| Abstract |
Geothermal energy training is a very specialised with only few established postgraduate programmes available worldwide. In this paper we discuss the background, teaching philosophy, course content, student cohort, funding and recent enrolment trends in the New Zealand course. The Post Graduate Certificate in Geothermal Energy Technology (PGCertGeothermTech) taught at the University of Auckland, New Zealand since 2007. It is a one-semester (5 month) course for Science and Engineering graduates, developed in response to the demand for trained engineers and scientists to work in geothermal exploration and development nationally and internationally. The programme is industry-oriented and is designed to bring together graduates from different disciplines in science and engineering. The course is very condensed; concept rich and organized into two teaching blocks of six weeks each, followed by a short project. There are two major field trips of one week each, which comprise 20% of the course. Running this programme has many challenges such as the diverse technical skills needed to teach this programme, which are not all available within the University. The programme is expensive to run due to the high cost of the two week-long field trips. At the same time, student numbers have to be limited for this level of applied teaching and for health and seafety considerations associated with the field work. The course coordinator and main academic staff carry out most of the teaching and fieldwork and are strongly involved in the selection of material covered by the external lecturers and industry experts. This reduces the course overhead in terms of number of full time academic staff and prevents repetition of material covered by multiple lecturers, which also ensures a consistent course structure. There has been significant changes in student’s enrolment trends in the past few years. While the number of students attending the different geothermal papers/modules has been relatively stable, the number of students completing the full PGCertGeothermTech degree has declined. This is related to the strong interest in the interfaculty Master of Energy (taught) program where students carry the credit from doing the geothermal papers toward this degree. Students from the Master of Energy program also carry six months research project on geothermal topic. |