The head of Eastern Institute of Technology's computing school has been made a Fellow of the Centre for Information Technology Education and Research New Zealand (CITRENZ) ahead of his upcoming retirement.

Dr Stephen Corich was awarded the honour at the CITRENZ annual conference held in Queenstown for information technology educators and researchers.

The honour, one of few conferred in CITRENZ's 26-year history, recognises his contribution to IT education and research in general.

To cap off that achievement, EIT's School of Computing out-performed all other institutes of technology at CITRENZ's award ceremony in winning four of five award categories and receiving three commendations.

The four category award wins were for best student poster (Postgraduate Diploma in Information Technology student Kamal Jyoti, supervised by Dr Michael Verhaart, Associate Professor at EIT's School of Computing), best educational innovation paper (Verhaart and EIT learning technologist Stephanie Day), best collaborative paper (senior lecturer in management at EIT's Auckland campus Raewyn Boersen and AUT staffer Alison Hunter) and best paper (Boersen and Hunter).

According to EIT, Corich retires in December after 22 years at the tertiary institute. Joining as an academic staff member in 1994, he was appointed programme coordinator for the newly created Bachelor of Computing Systems in 1997.

Corich was the first staff member to be awarded both the CEO's Award for Academic Excellence and the CEO's Award for Research Excellence. He was appointed assistant Head of School Computing in 2008 and Head of School the following year.