Māori and Pacific students generally do not attain the same levels of tertiary success as New Zealanders of European descent, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects. Te Rōpū Āwhina (Āwhina), an equity initiative at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand between 1999 and 2015, aimed to produce Māori and Pacific professionals in STEM disciplines who contribute to Māori and Pacific community development and leadership. A hierarchical Bayesian approach was used to estimate posterior standardized completion rates for 3-year undergraduate and 2-year postgraduate degrees undertaken by non–Māori-Pacific and Māori-Pacific students. Results were consistent with an Āwhina effect, that is, Āwhina’s positive influence on (combined) Māori and Pacific success.

Vol. 17, No. 1

March 01, 2018

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History

Submitted: 4 July 2017

Revised: 26 December 2017

Accepted: 28 December 2017

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© 2018 K. Richardson et al. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2018 The American Society for Cell Biology. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0).

We acknowledge past and present staff in the Āwhina faculties, the late Sir Paul Callaghan, and the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology. This work would not have been possible without the strong commitment of all Āwhina whānau members. We acknowledge and thank them for their significant contributions to Āwhina. We also thank Cheryl Leggon, Hazel Phillips, and Andrew Tarr for their help with earlier drafts of this paper.

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