Building a medical campus

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1910s, 1920s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, anatomy, biochemistry, library, medicine, microbiology, obstetrics and gynaecology, pharmacology, pharmacy, physiology, preventive and social medicine, surgery

An aerial view showing the medical school and hospital buildings, c.1970. The low-rise 1950s building replaced by the Sayers building can be seen between the Wellcome and Ferguson buildings, with cars parked in front. At the hospital, the clinical services building, opened in 1968, can be seen, but construction is yet to begin on the ward block, which opened in 1980. Several of the buildings in the block east of the hospital are now part of the university: the original Queen Mary maternity hospital now houses the surveying school and marine science department; the 2nd Queen Mary hospital is Hayward College, and the old nurses’ homes are Cumberland College. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, University of Otago Medical School Alumnus Association records, MS-1537/806, S17-517b.

There’s a significant university anniversary this year: it’s a century since the medical school opened its first Great King Street building. Otago medical classes started out in the university’s original building in Princes Street, but soon moved to the purpose-built anatomy and chemistry block (now the geology building) on the new site near the Leith. Opened in 1878, the new premises incorporated a lecture room, dissection room, preparation room, morgue, laboratory, anatomy room and professor’s office for the medical school. The facilities weren’t large – they were designed to cater for classes of a dozen or so – and the building was extended in 1883 and again in 1905, to provide for the expanding school and its first physiology professor. As medical student numbers continued to expand, from 80 in 1905 to 155 in 1914, space became desperately short and the medical faculty won government approval for further extensions to the anatomy and physiology departments, plus a new building to house the pathology and bacteriology (microbiology) departments, along with other subjects being taught in far from ideal conditions in the crowded hospital.

The site of the new building – in Great King Street, opposite the hospital – was controversial. Some university council members wanted all new developments to be on the existing campus, but medical academics wanted to be closer to the hospital, and the chancellor, Andrew Cameron, was on their side. Sydney Champtaloup, professor of public health and bacteriology, revealed the thinking behind the move during the 1914 public appeal for funds for the new building. After completing their studies in anatomy and physiology, which would still be taught at the university, said Champtaloup, ‘students are intimately associated with the Hospital. At present students attend some classes at the University, and have then to proceed to the Hospital for others, and to return to the University later. This involves a great waste of time and energy. All lectures and practical classes for senior students should be held in a suitable building near the Hospital’. He also pointed out that the hospital and university both required bacteriology and pathology labs, and ‘a combination of these requirements in one building makes for efficiency and economy, but that building to meet Hospital requirements must be either in the Hospital grounds or in its close proximity’. Although he didn’t mention it, Champtaloup would have to waste considerable time and energy himself if the new building wasn’t close to the hospital, since he was in charge of its bacteriology services.

The bacteriology and pathology building, later known as the Scott building, which opened in 1917. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, University of Otago Medical School Alumnus Assocation records, MS-1537/636, S17-517a.

The public appeal raised the goodly sum of £8000 (over $1 million in 2017 values), which included £2000 from William Dawson (a brewer who made a fortune as one of the founders of Speight’s) and £1000 from members of the medical faculty. It was matched by the government, though the project ran considerably over budget thanks to ‘the presence of subterranean water, later found to characterise the whole area’, along with rising prices due to war conditions. The new building, designed by Mason and Wales and built by Fletcher Brothers, opened in 1917. Of brick with Oamaru stone facings, its neoclassical style seemed quite plain to contemporaries; the Evening Star noted some ‘pretty stained glass’ in the entrance hall was ‘one of the few ornamentations’. The building was large and well-lit, with a lecture theatre able to ‘seat 150 students and give everyone plenty of elbow room’ and other smaller lecture rooms; they incorporated facilities for the latest technology, the lantern slide. The pathology department was on the first floor and the bacteriology department on the second floor; there were also rooms dedicated to medical jurisprudence and materia medica (pharmacology), the library, specimen museum and an assortment of staff and student facilities. ‘The roof is used for store rooms, etc.’, reported the Star with some delicacy; that was where animals and food stores were housed.

The new building was just the beginning. Medical dean Lindo Ferguson had ambitious plans; he imagined the school expanding to take up the entire side of the Great King Street block facing the hospital, replacing its collection of old cottages and shops. Not everybody approved, and there was another battle over the new anatomy and physiology building. In 1919 university council members decided that further extensions to those departments should be on the main university campus, provoking a determined – and successful – campaign by the medical faculty, medical association and ODT to have them change their minds and instead construct a large new building adjoining the 1917 one. Physiology professor John Malcolm countered one of the main objections to the Great King Street site: ‘It had been said that the social life of the university was cut in two through the existing arrangements; and if that were so how about the scientific life of the university? Was it not cut in two as well? The most important was the human life’. After considerable delays in raising funds, in 1927 a splendid new building – ‘one of Dunedin’s most handsome’, declared the ODT – was opened. Designed by Edmund Anscombe in brick and stone facings to complement its neighbour, it provided accommodation for not just anatomy and physiology, but also the ‘sub-departments’ of histology, biochemistry and pharmacology. It had the ‘necessary classrooms, laboratories, and research rooms for a school averaging an annual class of 50 students’.

At the opening of the new block, Ferguson joked that ‘if a dean were content he was not fit to hold his position. No one knew the shortcomings of a school better than the dean, and if the dean thought that enough had been done he should be pole-axed’. He continued to dream of further expansion, and had already foiled suggestions the new dental school building should be immediately next to the medical school; instead its new 1926 building (now the Marples building) was constructed on the next block. Ferguson’s successors took up his scheme and in the midst of World War II work began on yet another large building. It had the prosaic name of ‘the south block’, but later the various buildings were named after the medical deans, according to their chronology, and it became the Hercus building, after third dean Charles Hercus; the earlier buildings were named for the first two deans, John Halliday Scott and Lindo Ferguson.

