Papua New Guinean couple Douglas and Delka Rinny are far away from home and have been travelling the Pacific since last month, having already stopped over in the Solomon Islands and Fiji.

Vanuatu and the island kingdom of Tonga are their next destinations after they fly out of Samoa on Monday to conclude two months of travelling on behalf of the Pacific Adventist University (P.A.U.). The P.A.U. – which is owned and operated by the South Pacific Division of the SDA church – is located 21 kilometres outside the PNG capital Port Moresby. It is reaching out to potential students, especially those studying in SDA schools, as well as reconnecting with its alumni following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mr. Rinny, who is the P.A.U. Media Officer, told Samoa Observer in an interview on Friday that due to the regional footprint of the SDA church's South Pacific Division, they are travelling through the various nations meeting with students, schools as well as affiliated churches to brief them on the courses that are available and the course requirements.

"Students in grade 12 or Year 13 or Form 13 are eligible to apply to P.A.U. so we've been getting students from Samoa and Tonga for the last 39 years until Covid," Mr. Rinny said. "So when Covid hit the 2019, 2020, 2021 intake and a bit of 2022 were mainly Papua New Guinean students because international students couldn't come.

"Now post-Covid, the numbers slowly coming back in so part of this trip is to promote the courses that we offer and to show students that you are also eligible to apply to P.A.U. to do your further studies as well so that's basically what this trip is for."

The P.A.U. administration is also keen on linking up with its former students with Mr. Rinny indicating that the SDA church-run university will celebrate its 40th anniversary next year with a view to getting the alumni involved in the planned celebrations.

"Meeting with these alumni and bringing them together and psyching them up for that anniversary to bring them back to school so that anniversary will be in 2024 from 5-7 July so we are looking forward to meeting all the former students."

Asked if there is potential for more students from Samoa to go to the university, Mr. Rinny said the university is keen on boosting the current student ratio to 30:70 with a focus on getting more students from the Pacific Islands region to Papua New Guineans. 

"We want a lot more Samoan students to come because Samoan student numbers have dropped from P.A.U. [as] before they came in good numbers and now [the numbers] are down. I think the last Samoan graduate was in 2018 just before Covid," he said. "We believe P.A.U. is an ideal university for all the Pacific because being a church-run institution, we have extra activities apart from your studies, that encourage or build up in a student the values that are needed for workplaces."

All academic courses offered by the P.A.U. are administered by four schools and a postgraduate office. These include the School of Business, School of Humanities, Education and Theology, School of Health Science, and Postgraduate and Research. 

Mrs. Rinny is a graduate training assistant at the P.A.U. who is also doing a master's degree in leadership and management at the university.