N.U.S. plans Savai’i expansion

The Vice-Chancellor of the National University of Samoa [N.U.S.], Professor Aiono Alec Ekeroma, has revealed plans for a bigger campus in Salelologa, Savai’i. 

The university currently has a Savai’i campus on the upper level of the Salelologa market. It consists of three rooms used to deliver the three programs available on the big island: the Faculty of Education, the Oloamanu Centre and the Centre of Samoa.

Aiono said the Government has offered about 10 acres of land in Salelologa as space for the proposed campus. It currently lacks an and the land is closer to the beach.

“We’re thinking of [building] it in stages so what we’re planning is that we do the first stage, where we’ll do a few classrooms before we move on to the other stages for other classrooms,” he said 

Aiono says that the policy and planning departments of the university are looking at formulating a design for the campus, and hope to discuss their plans with the Member of Parliament for Salelologa and the village to get their views. 

The university is also planning to take some of the programmes available at the To’omatagi campus to Savai’i to allow students to study them there.

But Aiono said some courses would not be able to be taken to the big island such as medicine, the maritime school or the nursing programme. 

“Hopefully, we can deliver some courses through an online platform and our lecturers here can provide that service," he said. 

"We cannot take all the programmes to Savai’i because it’s not cost-effective if all our lecturers go to Savai’i, when there are not that many students who will subscribe to the courses that will be offered there."

Aiono also revealed that the university is planning to put up to half of its courses online in the next four years, allowing remote study by students from as far afield as Tokelau or Niue.