The Ferguson building (opened 1927), with the Scott building (1917) and Hercus building (1948) in the distance. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, University of Otago Medical School Alumnus Association records, MS-1537/637, S17-517c.

The south block was in brick and of similar scale to its neighbours, but the similarities ended there; it was a striking example of art deco, designed by Miller White and Dunn. Hercus recounted how the Minister of Education, Rex Mason, ‘turned down our original severely utilitarian plan with the statement, “This is not a factory, but a national building of great importance, and it must bear the marks of its function”’. The new design incorporated various artworks, most notably a sculptured marble panel by Richard Gross above the main Hanover Street entrance; there were also plaster murals inside. Building was a challenge because of wartime labour and supply shortages; four Dunedin building firms – Love, Naylor, Mitchells and McLellans – formed the Associated Builders consortium to complete the project. Some students obtained holiday work helping with the demolition and ground works for the foundations, which were dug down 15 metres, but the foreman ‘had to keep his eye on them because many would jump the fence and be off’. The building opened in 1948 and boasted 210 rooms; it became a new home for the preventive medicine, pathology and bacteriology departments and had two dedicated research floors, one of them for animals.

The new south block (Hercus building) under construction in the 1940s, looking east along Hanover Street. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, University of Otago Medical School Alumnus Association, MS-1537/631, S15-619f.

The next building development was less imposing and not destined to last for long: a single-storey brick building, completed in 1956 next to the Ferguson building, provided a space for the surgery and obstetrics and gynaecology departments. Next to it, on the corner of Frederick and Great King Streets, appeared in 1963 the Wellcome Research Institute. Funded entirely by the Wellcome Trust, which was created from a pharmaceutical fortune, the new building was a tribute to the important research on hypertension by Otago medical professor Horace Smirk, and provided a space for various research teams. It soon developed the nickname ‘Hori’s whare’, while the dental school was ‘Jack’s shack’ after dental dean John Walsh and the pharmacology department in the old Knox Sunday school was ‘Fred’s shed’ after its professor, Fred Fastier. The Wellcome building was designed by Niel Wales, the latest generation in old Dunedin firm Mason and Wales, which had also been responsible for the Scott building; the new building’s international style, with its simple forms and lack of ornamentation, reflected the architectural fashion of the period.

The next buildings took the medical campus further into the realms of new architecture. In 1972 the medical library acquired a new home in the Sayers building, named for the fourth dean, Ted Sayers. The building, which replaced the 1950s surgery and O & G construction, also included accommodation for the medical school administration. A year later the multi-storey Adams building (Bill Adams was the fifth dean) emerged behind it, with an entrance from Frederick Street; it provided new space for the preventive and social medicine, pharmacology, pharmacy and surgery departments, along with the university’s higher education development centre. The Sayers building was designed by Alan Neil of Fraser Oakley Pinfold. A 1994 exhibition on University of Otago architecture suggested his ‘use of fair-faced concrete is an essay in Brutalism’. The Adams building was designed by Miller White and Dunn and the design was recycled in the microbiology building, opened in 1974 on Cumberland Street. The 1994 exhibition noted its utilitarian architecture: it ‘appears to have been designed from the inside out’ and ‘no thought appears to have been given to the external appearance .… Built in the tradition of tower blocks in a park-way, it does not invite inspection of detailing’.

The new Sayers (front) and Adams buildings in the 1970s. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, University of Otago Medical School Alumnus Association records, MS-1537/665, S17-517d.

With the 1970s buildings completed, Lindo Ferguson’s 1910s vision of a medical school encompassing the length of the block was fulfilled. Indeed, the school was already spreading much further afield, with microbiology and biochemistry buildings on the new science campus in Cumberland Street and new developments in Christchurch and Wellington. At its Great King Street home base, the school was a showcase of 20^th century architecture, from neoclassicism and art deco to international style and brutalism. Across the street, Dunedin Hospital, whose presence had drawn the medical school to this location, also went through multiple developments. That, however, is a whole other story.

The Nobel connection

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1940s, 1950s, biochemistry, medicine, physics, physiology, research

Staff and senior students of the physiology department in 1951. Front row, from left: Laurie Brock, Ken Bradley, Prof Eccles, Eric Hook, Charlie Morris, Wilfrid Rall. Middle row: Arthur Chapman, Jack Coombs, Yap Tien Beng, Molly Bradley, Graham Jeffries, Pearl Cousins. Back row: Arnold Annand, Ron Stevenson, Dan Whyte. Photo courtesy of the Department of Physiology.

At first glance, the Otago physiology department’s one-page annual report for 1951 appears somewhat mundane. It listed student numbers, staff changes, research topics and publications, but it was a simple factual report and made no comment on the teaching workload (which was heavy), research productivity and quality (high), or the achievements of departing staff (remarkable).

A closer look at the 7 publications listed provides further insight into goings-on in the department. Two appeared in the leading journal Nature: ‘Plasticity of mammalian monosynaptic reflexes’, by departing professor Jack Eccles and senior lecturer Archie McIntyre; and ‘The afferent limb of the myotatic reflex arc’, by McIntyre. Several others appeared in the local publication Proceedings of the University of Otago Medical School, including ‘Action potentials of motoneurones with intracellular electrode’, authored by physiology lecturer Laurie Brock (a recent Otago medical graduate), physics lecturer Jack Coombs (another Otago graduate) and Eccles. That article – just a page and a half long – was the first published report of an important breakthrough in neurophysiology research; it was a significant step in the work that won Eccles a Nobel Prize in 1963.

