Celebrating success at the NZ Amcham Awards
16 September 2019
The International Office was awarded ‘highly commended’ in the Bilateral Relations category at the AmChamNZ Awards for their work advancing the commitment to IIE’s Generation Study Abroad initiative.
Professor Jayne Godfrey, Dean Business School and member of the American Chamber of Commerce was on hand to join in the celebrations.
The Generation Study Abroad (GSA) campaign aims to double the number of US students learning abroad. Incoming US students are generally coming to the University to study for a semester rather than a full degree. While they are able to take courses across the university, many take classes in the Faculties of Arts and the Business School in addition to the major studies.
New Zealand was the first international commitment partner to join the Generation Study Abroad initiative and in doing so, the team committed to do their bit to help US partners to double participation in learning abroad. It also enabled the team to reach its own ambitious goals for learning abroad.
We may be unique among commitment partners. In joining IIE GenSA, we sought to increase students heading out to study as much as supporting US students to come in. It’s been a rewarding strategy of success for us in many levels.
The International Office’s strategy is built on partnerships. They established 100 Generation Study Abroad Scholarships and distributed these to US university and college who were fellow IIE GSA commitment partners.
They found new ways to work with existing partners like IFSA with whom the team have partnered to offer Upfront@Auckland scholarships to support students for whom the upfront costs of learning abroad, things like passport and visa fees, flights and programme deposits, can prove a near insurmountable barrier to study abroad.
They formed new partnerships with organisations like Diversity Abroad and offered scholarships and travel grants to students from diverse and underrepresented backgrounds to come to Auckland to explore their identity in a super diverse city while studying with the University.
The team also made some in-house changes to remove barriers to study. These included guaranteeing accommodation for study abroad students, removing study abroad students from the pre-requisite approval process and improving our admissions processes to simplify and speed up admission and enrolment.
In this work, the team also collaborated with the government. Education New Zealand is committed to platinum sponsorship of NAFSA to build profile for New Zealand. They partnered with GoOverseas in a three year project to offer Generation Study Abroad scholarships and travel grants to US students for study in New Zealand.
The Generation Study Abroad commitment has resulted in hundreds of students coming to know New Zealand and its people. In fact, the team enrolled over 650 US students last year in semester study, as well as innovative short programmes like ScreenTools, the practical film making course.