SIT board retains three members
Three members of the Southern Institute of Technology’s governance council will be retained when a new subsidiary board of directors takes over in April.
The new team of leaders still needs to be approved by the Ministry of Education by the end of this month.
The six-member subsidiary board will manage SIT’s operations after New Zealand’s 16 polytechnics are centralised in line with the Government’s vocational education reforms.
The New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology Establishment Board chairman Barry Jordan said more than 370 applications were received for the board.
Current SIT Council members Janet Copeland, Aimee Kaio and Murray Donald were chosen to serve on the new board. Donald will serve as the deputy chairman of the subsidiary board.
The three are joined by Darren Rewi, Barry Jordan and new board chairwoman Alison Broad.
Broad was a business tutor at the then Southland Polytechnic and has a long history with SIT. She is a former chairwoman of Community Trust South and current deputy chairwoman of the Southland Conservation Board.
‘‘I’m very pleased with the mix of expertise and experience on the new board, along with continuity from the outgoing SIT Council and links with the national picture,’’ Broad said in a statement.
SIT’s current leaders were left deflated in February when they found out they’d been overlooked for positions on the new board.
Council chairman Peter Heenan said he thoroughly recommended Copeland, Kaio and Donald, but couldn’t comment on the other directors as he did not know them. He was pleased to see a Southlander as the chairperson.
Heenan believed the direction of the new board would depend on how much autonomy they would be given in the new tertiary structure. The challenge would be in guiding SIT and its students through dramatic changes in the education sector. ‘‘I wish the new board well.’’
A New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology council member and a member from another polytechnic will join the SIT subsidiary board to help the institute function as part of the education network. They will be announced in April.