PNG UNRE News

Acting Director of the Popondetta institution, Cletus Tepaiyan (second left) and the team that accompanied him to East New Britain.   STAFF of the University’s former Popondetta Campus are calling on the National Government to bring the campus back under PNG UNRE. A team from the campus led by acting director Cletus Tepaiyan were at Vudal this month to meet with the UNRE Administration. Mr Tepaiyan  said the campus had contributed immensely to the Agriculture sector and would continue to do so if the Government reconsidered its 2014 decision to make it an autonomous higher education training institute, and return the institution to PNG UNRE. The July 2014 decision of the National Executive Council had effectively removed the Popondetta college from PNG UNRE and placed it under the Department of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology as an independent institution. It was named Eastern Papua Institute of Agriculture and Technology and was to offer tertiary level trai...

PNG UNRE ICT Special Services team and the ICT Technical team have been working tirelessly to improve ICT services at UNRE Campus. This was one of the 26 recommendations in the 2013 External Audit. The team is led by Quality Assurance Officer Josephine Lowe. She is assisted by Database & Information System Administrator Leo Darius; Database Officer Sophie Matane and ICT Service Support Officer Ashlee Kunan. The team reports directly to the Vice-Chancellor. The first task achieved was the launch and the changeover of the University Internet Service Provider from Excite PNG to Telikom PNG.  “We were allocated 10MBps (megabytes per second) bandwidth or speed. This speed was tested and verified by Telikom Technicians and ICT Manager, PNG UNRE. However, there have been many variables affecting connectivity in delivering data to our end users on campus,” said Mr Darius. Mr Darius explained that currently users can expect on average 3-5 Mbps download and upload speeds basically becaus...

UNRE Acting Chancellor Dr Andrew Masta (left)  and Telikom PNG CEO Mr Xavier Victor cut a cake. PNG University of Natural Resource and Environment has renewed its partnership with Telikom PNG to assist the University achieve its expansion plan. UNRE Vice-Chancellor Dr Pongie Kichawen said with the limited infrastructure available at the University, it could not meet the target of producing 1,000 graduates annually, therefore it is looking at using Information Communication Technology services to deliver academic programs to its students.  He said the University looked to Telikom PNG to help achieve this objective because it has cheaper rates. The University will be using its (Telikom) services to expand its academic programmes.  “For me the most important indicator to say that a university is big as such, it has to be students’ enrolment and this is where the mass education can come in.  “This is a small university in terms of its physica...

PNG University of Natural Resources and Environment through the new School of Environment and Climate Change was challenged to be at the forefront of biodiversity conservation in the Pacific region. UNRE Vice-Chancellor Dr Pongie Kichawen made the call at the University’s World Environment Day celebration last Friday. Dr Kichawen told staff and students that conservation of biodiversity remains a great challenge for PNG and that there is a need to integrate the goals of conservation of biodiversity areas into plans and policies of other sectors so that they are not undermined by incompatible developments. Dr Kichawen called on UNRE to lead the way to protect the East Melanesian biodiversity due to high levels of plant and animal endemism and accelerating levels of habitat loss caused by widespread of commercial logging and mining, expansion of subsistence and plantation agriculture, population increase and the impacts of climate change and variability. He...