Eccles, born in Melbourne in 1903, commenced at Otago in 1944, bringing impressive credentials from his years as a physiology researcher in Oxford and Sydney. He replaced John Malcolm, who had been physiology professor since 1905. Malcolm was an active researcher, highly respected for his work in biochemistry and nutrition, but Eccles was to take the research activity of the department to a new level. First, though, he had to reacquaint himself with the whole of physiology in order to teach medical students, something he had not done for some years. Preparing 75 lectures for second-year meds, plus others for first-year meds, along with a completely new laboratory course and discussion groups, meant his research ‘virtually came to an end’ during that first year, Eccles later recalled. He did design some of the medical students’ lab work to assist his research, as Miles Hursthouse explained: the professor ‘conducted many interesting experiments, some of them on us! At our practical sessions we had to endure having needles stuck into a muscle, then contract that muscle while measuring the electrical impulse and rate of propagation’. There weren’t many staff to assist, though Eccles was grateful for those he had, including Norman Edson, appointed associate professor of biochemistry in 1944. Biochemistry was a rapidly-growing field, and in 1949 it split from physiology to become an independent department with Edson as inaugural professor; the two fields continued to work closely together despite the administrative separation.

Though he had little time for research in 1944, it was ‘important in my scientific life above all my post-Sherrington years’, recalled Eccles (Charles Sherrington being the distinguished neurophysiologist who inspired him at Oxford). It was then he met the great philosopher Karl Popper, who was teaching at Canterbury. Hearing of the stir that Popper was creating among the scientists of Christchurch, Eccles and Edson invited him to visit Otago. Eccles was heavily influenced by the ‘inspiring new vision of science that Popper gave us’, most notably by his message ‘that science is not inductive, but deductive’. With Popper’s urging, Eccles set about designing experiments that would test a hypothesis ‘in its most vulnerable aspects in an attempt at falsification’. He was keen to prove his theory that messages crossed the synapses of nerve cells by electrical rather than chemical means.

By 1945 Eccles was busy experimenting alongside his teaching duties. David Cole, future dean of the Auckland medical school, completed a BMedSci degree with Eccles that year, recalling that ‘the ebullient JCE’ had ‘ideas tumbling out of his mind’; students appreciated ‘the invaluable experience of working close to the edge of scientific knowledge’. The professor’s lab was ‘a huge cage of chicken wire’ and ‘almost a caricature of the mad scientist amongst his oscilloscopes, wires and animals’. Another student recalled the day that Eccles ‘arrived in great excitement, having, he said, a testable hypothesis about inhibition which had come to him, like Archimedes, in the bath that morning. He retired to his wire cage for 24 hours or more, being fed sandwiches through the door’.

Neurophysiology experiments required sophisticated and intricate electronic equipment; Eccles acknowledged that such technology ‘rapidly outstripped my understanding …. My indebtedness to my associates is immeasurable’. In his travels around the world, he noted, ‘I have left … a trail of elaborately designed shielded research rooms stripped of equipment!’. To Otago he brought not just specialist electrical equipment, but also a technician, Arthur Chapman. He also made the most of the technical expertise he found in Dunedin. Arnold Annand, whose electrical expertise had been honed during service in the Air Force, joined the physiology department as a technician in 1948, beginning a career of almost 40 years building and maintaining equipment for the university’s health science departments. In 1950 Eccles asked Jack Coombs, a ‘shy genius’ who had been lecturing in the physics department since 1940, to design a machine capable of the electronic stimulation and recording he needed for his experiments. Coombs came up with devices which remained, for many years, ‘the best general research instruments for electrophysiology in the world’, said Eccles. Coombs also participated in the neurophysiology experiments. Eccles attracted PhD students – then a rare breed – to Otago. For instance, Wilfrid Rall, a Yale graduate, came to study with Eccles, remaining on as a lecturer for several years before returning to pioneering neuroscience work in the US. Another important recruit to the department was Archie McIntyre, an old Australian neurophysiology colleague. Eccles convinced McIntyre to join him at Otago, where he became senior lecturer in 1949.

Eccles at work on an experiment, assisted by Molly Bradley, in 1951. Photo courtesy of the Department of Physiology.

The breakthrough 1951 experiment required the insertion of a tiny electrode, less than a micrometer wide, into a single nerve cell in the spinal cord of an anaesthetised cat; the action potentials of the cell could then be measured. Similar experiments had been carried out on frog muscle fibres, but never successfully on mammals. The day that revealed that synaptic action was chemically mediated, thus disproving Eccles’s theory of electrical transmission, was remarkable not only for that result. The experiment lasted for many hours, but for some time Eccles was left to tend it alone while one of his colleagues, Laurie Brock, delivered the baby of the wife of the third member of the team, Jack Coombs! As an enthusiastic disciple of Popper’s deductive method, Eccles was happy to accept that his theory was false, becoming a ‘belated’ convert to English neuroscientist Henry Dale’s hypothesis of chemical synaptic transmission even in the central nervous system.

Although Eccles was to carry out further ground-breaking experiments in neurophysiology, they didn’t take place in Dunedin. At the end of 1951 he departed for a plum job as founding physiology professor at the John Curtin School of Medical Research, attached to the recently-established Australian National University, Canberra. There he could carry on his research without the distraction of the heavy teaching load which he found a burden at Otago. Jack Coombs (whose younger brother Doug was geology professor at Otago for many years) and Arthur Chapman followed Eccles to ANU, as did some of the specialised equipment. But he left behind a strong legacy of experimental neuroscience at Otago and, by no means least, his much-respected colleague Archie McIntyre, who succeeded him as physiology professor. Under McIntyre’s leadership the department continued to attract talented research students and staff and maintained a strong experimental focus, albeit one less focused on neurophysiology, as new staff with other interests within physiology joined the team.

Ted Jones, who became a prominent neuroscientist in the USA, arrived at Otago as a medical student a few years after Eccles departed. He could not recall ever being told that Eccles had carried out groundbreaking work ‘in one of those rather grubby basement rooms of the Lindo Ferguson building. If Eccles was remembered at all it was for his irascibility, not his scientific achievements’. Perhaps the subsequent award of a Nobel Prize alerted later students to what this man had achieved in the world’s southernmost medical school – certainly it’s something we can celebrate today!

