Areef Dean

Areef Dean arrived in New Zealand from Fiji four years ago and completed a senior year at secondary school before enrolling at UCOL in Palmerston North for the Bachelor of Information and Communications Technology programme.

Although he was an international student, he had support from family members based in nearby Wanganui.

He says the BICT degree was recommended by his teachers at school and turned out to be exactly right for him. "Very hands-on, with the opportunity to develop specialised skills," he says.

Areef acquired an interest in networking and the rapidly developing area of IP telephony systems, and has already done tutoring and hardware maintenance at UCOL. Now he has completed his degree, he will look for a fulltime position where he can apply his new knowledge.