NPM goes through for next stage of funding

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The Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) has announced that Nga Pae o te Maramatanga (NPM) has been selected as the only applicant to go forward to the next stage of the Maori Centre of Research Excellence (CoRE) funding round for 2016 - 2020.

The announcement by the commission, which is managing the funding process, means that NPM can now submit a full funding proposal to the selection panel, marking the final stage of a three-stage application process which was initiated last year. The full proposal is due February 27, this year.

Nga Pae o te Maramatanga last year supported the project Ka Awatea, a tribal-based study of high achieving rangatahi, lead by Te Arawa researcher Professor Angus Macfarlane.

Nga Pae o Maramatanga also supported the Enhancing Maori Distinctiveness national conference held in Rotorua in 2012 which several Te Arawa researchers spoke at. It had also supported projects by researchers of Te Arawa descent such as Dr Shaun Ogilvie, Associate Professor Poia Rewi of Otago University and Dr Kepa Morgan.

"We are delighted to have the opportunity to develop this full proposal and believe that NPM provides an excellent vehicle to ensure that researchers involved with the competing bids be incorporated into our final submission. NPM has always been inclusive of all Maori researchers and institutions and this ethos remains in place," a commission spokesperson said.

"We would like to acknowledge the many researchers across the country who contributed to the pre-proposal." The NPM bid includes a new distributed research leadership model with a collaborative governance structure and even greater community engagement.

This collective model supports and values the efforts of all our researchers to ensure that research excellence is met and that the benefits of this research accrue to Maori and the nation. Distributive leadership will provide for a considerable expansion of diverse leadership skills, which will be set in a context of renewal and succession planning.

NPM's vision is for Maori to lead the nation into the future and as such we hope to secure the TEC funding to realise this. TEC is expected to make the final funding decision by June 2015.