Building the sciences

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1970s, 2010s, biochemistry, chemistry, human nutrition, mathematics, microbiology, physics

Construction underway on the Science I and biochemistry buildings, around 1970. Image courtesy of Arthur Campbell.

With work now underway on a major redevelopment of the Science I building, it seems a good time to look back at the beginnings of this and the four large science buildings which neighbour it: Science II (like Science I, occupied by chemistry and human nutrition), Science III (physics, maths and statistics and the science library), the biochemistry building and the microbiology building.

These buildings were part of a major expansion of the university campus during the 1960s and 1970s, necessary to cater for rapidly rising student numbers. Growth was particularly evident in the science departments, which were straining at the seams in their original locations (now known as the registry and geology buildings). The Interim Science Building (discussed in an earlier blog post), provided some extra space from 1965, but much more was needed. In 1960 there were 300 students studying in the science faculty, by 1970 there were 1420 and by 1977, when the last of the five buildings was completed, there were 1663 science students. Meanwhile, moving microbiology and biochemistry into new buildings provided more space in the medical school, which also had to cater for a growing roll.

Development began with the demolition of existing buildings in the block bounded by Cumberland, St David, Castle and Union streets, which once accommodated around 100 low-cost dwellings, crowded together along little alleyways. In late 1968 construction commenced on the first new building, then known as the chemistry phase I building, with the department moving in early in 1971. Science I, as it is now called, was designed by Ministry of Works architects in light and dark tones of grey to ‘blend in’ with the older university buildings. Next out of the ground was the biochemistry building, designed by Allingham, Harrison and Partners as a home for this rapidly growing department, previously squeezed into the Lindo Ferguson Building with much of the medical school. Next was the chemistry research building (Science II), which adjoined the first two buildings on the east, along Castle Street. Designed by John Aimers of Mason and Wales, this ten-storey building towered over the campus; it was occupied in 1973.

Special attention was paid to the appearance of the fourth building in the complex, the microbiology building, designed by architectural firm Miller, White and Dunn. ‘We are taking particular care with the external treatment of the façade and the over-all form of the building’, explained E.A. Dews, the head of university works and services. ‘We want it to look a particularly attractive building since it is to be the focal point for the approach to the university’. There was a plan at the time to make a road from this point of Cumberland Street to the clock tower, which would make the building the ‘front door’ of the campus. The project was brought forward to cater for an increase in medical student numbers; like biochemistry, microbiology had previously been squeezed into the medical school buildings. Construction started late in 1972 and was competed in 1974. In the same year work started on the final building in the science complex, Science III. The design for this large building was a joint-project of the Ministry of Works and Allingham, Harris and Partners; its foundations required ‘one of the largest single [concrete] pours to be laid on a Dunedin site’, noted the Evening Star newspaper. It opened in 1977 to house the physics department and science library, with mathematics moving in a little later.

All of this building was a great boon to local trades firms. Fletcher Construction Ltd, which had grown into a building powerhouse since its small beginnings in Dunedin early in the century, was main contractor for the first three science buildings. The next two contracts went to another large firm, Naylor Love Construction Ltd. Building seems to have gone reasonably smoothly, but there was one major exception. In 1971, as a crane was lifted from one floor to another of the partially-completed Science II building, a wire rope broke and the crane fell 15 feet, landing on two young workers. One of them, Kenneth Copland, was killed.

The new science buildings feature at top right of this late-1970s aerial view of the central Dunedin campus. See this earlier blog post for further discussion of this image. Photograph courtesy of the Hocken Collections, S12-192J.

Opinions varied on the design of these buildings. Where space was concerned, they were a great improvement for the sciences. Chemistry researchers, for instance, had previously squeezed into the attics and basements of what is now the geology building, in conditions considered unsafe even in those less safety-conscious days; now they had two large purpose-designed buildings. The buildings were also well equipped. New biochemistry professor George Petersen put many hours into his application for the grant to equip the new building, accounting for every last rubber bung together with the expensive new machines needed for the best teaching and research. The department eventually obtained a government grant for over six million dollars in today’s values to equip the biochemistry building; it was, recalls Petersen, as well equipped as any biochemistry department he had seen and helped attract good staff to Otago.

All that concrete architecture took some getting used to, though. Stan Hughes, who had been a technician in the physics department since the 1920s, found the design of the Science III building ‘rather severe’. He preferred the old building (the south end of what is now the registry), which was ‘marvellous – every floor was different’. It was ‘pleasant to walk around’ and also ‘so variable that it is adaptable’. Four decades later, opinions of the architectural style of the 1970s science precinct remain mixed. The 2010 campus master plan noted that the science buildings were ‘from an architectural period that was not renowned for the subtlety of its aesthetics’, with somebody once describing Science II as ‘being designed by Stalin’s personal architect’. Part of the current project to redevelop Science I involves a new exterior design ‘to play down the concrete box appearance in favour of softened architectural lines’. The need to re-clad concrete buildings of this era for technical reasons – 1960s and 70s construction techniques have not stood the test of time, with surfaces crumbling – has already provided an opportunity for a little restyling. Recladding of the microbiology building was completed in 2010, though not everybody approves of its new look – a friend now calls it the Joan Rivers building, in honour of its ‘garish’ recladding!

Whatever you think of its style, the science precinct has been highly significant in the university’s history. Generations of students have learned all about science in its laboratories and lecture rooms and much exciting research has emerged from these buildings. Do you have any memories to share of the science complex?

The newly-refurbished microbiology building in 2010. Photograph courtesy of University of Otago Marketing and Communications.

