Cultures combined to make a welcome to Pasifika students to the University of Otago health sciences division a special one last night.
About 200 people packed the Hunter Centre to formally welcome students with Pacific Island heritage to the university and also to recognise the efforts of health sciences pro-vice-chancellor Peter Crampton.
Prof Crampton was presented with a cultural garland by the university's Pacific Island community after more than 25 years helping Pacific Island people in the fields of medicine and health science education.
"That must be, without doubt, one of the most humbling occasions of my entire life,'' Prof Crampton told the crowd after receiving the accolade.
"I'm so overwhelmed. I'm very humbled.''
Prof Crampton started working with Pasifika people in medicine as a general practitioner in Porirua in 1990 and carried his work with Pasifika people to the university environment in 1996 when he joined the University of Otago in Wellington.
The number of University of Otago Pasifika students was more than 400 in the health sciences division and was increasing across the university, Prof Crampton said.
This was, in part, due to the division's work promoting the university as a place for Pasifika people to study, but it was also because children were seeing their family members achieving.
"Pasifika communities, in my long experience, really want the best for their children. Part of our work is to get ... students in front of school kids to see that that can be their future too,'' Prof Crampton said.
The welcome included dancing, food, a kava ceremony and attendance by most new Pasifika health science students from countries including Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, Kiribati and the Cook Islands.
