Teachers serving at Adventist schools within the Central Papua Conference (CPC) in Papua New Guinea (PNG) graduated with certificates of participation for a two-week mathematics course on January 31 at Pacific Adventist University.
The ceremony, conducted at PAU’s English church, recognised 124 teachers—representing 15 of the total 17 schools in the conference— who attended, from very remote schools such as Efogi, to crowded city schools such as Carr Memorial School in Port Moresby.
Dignitaries present at the graduation ceremony included CPC president, Pastor Kove Tau, PAU vice chancellor, Professor Raul Lozano, and deputy vice chancellor, Professor Lalen Simeon.
Launched in partnership with the PNG Mathematical Society and the PAU School of Science, the in-service was an initiative of CPC’s education department, which funded the operation in light of their vision to host annual in-service programs to empower teachers and improve their competency on various subjects.
Dean of the School of Science & Technology at PAU, Dr Samuel Kopamu, who is also president of the PNG Mathematical Society, led out in lecture presentations throughout the in-service.
Topics covered the use of venn diagrams to prove set identities, the use of tree diagrams to solve word problems in permutations, combinations, and probability, and other standard topics in such domains and ranges of functions, sketching graphs, inequalities and absolute values, bijections, composition of functions, inverses functions, differentiation, and integration.
CPC education director, Mrs Dorcas Kuma, who participated in the in-service, stressed that the program was not only mathematically up-skilling but also spiritually empowering.
“We can be the head and not the tail,” she said. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom and I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
The teachers agreed that this in-service was personally, spiritually and professionally uplifting and have expressed a desire to attend future programs.