Preparing for the health professions

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1870s, 1880s, 1900s, 1940s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, anthropology, biochemistry, biology, chemistry, dentistry, English, mathematics, medical laboratory science, medicine, pharmacy, physics, physiotherapy

A familiar sight to HSFY students of recent years – popular teacher Tony Zaharic of the biochemistry department. Image courtesy of University of Otago Marketing and Communications.

Health Sciences First Year (HSFY) is a term very familiar to anybody who has been around the university over the past couple of decades. Students aiming to enter one of Otago’s undergraduate health science degrees – dentistry, medical laboratory science, medicine, pharmacy and physiotherapy – complete this shared course in their first year of university study. Entry to the professional degrees is also available to some graduates, but most come via the HSFY course, which brings a large number of students to Otago. The course has undergone a few changes since it first appeared under this guise in 1998 and it was built on a much older tradition of the ‘intermediate’ year; I thought it would be interesting to look back over the long history of first year health science courses.

When the medical school started out in the 1870s it could only offer the first two years of a medical course and students headed overseas – most often to Edinburgh – to complete their training. Prospective doctors had to register as medical students, which required them to pass a ‘preliminary examination in general education’. Once registered, medical students started out on their two-year course in chemistry, biology, anatomy, physiology, surgery and clinical instruction at the hospital. From 1885 students could complete their entire medical course at Otago. To obtain a New Zealand medical degree, they needed to pass an intermediate exam, followed by three professional exams. The intermediate exam covered a general university science prospectus of biology, physics and chemistry.

The dental school opened in 1907, offering a four-year degree, later extended to five years. Students had to formally register for the course and this required passing the same preliminary exam as medical students. Also like medical students, they took the standard first-year courses in physics and chemistry, but added to the biology requirement was a course in dental anatomy. There was little rest for dental and medical students, for as soon as their first-year exams were over they commenced their specialist courses with a ‘summer term’. For many years there was, however, no competition for places: anybody who could pay the fees, complete the courses and pass the exams could qualify as a doctor or dentist.

In 1941, faced with rising student numbers and significant overcrowding, the Otago medical school for the first time limited entry to its second-year classes, initially to 100 students. Some places were reserved for graduates and people repeating second year, but for most students entry came through obtaining the best exam marks in the intermediate course. No intermediate medical student could afford to rest on their laurels now: competition for entry to medical school varied from year to year but was generally tough. Some of those who did not gain entry to the medical course instead enrolled for dentistry. From 1945 the specialist dental course disappeared from first year and prospective dentists took exactly the same intermediate course as prospective doctors, that is, first-year chemistry, physics and biology (zoology and botany). Unsurprisingly, the dental course then became crowded, exacerbated by an influx of returned servicemen to university. From 1947 entry to second-year classes in the dental school was also limited, initially to 50 places.

Dental students working in the prosthetics lab in 1949. Before reaching this stage they had to overcome the hurdle of a competitive intermediate year. From left: Brian Arkinstall, Jim Armour, Reece Baker, Clive Bayley, Rod Beattie and Nick Bebich. Image courtesy of Elaine Donaldson.

The medical school began offering a Bachelor of Pharmacy degree in the 1960s, though most New Zealand pharmacists trained through a technical institute diploma course until 1991, when Otago’s newly independent school of pharmacy became the country’s sole training programme for pharmacists. The intermediate year for pharmacy was the same as that for medicine or dentistry – chemistry, biology and physics.

The intermediate health science courses remained essentially unchanged for many years, though there were of course some changes to the content of the basic science courses, reflecting new scientific developments. Over time, though, questions arose about the suitability of the criteria for entry to health science courses: did New Zealanders want their doctors and dentists selected purely through their ability to obtain top marks in science exams? Academic ability and scientific understanding were clearly important, but the best health professionals also needed some sympathetic understanding of the human condition and good communication skills. Extensive changes to the medical curriculum in the 1970s included modifications to the long-standing biology/chemistry/physics requirement of the intermediate course. From 1973 students took four subjects in their intermediate year: chemistry, biology and any two subjects of their choice from the arts or sciences (those who hadn’t got 50% or more in either maths or physics at bursary level had to include one of those among the two options). While some students stuck with the sciences, others branched out, with anthropology a popular choice. From 1981 students without an arts background were forced to think more laterally, as those without 50% or more in an arts subject at bursary level had to include an arts paper in their medical intermediate programme. The dentistry intermediate also added a fourth subject, taken in any of the arts and sciences, in 1980. Pharmacy retained a more scientific focus for longer. It added a statistics paper to its biology, chemistry and physics intermediate year from 1975. It was not until 1988 that pharmacy intermediates had a wider choice: they could then choose between physics and statistics, freeing them up to take their fourth course from any within the science, arts or commerce offerings.

Concerns remained about the communication skills of the medical profession. In 1993 the English department introduced a new paper primarily designed for health science students (though also open to others): ‘language, style and communication’, an ‘introduction to the fundamentals of effective speaking and writing’. This became a compulsory part of the intermediate years for medicine and pharmacy, unless a student had a good pass in bursary English; dental students were also advised to take an approved English paper from 1995.

1998 brought the biggest change yet to intermediate courses, with a completely revamped programme named Health Sciences First Year. Controversially, the course had to be taken in Dunedin; previously students had been able to complete their intermediate year at any university. Cynics noted that this increased Otago’s student numbers and thereby its funding. This was undoubtedly true, but there were also sound academic reasons behind the change. First, it was difficult to make fair comparisons between applicants who had obtained their grades in intermediate subjects at a variety of institutions. Second, and more important, Otago could now tailor its Stage 1 courses more closely to the needs of the health sciences and transfer some of the overcrowded specialist curriculum into first year. The course included two brand new compulsory papers – foundations of biochemistry, and chemistry: molecular reactivity – together with the biology of cells and biology for health sciences. Students without exemptions also needed to complete introductory physics, introductory biostatistics and the English language, style and communication paper. Students needed a total of 8 papers, leaving them to choose between 1 and 4 other subjects. This course became the common intermediate year for medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, medical laboratory science and physiotherapy degrees. The change was most radical for physiotherapy, which previously had a tightly-structured first year programme with papers specifically designed for the profession (the Bachelor of Physiotherapy degree was jointly taught by the university and Otago Polytechnic from 1991, with the university taking sole responsibility from 1996).

