Kia ora koutou, it’s wonderful to have such a cracking start to our growing season, fingers crossed it lasts.
Our Level 3 students have a lot of EIT work in progress – the final class for block development (irrigation) that goes with fruit supports, block layout and propagation, has just finished, and this assessment should be straight forward. It asks students to describe standard irrigation pre-season and maintenance checks, so please get them involved in this. Any opportunities to repair posts and wires, to be involved in grafting and tree planting will also help reinforce the class learning in these subjects. This class are also half way through crop health, and should be documenting pest, disease and weed control methods for their portfolio, and again any opportunity to be involved in these tasks will be helpful.
Level 4s have completed growing environment and have three assessments with this course around extreme weather events, block layout and soil analysis. They have just started fruit crop management which includes running a small trial at EIT observing the effects of different growth hormones on a crop. They need to present this information back to you for feedback, so get some curly questions prepared.
The level 5 fruit production students all gave their research talks last week. The students have to carry out a small scale research proposal as part of the research course and present this to an invited audience. Steven and Chris mark the delivery on a range of requirements. The students all did a great job, despite a few nerves, and the invited guests were impressed with the quality of the research questions, the way the research was carried out and the final presentations. All great skills to have as a potential leader in our industry. The students are currently working through the labour management course with Steven, where they get to discuss the law and how it works among other labour management skills. This leads on from the leadership course, bringing together two key skills required in todays orchards.
The level 5 Post Harvest students have completed their labour management courses and are now working through the leadership course where we un-pick what leadership is and what are the key elements of effective leadership. This allows the students to reflect on their own leadership style and look for ways they can develop to make them more effective in their leadership roles. This week we are delighted to welcome Clare Reid (Easton) who will be doing some leadership development exercises with them.
EIT has put in an application to Te Pūkenga for a fees discount again for next year. We hope the fees for 2025 will be similar to 2024. We will let you know when the 2025 fees are confirmed. We had good support from industry this year which enabled a discount on the planned 2024 fees and we hope to carry this over to 2025.
EIT is planning on being a regional polytechnic again with the proposed disestablishment of Te Pūkenga. We will know more about this in the new year.
Noho ora mai
Clare, Chris, Steven and Warren
