NZ Maritime School Alumni Expands to Meet Demand

NZ Maritime School Alumni Expands to Meet Demand…

The New Zealand Maritime School Alumni is proving so successful that it has been extended and enlarged to include nautical students from foreign going qualifications and local skippers’ courses.

The pilot website for logistics and freight students set up last year has now been paralleled with two further websites, each of 40 pages or more, with information and data specific to the audiences of foreign going skippers, and local validity skippers.

“The school offers a diverse range of marine related courses and qualifications, so we have nautical students and freight students studying concurrently, along with our overseas student contracts and short courses or contract training,” said Captain Tim Wilson, Director of the NZMS.

“Once those students graduate though, they tend to follow their own career paths. Freight and logistics students are generally based in New Zealand or Australia, although some do obtain work elsewhere overseas. Foreign going skippers can be anywhere in the world, and local validity skippers operate locally or within defined water limits again anywhere in the world, so the websites need to meet different needs to meet that diversity.

“The three websites offered through the Alumni have been tailored to their audiences and the membership is vigorous and active. We only launched the foreign going and local validity sites a month ago, but already we have about 40 members joined up. The freight and logistics site has now hit 100 members, so we are pleased with that growth in less than one year,” he said.

“The websites are being hit actively. Last month there were over 20,000 hits, and over 4000 pages were downloaded.

“The Alumni is an on-going part of our pastoral responsibility to students, providing a forum for the students and graduates to keep in touch with their fellow classmates and colleagues as their careers develop. Personal contacts and business relationships are critical to successful business in New Zealand, and the contacts students make at school and in tertiary as they train and gain academic knowledge lay the foundations for ongoing business relationships as the students mature and they climb up the corporate business ladder.”

The New Zealand Maritime School has been involved in maritime and marine training for the past 60 years. In 1946 the first graduates emerged from what was then called the Auckland Nautical School, and since then the school has grown and expanded. Now about 350 high quality students graduate from the School in the nautical and logistics sector each year, and find positions within their industries.

The quality of our graduates is an important part of our reputation as a high class academic training institute, Mr Wilson said. “We know we have graduates working on international cruise liners, and containers vessels all around the world. Some of our local skippers may be on ferries in Auckland and Wellington but equally there are some who are managing super yachts in the Mediterranean or the Caribbean, while others skipper service vessels and tenders servicing oilrigs in the North Sea or in the parts of Asia.

The freight and logistics graduates are among the best air freight, freight forwarding, shipping and customs brokering professionals in New Zealand, but even some of them have found their way in to international arena in Australia, the US and other parts of the world.

“We have staff committed to alumni activities and ongoing website content management,” Mr Wilson said. “For the websites to be effective communications tools, we have to update them regularly, and ensure the content is refreshed and current. Building the website is one task but the real job is ensuring that they are current and relevant information and news portals for the users.”

Mr Wilson said that the School and the Alumni were delivering on this commitment, and the websites would continue to expand and be improved. The NZMS Alumni websites are online now at www.maritimealumni.ac.nz. Membership is free.

ENDS

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