HSFY was modified over the years to cater for changing health priorities and learning needs. Biostatistics morphed into epidemiology, a specialist biological physics paper was added, the compulsory English paper was dropped (except for those who failed a diagnostic test) and in 2007 a new acronym – HUBS – entered the Otago lexicon. ‘Human body systems’ replaced the former biology papers; it was a significant modification aimed at improving students’ self-directed learning skills. Throughout, the HSFY course attracted many enrolments and competition for entry to second-year classes in the professional degrees remained intense. Debate continued – and will probably never end – over selection methods. Grades remain the number one criterion, but some courses now also require prospective students to pass a psychometric test, the Undergraduate Medicine and Health Sciences Admission Test (UMAT), a widely-used tool devised in Australia. At Otago UMAT became part of the admission process for medicine in 2003, for dentistry in 2005 and for medical laboratory science in 2007; the dental school also interviewed prospective students from 2005. For some decades a number of places have been reserved for the best Maori and Pasifika applicants, because New Zealand needs more Pacific Island and Maori health professionals, while more recently the medical and dental programmes have also targeted students from rural backgrounds with a commitment to rural practice, to help overcome serious shortages of rural health practitioners.

Are you a survivor of HSFY or one of the older intermediate courses? Do you have any memories to share?

PhDs by the thousand

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1920s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, accounting, biochemistry, botany, chemistry, economics, history, medicine, microbiology, PhD, physiology, postgraduates, research

A PhD is well worth celebrating! Graduates on 13 December 2014. Photo by Michael Thomas, courtesy of University of Otago Marketing and Communications.

In 2007 the University of Otago reached a milestone so significant it held a gala ball at Larnach Castle. A large group of postgraduate students gathered for a convivial evening, celebrating the enrolment of over 1000 PhD students at Otago that year. Students of a century earlier could not have imagined such an event. They would have been shocked at the numbers, for a start, but many would also have no idea what a PhD was. The growth of the premier research degree is one of the significant changes in university life over recent decades.

PhDs are a fairly recent phenomenon in the British and colonial world. The PhD as a higher research degree had its origins in Berlin in the early 1800s and was adopted in the USA from the 1860s. Oxford did not pick up the baton until 1917 but by 1919 it was in all British universities. The University of New Zealand – the federal authority which set the syllabus, conducted exams and awarded degrees for all universities here until 1961 – introduced the PhD degree in 1922, but the programme quickly ran into problems thanks to a requirement for full-time study. That made it less flexible than existing higher degrees, which had been around since the 19^th century. By 1900 three Otago students had earned a Doctor of Science degree, three were Doctors of Laws and four Doctors of Medicine. For those degrees students presented a thesis or publication, completed without any supervision from the university. Settling on a uniform standard for the PhD was another difficulty and, in the face of few enrolments, in 1926 the University of New Zealand abolished the PhD degree.

By the time existing students had completed, there were just nine graduates from the University of New Zealand’s first experiment with the PhD. Three were from Otago, and it’s nice that they were distributed around three of the current four academic divisions: sciences, humanities and commerce. The honour of being the first Otago student to graduate PhD, in 1927, goes to Rudolf Penseler, whose thesis was ‘Experiments on the Synthesis of Apofenchocamphoric Acid’, completed in the chemistry department. He later did further research in England and Germany before returning to a varied career in New Zealand. Following Penseler, James Salmond graduated with a PhD in history in 1928 and Walter Boraman in economics in 1929. Boraman became a secondary teacher and school inspector, while Salmond became a minister, educator and leader in the Presbyterian Church (Salmond College is named for him and his sister).

Arthur Campbell teaching in the first-year chemistry lab in the early 1950s. He was lecturing during the day and working on his own research at night. Image courtesy of Arthur Campbell.

After World War Two, as the country came to value increasingly the research work being done in universities, the PhD degree was re-introduced, this time to stay. Otago’s first post-war PhD graduate was Richard (Dick) Batt, a chemist, in 1948. Like quite a few of that generation of PhD graduates he went on to a distinguished academic career, in his case at Massey University, where he became a noted alcohol researcher. The next made his career closer to home. Arthur Campbell, who was once Batt’s flatmate, graduated PhD in 1953. With the regulations now more flexible, he was able to complete his research part-time while working as an assistant lecturer; in fact he did most of his work late at night in the laboratory. After completing he spent some time researching in Glasgow before returning to the Otago chemistry department, where he later became professor. He eventually retired in 1987, noted as ‘an analytical chemist without peer’. A second 1953 graduate – Lyle Fastier, based in the medical school – completed ‘an experimental study of the mouse encephalomyelitis group of viruses’. The following year Margaret Di Menna became Otago’s – and New Zealand’s – first female PhD graduate, with her microbiology thesis on ‘Yeasts of the human body: their nature and relationships’.

By the end of the 1950s another ten PhD graduates had been added to Otago’s credit, all of them in chemistry and biochemistry with one exception, which was in botany. Through the 1960s the Otago PhD slowly grew in popularity, though it took a while before the prejudice against ‘colonial’ degrees was lost and the best scholars no longer felt compelled to travel overseas for doctoral work. The colonial cringe is now long gone, with candidates coming from all over the world to study here. Good Otago staff attracted good research students, with the medical school a particularly important draw for researchers. Though fields of study broadened through the 1960s and 1970s, a very large proportion of Otago PhDs in those decades were in biochemistry, physiology and microbiology, together with chemistry. Funding was significant in attracting students too. After the devolution of scholarships, once run nationally by the University Grants Committee, Otago committed heavily to providing support for PhD students. In 1995 it boasted of being the New Zealand leader in postgraduate support, granting 97 scholarships (paying full fees plus $12,000) to PhD candidates, plus 89 awards to masters students. Scholarships assumed ever greater significance as the government reduced the duration of its financial support to students.

