The excellent news for ICL this month is that the Postgraduate Diploma in Business (Level 8) has been approved by NZQA, short of final sign-off. The NZQA Panel gave three commendations, seven recommendations and no requirements. The commendations were for our “willingness to embrace and continuously develop the degree culture”; to the staff for “their commitment to student-centred learning”; and for the school’s “emphasis on pastoral care and the continuous self-improvement involved”. The recommendations were all reasonable and easily achievable, and those on our research activity are timely for us to lift our research to a new level.
This is a significant moment in the development of ICL; we expect the PGDip to become our largest programme within the next two years. We have decided on a start in the first week of June, and hope to have recruited a reasonably-sized cohort by then.

As a consequence of this success, and the fact that already over half our academic programme students are at Level 7, we are rebranding the business school ICL Graduate Business School, effective 1st April.
The introduction of a PGDip will have a significant effect on our research programme, as we make it increasingly more closely allied to our business teaching, and we are convening a meeting of our newly-expanded Research Advisory Board in May to seek advice.

Ewen Mackenzie-Bowie