Study leads student from Taipa to Canada
Hailing from the tiny town of Taipa hasn’t stopped Chris Beckham gaining great success.
The 22-year-old recently graduated from the University of Waikato with a Bachelor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences with first class honours.
Beckham was chosen to speak at the graduation ceremony in April and is now studying for a Master of Computer Science at Universite de Montreal in Quebec, Canada.
Growing up in the small Far North town, north of Mangonui, he says many of his peers didn’t see university as an option for them.
‘‘I came from a low-decile secondary school and a lot of my peers believed that university wasn’t an option for them because they didn’t think they were smart enough.’’
In his final year at Taipa Area School, Beckham applied for as many scholarships as he was eligible for at the university.
He received a number of them and one in particular meant that his first year of accommodation in the halls of residence was paid for. Worth up to $7000, the DV Bryant Trust Residential Scholarship is designed to assist those with proven academic potential but whose financial circumstances are constrained.
By the end of his studies he had received scholarships totalling more than $28,000.
Beckham says school leavers should think deeply about why exactly they think university isn’t an option for them.
It’s not for everyone, Beckham says, as some people might prefer a polytechnic learning environment or to run their own business.
‘‘If there is an ambition they’d like to pursue and going to university helps achieve that ambition, I don’t think they should let their environment or upbringing be a limiting factor in that decision.’’
His end goal is to help people and he hopes that will be his legacy.
‘‘Because my specialty is in machine learning (teaching computers how to learn), I am in a really awesome position to utilise those skills for the benefit of humanity.
‘‘An example of this is in biomedical science, where genetic data can be used to help predict cancer susceptibility.’’
He returns to Taipa as much as he can. ‘‘From Hamilton it was a long drive up and even more so now that I’m in Canada.’’