In 1995 Otago had just under 500 PhD candidates in a wide variety of fields, with 38% in the sciences, 34% in health sciences, 19% in humanities and 9% in commerce. The following year Paul Theivananthampillai became the 1000^th person to graduate with an Otago PhD (the count began in 1962, following the abolition of the University of New Zealand). Like many before him the 1000^th graduate was already an Otago staff member; he completed his study on ‘the coalignment of strategic control systems’ while lecturing in the Department of Accountancy. The next 1000 Otago PhD graduates took just nine years to produce. Now (June 2015), the University of Otago boasts 3514 PhD graduates, together with 25 who graduated under the old federal system. Their research represents a pretty significant contribution to the sum of human knowledge! Some of that knowledge can now be accessed freely on the Otago University Research Archive, which has digital versions of many Otago PhDs – happy reading!

PhD graduates during the 25 August 2012 ceremony. Image courtesy of University of Otago Marketing and Communications.

Becoming part of Asia

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1950s, 1960s, 1970s, Africa, Arana, Asia, biochemistry, Colombo Plan, international students, mineral technology, mining, Pacific, physics

Oo Khaik Cheang, Philippa Wiggins and an unidentified person at a farewell morning tea for Oo in the Department of Biochemistry, c.1964. Photograph courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Department of Biochemistry records, MS-4113/009, S14.512b.

In the middle of the twentieth century Pakeha New Zealanders, who had for generations looked “home” to Britain, became increasingly conscious that they were part of the Asia-Pacific region. The arrival of Asian students on New Zealand university campuses as part of the Colombo Plan played no small part in this changing perspective of the world.

The Colombo Plan – named for the city where it was signed, Colombo in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) – was a 1950 agreement between various Commonwealth countries to promote economic and social development in Asia and the Pacific. There were various aspects to the scheme: more developed nations sent money and technical expertise to countries in need of assistance, and they also provided education within their own tertiary institutions for promising students from developing nations. Around 3500 students came to New Zealand as part of the Colombo Plan during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. This country then withdrew from that aspect of the scheme, though the Colombo Plan survives today, considerably modified from its origins of over sixty years ago.

Otago’s first Colombo Plan students arrived in the early 1950s, with numbers gradually building up. In 1965 there were just over 160 international students on campus, more than half of them from Asian countries. Probably most, if not all, of the Asian students were here on the Colombo scheme. The largest group came from the countries which would later form Malaysia: 39 from Malaya, 11 from Sabah and 8 from Sarawak. Another 10 came from Thailand, 8 from Singapore, 8 from Hong Kong, 2 from Ceylon, 2 from Indonesia, 1 from Java and 1 from Burma. A quarter of these Asian students were women. Otago also had 28 international students from Africa and 26 from the Pacific Islands that year.

The Colombo Plan students completed courses in a wide range of disciplines. Most lived in residential colleges for at least part of their course, and in recognition of this the government provided funding for the university to expand its residential capability. The money was used to extend Arana Hall (now Arana College), with its new Colombo Wing opening in 1968. But authorities were keen for the Colombo Plan students to be integrated throughout the community, so they were spread around all the colleges, and also enjoyed the hospitality of New Zealand host families during holidays.

Arrival in Dunedin, with its less than tropical climate, could be something of a shock for students from Asia! Furthermore, especially in the early years of the scheme, many New Zealanders were unaccustomed to the presence of ‘foreigners’ and treated anybody speaking in another language with suspicion. Fortunately, other members of the community made a real effort to welcome the visitors and the students themselves appreciated the opportunity to learn about Kiwi culture. Some really threw themselves into student life. One outstanding example of this is Mazlan Othman, who arrived in Dunedin in the early 1970s as an undergraduate science student and went on to become the first woman to complete a PhD in physics at Otago. She enjoyed all the capping events, attended protest rallies, played in a band, worked in a restaurant, visited the mountains and enjoyed long discussions at the pub with other students. She learned to appreciate New Zealanders’ egalitarian outlook on life.

Some of these mining students are likely to have been at Otago on the Colombo Plan – they were clearly getting into the spirit of Otago student life! Freshers’ welcome 1964, Department of Mineral Technology album, MS-3843/005, S13-561b, Hocken Collections, University of Otago.

Like many other Colombo Plan graduates, Mazlan Othman went on to a successful career. She returned to Malaysia to teach, and later worked in the Prime Minister’s office to oversee development of Malaysia’s national planetarium. She then became Director of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs. Many became university lecturers in their home countries. Oo Khaik Cheang, who features in the photograph above, became Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Malaya (Kuala Lumpur). He completed a PhD on “The biosynthesis of bacterial cell wall constituents” at Otago, graduating in 1965. Others went on to signficant political careers. A well-known example is Sulaiman bin Haji Daud, who graduated in dentistry from Otago in 1962. Over many years in Malaysian politics he served as minister in various portfolios, including education and health. Soedjati Djiwandono, who studied education, politics and languages at Otago before completing post-graduate qualifications in London, became a distinguished political scientist in Indonesia.

The Colombo Plan offered the opportunity for students to complete qualifications not yet available in their home countries, and to bring the benefits of that learning to their home communities. But the plan also had great benefits for the host countries. It brought a new diversity to the student body and introduced New Zealanders to new cultures. Lifelong friendships were forged in Otago’s residential colleges, lecture theatres, labs and the student union. The scheme brought some especially bright minds to Otago, for competition for the scholarships was fierce. The connections made through the Colombo Plan would have a very long impact on the university, as the goodwill built up encouraged further generations of international students to enrol here. It is no accident that the largest group of international students at this university in more recent decades has been from Malaysia, which was also the home of the largest group of Otago Colombo Plan students.

