Graduation

Secretary for Education Karen Sewell has urged University of Otago graduates to retain their sense of outrage over injustice.

A smarter way of cutting possum numbers, by using contraceptive "pills", has moved closer to reality through research undertaken by University of Otago PhD graduand Alexandra Kafka.

Telford Rural Polytechnic celebrated its last year as an independent institution with a graduation parade on Balclutha's main street yesterday.

When Peter Dulgar graduates from the University of Otago with a PhD today, he will celebrate a rare feat - a degree from the world's most northerly English-speaking university and another from the southernmost.

Academic achievements were "part of a journey, but not the destination", Tertiary Education Commission chairman Sir Wira Gardiner told University of Otago graduates at the weekend.

Sir Wira Gardiner, the Tertiary Education Commission chief executive, will give the address at a University of Otago graduation ceremony at the Dunedin Town Hall tomorrow.

The University of Otago will confer an honorary doctor of laws degree on a leading Dunedin artist and art educator, Marilynn Webb, at a graduation ceremony today.

About 240 people graduated in person with degrees, diplomas and certificates from Otago Polytechnic yesterday, in a 3pm ceremony at the Dunedin Town Hall.

Fanaafi Aiono-Le Tagaloa will have plenty to celebrate today when she graduates from the University of Otago, becoming the first Samoan-born person to gain a PhD in law from the university.

For one Dunedin father and daughter today is extra special.

Hundreds of University of Otago students, lecturers and professors stood to remember one of their brightest as Chris Elliott accepted his late sister's degree at the Dunedin Town Hall on Saturday.

Making dispassionate decisions based on the evidence is a habit which is ''increasingly under threat'', the British High Commissioner to New Zealand, George Fergusson, says.

Mixing work and study has been tough at times, but hotel manager Jaclyn Allison believes her career prospects have been strengthened by the hospitality qualification she will gain from Otago Polytechnic today.