Who's doing Surveying and Spatial Science Honours Degrees and what do they get from it?

Te Kura Kairūri | the School of Surveying, at Te Whare Wānanga o Ōtākou | the University of Otago in Aotearoa New Zealand aspires to support an undergraduate research programme and culture that promote inclusion, encourage project variety, and inspire future participation. To understand our current position, we have compiled demographic and research topic data, and surveyed students who completed a Bachelor of Surveying (Honours) (BSurv(Hons)), between 2000 and 2022. Within New Zealand, both the Surveying profession and degree course are male-dominated. Yet within the BSurv(Hons), we find that female students are over-represented relative to their numbers in our programme, while male students are under-represented. Alongside this, female graduates are less likely to report a relationship between honours and career attributes while males are more likely to report such a relationship. Engineering surveying topics featured often in our catalogue of thesis topics, relative to their representation in the Surveying curriculum, and we associate this with forward-looking aspirations in a field characterised by rapid technological innovation. Together, the survey data suggest that career considerations are a stronger driver for male students than for female students who choose undergraduate research. All of our survey respondents had generally positive recollections of their experience, encouraging others to take it on. In this new work, we expand our demographic analysis to consider the ethnicity and diversity of our cohort and their projects. Examining how students choose honours, we find that lecturers play a large role in the initial stages of the decision, but that personal goals, including ‘rising to the challenge’, are more often the reason a student ultimately commits. This project allows us to learn from the past and provides insights that will help us develop a thriving and inclusive undergraduate student honours experience at Te Kura Kairūri | the School of Surveying.