Did you attend Otago under the Colombo Plan? If so, do you have any memories to share? Can you help identify anybody in the photographs? I have published the image of the mining students on this blog previously, but I’m yet to identify any of the people, or the location!

Update – 27 March 2014: Many thanks to Alison Finigan of the Alumni Office who found a mining graduate at an alumni function in Kuala Lumpur who identified some of the people in the mystery photograph! Among the men standing are Boon Meer Prasart (left), Vivoon Petpaichit (3rd from left), Chai ? (wearing dark glasses) and Paichit Patasorn (right). All four were from Thailand. Can you add any more details?

Another update – 16 December 2014: A big thank you to Nic MacArthur who identified Ray Soper as the man standing second from left in the photograph of mining students at their freshers’ do. Ray graduated with a BSc in 1967, a couple of years ahead of Nic, who graduated with a BSc (Hons) in mineral technology in 1969. A check of the graduation programmes also reveals what are hopefully the correct names of three of the Thai mining students. Viroon Petpaisit graduated BSc in December 1965, while Paichit Pathnopas and Sunan Boonmeeprasert were awarded Bachelors of Engineering in December 1966. I’m still wondering what the venue is – anybody out there know?

More information – 26 July 2016: My thanks to Jean Kennedy, who identified the man in dark glasses in the mining student photograph as Riew Kongsangchai, who graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering degree in December 1965. Jean became friends with the Thai mining students through the International Club in 1963 and remembers them as ‘the best cooks among the Asian students’; they shared a flat in Clyde Street.

Experts on the radio

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1920s, 1940s, 1950s, 2010s, biochemistry, chemistry, history, home science, law, mathematics, media, music, physics, politics, public health, radio, university extension, zoology

University of Otago staff are in demand to provide expert comment via the media on a very wide range of topics, and these days they can be accessed in a wide range of formats, from the traditional newspapers, magazines, radio and television to more recent technologies such as blogs and other social media. The university also makes many of its public lectures available via its own channel on iTunesU. Robert Patman, Bryce Edwards and Brian Roper of the Department of Politics appear regularly in the media as political pundits, and Edwards’s blog is a key source for those with an interest in current events. Mark Henaghan and Andrew Geddis from the Faculty of Law also appear frequently in the media.

In the ever-evolving media environment, radio remains one of the most popular means of disseminating some of the scholarship coming out of Otago. Just this morning, my colleague John Stenhouse of the Department of History and Art History spoke about a recent publication revising traditional assessments of one of New Zealand’s early governors, Robert Fitzroy, on Radio New Zealand National; his co-author Hamish Spencer of the Department of Zoology spoke about Fitzroy with Kathryn Ryan on the same station a few days ago. Among the other Otago staff interviewed at some length on Radio New Zealand National in the past month are Graeme Downes and Ian Chapman from the Department of Music (on Lorde’s current hit song), Philippa Howden-Chapman, Professor of Public Health in Wellington (on warrants of fitness for rental housing), Colin Gavaghan of the Faculty of Law (on the patenting of tools for gene selection), Peter Dearden of the Department of Biochemistry (on diet and longevity) and Dave Warren from the Department of Chemistry (on science ‘magic’ shows).

Robert Jack, Professor of Physics and radio pioneer. Photograph courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Ref: 1/2-220116-F.

It seems only fitting that Otago staff should appear often on the radio, because Robert Jack, Professor of Physics from 1914 to 1948, was the pioneer of radio broadcasting in this country. In 1921, assisted by other staff from the Department of Physics, Jack broadcast New Zealand’s first radio programme, just a year or two after the world’s first radio stations went on air in the USA and Holland. Like many Otago staff both past and present, Jack was skilled at popularising his scholarship in the form of public lectures – the radio offered a new opportunity to reach out beyond the walls of academia. This was clearly the goal of his colleague Robert Bell, Professor of Mathematics from 1919 to 1948, in his 1940 broadcast on 4YA Dunedin, “The human side of mathematics”. As the Listener commented, figures may at first seem dull, but Bell “knows very well how to make them interesting”. The cartoon of the clichéd “hoary old beaver” of a mathematician bore little resemblance to Bell, a dapper Scotsman renowned for his clear thinking and his warm nature.

A cartoon which accompanied the listing for Professor Bell’s radio talk, from the Listener, 9 August 1940. Reproduced with the permission of the New Zealand Listener.

Perhaps the most influential radio programmes to originate from the University of Otago were those presented by the Extension Service of the School of Home Science. The service commenced in 1929 to provide outreach into the community, particularly the rural community, through tutors and a consultation service for the public. I’m not sure when their regular radio broadcasts began or ended, but a 1958 survey of an Otago town (possibly Oamaru) by Judith King of the Department of Adult Education revealed that a quarter of the women surveyed were “constant listeners” to the weekly home science talks on the YA network (intriguingly, King dismissed this as “only 25 per cent”). Most of these programmes focussed on nutrition and foods, but a few surviving scripts in the archives of the Department of Clothing and Textiles reveal that home science staff also gave radio talks on various other topics, such as creating a wardrobe. By the 1960s the Extension Service was also producing cookery programmes for commercial radio stations.

These days we can listen to radio programmes at our leisure by podcast or via the internet, as evidenced by the links in this post to recent broadcasts. Radio was once a much more ephemeral medium, but it could still have lasting significance. In her 1958 survey, King encountered a woman who, each week when the home science radio talk was due, “sat down with pencil and paper to record the ideas and recipes.”

Have radio programmes and interviews with Otago staff had an impact on your life? Were there any particularly engaging radio speakers from the university? Do you remember listening to the home science radio talks? I’d love to hear more about Otago’s radio connections!