Dr Cherie Chu-Fuluifaga, who was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to education earlier this year, works hard to create spaces for people who are often invisible in the education system.
“We shouldn’t have students who are alone or isolated, so I do my best to see them,” she says.
Dr Chu-Fuluifaga, who is Chinese and Tahitian, has spent 25 years at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington’s Te Puna Ako Pai—School of Education, bringing her expertise and experience as an educator and a champion of Pacific leadership to generations of University students, and to many other communities in Aotearoa and the Pacific.
Her parents never went to school, but they valued and supported their daughter’s education. Her mother saved up $900 for Dr Chu-Fuluifaga’s first year of university fees from her work as a cleaner.
Dr Chu-Fuluifaga followed her friends to Victoria University, and chose the same subjects they chose—one of which happened to be education. “I just loved it,” she says. “I loved my lecturers and courses.”
Dr Chu-Fuluifaga thrived at university, despite struggling at high school and being told by a guidance counsellor that she should be a secretary.
“When she said those words, I was really disappointed. I felt invisible. She didn’t take the time to ask about me. I wanted to be a marine biologist or an air traffic controller. No one asked me, no one talked to me about it.”
Dr Chu-Fuluifaga now gives a lecture titled, ‘So you should be a secretary’.
While she was studying she saw a notice advertising for a tutor and decided to give it a go. “I was an absolute nervous wreck,” she says. “My hands were so sweaty, all the students in the tutorial were looking at me. I was so shy and didn’t have the skills. I had to go back to that point of respect, of how would I want to learn?”
“I would want to learn in ways that support my identity and culture.”
She describes her tutoring journey as a sort of apprenticeship, along with her Honour’s and Master’s degrees. “The apprenticeship model just worked—not being 100 percent successful in the beginning, but learning. I wanted to be the best for my students.”
From those early days as a tutor to her current position as a distinguished senior lecturer and scholar, Dr Chu-Fuluifaga has held on to the core value of respect. Her parents taught her to treat others the way you want to be treated.
“I just see people for who they are,” she says. “I grew up as the sixth child of the family. I was always watching how people interacted, how people were sometimes left on their own or excluded. I want people to be included in their own way, I want them to be flourishing in ways that are them, regardless of whether they’re Pacific or not, they deserve happiness.”
She tells her PhD students that their PhD will change a generation of people: their family, their community. “The potential of what a PhD can do to uplift people, and bring new knowledge and new pathways is immense.”
In 2000, she founded the highly successful mentoring programme for Humanities and Commerce at the University, and has been dedicated to providing leadership training to Pasifika students and others. She convenes a leadership network and cluster group specifically tailored for Pasifika students, and has led leadership development programmes for university students and communities throughout the Pasifika region.
Her impressive track record includes leading research projects for esteemed organisations such as Ako Aotearoa, New Zealand Council for Educational Research, and the Ministry of Education. Additionally, she has designed cultural training and education programs for a wide range of professionals, including judges, lawyers, optometrists, midwives, doctors, educators, teachers, youth workers, academics, and students.
Dr Sue Cherrington, Te Puna Ako Pai—School of Education Head of School, says, “Cherie is one of those colleagues who epitomises the whakataukī, kāore te kumara e kōrero ana mo tōna ake reka (the kumara does not brag about its own sweetness), with her humility about her contributions to the University and our wider community.
“She is an outstanding educator and researcher who is having enormous impact in the wider educational research sector, particularly in relation to Pacific education. This is evident in the lead she has taken in research into Pacific students’ experiences in schooling and tertiary education and her work mentoring young Pacific leaders. It is a privilege to work alongside Cherie in Te Puna Ako Pai.”
Dr Chu-Fuluifaga isn’t afraid to push boundaries as a way of helping people, and honouring who they are, in their identities and cultures. “Sometimes the policies and rules don’t fit particular groups of people, so how do we push back on the boundaries that don’t assist us as Pacific? It might be things like extension policies, because of our circumstances, like when we come from situations of poverty, or our obligations to churches.”
Dr Chu-Fuluifaga says she is thankful for the guidance and support of Professor Joanna Kidman, who she met when she was a young student. “Through this time of working with academics, she’s the one who’s always had my back, she’s my hashtag ride or die. Everything I’ve learned through this heavy system has been through her kindness and care and aroha, so I want to acknowledge her.”
Looking to the future, Dr Chu-Fuluifaga is working to extend the mentorship process in new and dynamic ways, particularly for Pacific postgraduate students, and to create networks and clusters of students to talk together, decipher ideas, and connect communities regionally and internationally. “For me it’s about the relationships,” she says. “Gathering together for symposiums that really change processes.”
She also wants to create a framework to build more pathways into Master’s and PhD degrees for Pacific students. “I want to say don’t take no for an answer, if the University processes say you don’t meet the criteria. Let’s find a way.”
Dr Chu-Fuluifaga is also a finalist in the Education Section of the 2023 Wellingtonian of the Year Awards. The award ceremony announcing the winners will be held at the end of March.
