Congratulations to Professor Emeritus Doug Pearce
In January Professor Douglas Pearce retired after a long and successful career, the last 15 years of which have been as Head of the Tourism Management Group at Victoria University.
In January we said goodbye to Professor Douglas Pearce who retired after a long and successful career, the last 15 years of which have been as Head of the Tourism Management Group here at Victoria.
However, soon after his retirement we celebrated his appointment as Professor Emeritus, a title that pays tribute to his international academic standing and contributions to the University.
Arrival at the School of Management
Doug arrived at Victoria in 2000 to take up the Chair in Tourism Management, having spent much of his academic career in the Geography Department at The University of Canterbury.
Having grown up in the South Canterbury town of Temuka, Doug completed his BA and MA degrees at Canterbury before moving to Southern France and being awarded his PhD from the Université d'Aix-Marseille II in 1975.
His doctoral research led to his first seminal book, Tourist Development: Topics in Applied Geography (1981), which has been followed by many others, including Tourism Today: A Geographical Perspective (1988), Tourist Organisations (1992), and most recently Frameworks for Tourism Research (2012).
In addition, Doug has published over 60 journal articles and held editorial board positions on a number of the leading tourism journals.
International activities
Doug’s international activities have included visiting positions at prestigious institutions, including the University of Hawai’i (USA), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain), and Université de Paris IV (Paris-Sorbonne, France).
He was a founding Fellow of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism and is a former Vice President. His work as a Tourism Development Consultant and Strategic Planner also included projects in Belize, Split (then part of Yugoslavia), Sarawak (Malaysia), Sabah (Malaysia), and Samoa.
Securing TEDQual accreditation
Doug’s impact on the Tourism Group at Victoria will be long lasting. On arrival he redesigned the BTM, BTM (Hons) and MTM and secured TEDQual accreditation for these programmes in 2006, with successful reaccreditations and the inclusion of the Tourism PhD programme from 2013.
He set up the Tourism Advisory Group to strengthen the relevance and application of the group’s degrees and research activities, and led the FRST-funded 'Innovation in New Zealand Tourism through Improved Distribution Channels' project.
Mentoring role
But perhaps Doug's most important legacy have been at a personal level.
As supervisor of many doctoral and Master candidates he has guided and supported postgraduate students who now hold academic and industry positions across the world.
And for staff, he has steered and mentored colleagues, with a door that was always open for questions and guidance, but not avoiding critical but constructive feedback when appropriate.
Doug’s appointment as Emeritus Professor retains his link to Victoria.
He is not resting on his laurels in retirement, having already returned to the classroom as a student of Spanish, and next month he is heading to Chile to extend his South American interests and provide guidance on research projects there.
That his retirement function brought together academics, graduates, and industry representatives serves as a testament to the impacts Doug has had in his long and illustrious career.
A portrait of Doug, not only illustrating milestones of his career but also his enduring legacy as a tourism pioneer, has just been published by the journal Anatolia, and can be accessed from this link: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/ZHtcCbsBkWgSIEaWKKvP/full
So we wish Doug, au revoir, adios, haere rā, goodbye and good luck.