in the short and medium term,” Dr Squires says.