Future Skills Academy student Mingmin Guo has been awarded a Bunckenburg Bursary to assist her with her bachelor’s studies.

The HH Bunckenburg Memorial Trust was established in honour of Henry Herbert Bunckenburg, who was a great influence on the quantity surveying profession.

Three Bunckenburg Bursaries are awarded to New Zealand Institute of Quantity Surveyors (NZIQS) members who have completed a diploma and are now studying towards a degree.

Mingmin decided to make a complete career change after having her second child. She had previously worked as an Early Childhood Teacher but decided it was time for something different.

“I wasn’t sure if at my age I could still do it, study, have kids, and look after the family, but I wanted to give it a try,” she says.

Future Skills Academy’s class schedule and central location fitted in with her family commitments, so she enrolled in the NZ Diploma in Construction (Quantity Surveying).

She finished the diploma last year and is now working towards her Bachelor of Construction, which she’ll be able to complete in just one year.  

Mingmin will finish her degree this December and she’s already getting her CV and cover letter ready to enter the industry. She hopes to secure a job as a full-time Quantity Surveyor.

The Bunckenburg Bursary will help Mingmin fund her bachelor’s study. She says her teachers wrote reference letters to support her bursary application, which also included an academic transcript. 

Mingmin says she’s thoroughly enjoying studying with Future Skills Academy. Highlights have included getting to meet other students who have the same dream of becoming a Quantity Surveyor.

She studies alongside both domestic and international students at our CBD campus and has become friends with a group of students whose circumstances are similar to her own. They are all very busy taking care of their families on top of their study.

Mingmin is also grateful to her lecturers here who she says are very understanding of different students’ situations. They support her with her assignments and have granted extensions when her children were sick in the winter.

“The teachers are awesome. They give me very good support,” says Mingmin.

“Our lecturers even gave us extra tutorials to help us with assessment outside the normal teaching time during lockdown, and I cannot thank them enough.”