Toitū Te Whenua Tertiary GIS Scholarships

After successful annual calls for applications since 2018, Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand is again calling for applications for external Tertiary GIS Scholarships – this time for the 2024 academic year.

A link to the Application form is below. Applications open 2 October 2023 and close 12 November 2023.

A geospatial expert walks a graduate through some of their work, pointing to some mapping data on screen

Applications are open to students who:

  • are enrolled at a New Zealand university or other New Zealand tertiary institute
  • are New Zealand citizens or permanent residents, and
  • have completed their first year of tertiary studies (for undergraduate scholarship) or undergraduate qualification (for postgraduate scholarship).

Each scholarship is up to a maximum of NZ$5,000 for undergraduate or postgraduate course fees for Geographic Information Science (GIS) related courses or postgraduate research undertaken during the period of the scholarship being awarded for each academic year.

GIS related-courses are of value to people from a wide variety of backgrounds - check out the Studying GIS page!

Studying GIS

Plus, check out the profiles of recipients of Toitū Te Whenua tertiary GIS scholarships for the 2023 Academic year:

Why are we offering these scholarships?

One of the key outcomes we are working towards is ‘the geographic and property information we provide is trustworthy and reliable, freely available and well used’. This means Toitū Te Whenua is working to ensure geographic and property information is used effectively to create value for New Zealand and New Zealanders. To deliver this value requires people with geospatial skills. Research from Victoria University in 2012 concluded that there was a geospatial skills shortage in New Zealand. A September 2017 report from economics and strategy consultancy firm AlphaBeta showed that the geospatial industry is growing strongly both in New Zealand and around the world (you can read both of these reports as well as Toitū Te Whenua's Strategic intentions 2023–2027 in the Related links below). By offering scholarships Toitū Te Whenua can encourage more tertiary students to take GIS-related courses as part of their studies and help ensure that there is a sufficient supply of skilled people to contribute to New Zealand’s growing geospatial industry.

Toitū Te Whenua is a member of the cross-sector Geospatial Capability Committee (GCC). The vision of the GCC is ‘New Zealand has the capability to reach its geospatial potential’. As part of its work programme the committee is implementing recommendations from the 2016 report ‘Graduate Pathways: Support for Young Geospatial Professionals in New Zealand’ (see link below). Through our scholarships we can help implement these recommendations, support New Zealand tertiary GIS programmes and help geospatial students achieve their goals.