Looking back at history

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1880s, 1910s, 1920s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, art history, economics, history, law, library, Maori, politics

Professor Angus Ross engaging another generation of potential history students at the Taieri High School breakup ceremony, 1965. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Taieri College archives, AG-629-015/060, S17-542a.

History has been around for a while! It first appeared at the University of Otago in 1881 when John Mainwaring Brown, the new professor of English, constitutional history and political economy, taught constitutional history to a class of two students. It was a subject designed for lawyers, covering ‘the development of the English Constitution, and of the Constitutional relations between the Mother Country and the Colonies’. The course, compulsory for the LLB degree, was also open to BA students. Mainwaring Brown’s career was cut tragically short when he disappeared during a tramping expedition in Fiordland in December 1888. The university council recognised that it would be difficult to find somebody capable and willing to teach all of the subjects he had covered and appointed a new professor of English, with separate lecturers for constitutional history and political economy (economics). Alfred Barclay, one of Otago’s earliest graduates and a practising barrister, taught constitutional history for many years, except in the early years of the 20th century when the law school was closed and the subject wasn’t offered.

Harry Bedford, Otago’s first ‘English history’ lecturer. This photograph, taken by William Henshaw Clarke around 1902, was his official portrait as a Member of Parliament. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, General Assembly Library parliamentary portraits, 35mm-00168-f-F.

In 1914, history emerged as a subject in its own right with a new course in ‘English history’. It was taught by Harry Bedford, who had been Otago’s economics lecturer since 1907. Bedford had an impressive CV; he was a brilliant local graduate who started his working life in his father’s tailoring business, served a term in parliament, and practised law while lecturing at Otago. The syllabus for ‘English history’ included ‘a study of the outlines of the History of England, including the development of the constitution down to 1900’, with a more detailed study of a different period each academic year. Constitutional history continued as a separate course for law students, and Bedford also devoted two special lectures a week to ‘Modern History, as prescribed for Commerce students’ from 1916. Bedford was an inspiring teacher and his appointment to a new professorship in economics and history in 1915 came as no surprise. Sadly, he was another promising young professor destined for a tragic death; he drowned during a beach holiday in 1918. With the times still unsettled due to war, the council appointed Archdeacon Woodthorpe, the retired Selwyn warden, as acting professor. But they felt the time had now come to separate the growing disciplines of economics and history, and in 1920 John Elder of Aberdeen was appointed to a new chair in history, endowed by the Presbyterian Church.

Though the Presbyterians selected, appropriately enough, a ‘conservative and hard working Presbyterian’ from Scotland as Otago’s first history professor, Elder brought considerable innovation to the chair. He continued an extensive publishing career commenced in Scotland, producing both popular and academic works on New Zealand history at a time when ‘it was highly unusual for colonial professors to publish anything’. His developing interest in New Zealand’s history was also reflected in the curriculum, which expanded to include more coverage of this country and other colonies among the broad survey courses on offer. He valued archival research highly; this was made possible thanks to the resources held at the Hocken Library, and Elder required MA students to complete a thesis based on such sources. His dour manner didn’t endear him to students, though, and he soon put a stop to a young lecturer’s introduction of seminar discussions: ‘These young men like to hear themselves talk but you’re paid to lecture … So long as I’m head of this department, there’ll be no discussions’.

William Parker Morrell, photographed in 1930 while studying at Oxford. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Judith Morrell Nathan collection, ref: 1/2-197548-F.

In 1946 William Morrell – who featured in an earlier blog post on absent-minded professors – succeeded Elder as professor of history. He was a local graduate who studied and taught at Oxford and the University of London, and published widely on imperial and New Zealand history; he later took on the important role of writing the university’s centenary history! Morrell believed not only that history illuminated the present, but that the political state was worthy of study in its own right, and it was through his influence that politics joined the Otago syllabus, initially as part of the history department. Ted Olssen, an Adelaide graduate, was appointed to teach political science and classes commenced in 1948. Students emerging out of the war years and their clash of political ideologies demonstrated an appetite for the subject; it grew and became a separate department in 1967.

Like his predecessors, Willie Morrell believed that New Zealanders’ study of history needed to start with the histories of Britain and Europe, but an imperial framework meant that regions which had come under European control – including New Zealand and the Pacific – also appeared on the syllabus. Gordon Parsonson, who first joined the department as assistant lecturer in 1951 and remains an active researcher in his late 90s, was partly hired because of his interest and experience in Melanesia, acquired during World War II military service there. Angus Ross was another lecturer with expertise on New Zealand and Pacific history, though his distinguished war service had been in Europe. After many years in the department he succeeded Morrell as professor in 1965 and ‘steered the department away from the legacy of imperial history by making appointments trained to look at imperialism from the perspective of the colonised’. John Omer-Cooper, a specialist in African history, took up the newly-established second chair in history in 1973, while Hew McLeod, who became a world-renowned expert on Sikh history and culture, joined the department to teach Asian history in 1971. From 1975 a revamped curriculum gave students majoring in history broader choices; previously compelled to start with European history, they could now, if they wished, focus instead on New Zealand, Australia, the Pacific or Asian history.

Barbara Brookes and Ann Trotter at a Federation of University Women event at the Fortune Theatre, 1993. Image courtesy of Ann Trotter.

Under the umbrella of the histories of various regions, new themes began to emerge, often led by younger staff. Erik Olssen and Dorothy Page, both appointed in 1969 and both future heads of department, became pioneers of social history and women’s history respectively. Ross had a policy of appointing women where possible; although Morrell had also appointed a couple of women in the 1940s, men had long dominated the staff. The policy of recruiting good women academics continued and by the late 1980s they made up nearly half the department. In addition to Page, there were Barbara Brookes (another women’s history expert), Ann Trotter (who taught Asian history and subsequently became assistant-VC for humanities), Pacific historian Judy Bennett and long-serving lecturer Marjorie Maslen.

Angela Wanhalla and Judy Bennett in 2009. Photograph by Sue Lang, courtesy of the history and art history department.

As part of the new movement towards social history, Olssen embarked on the Caversham project, a long-running study of historic residents of southern Dunedin. Generations of honours and postgrad students mined the huge store of data for new insights into work, politics, gender, culture and society in New Zealand’s earliest industrial suburbs. Other new themes which became popular in the late 20^th century included environmental history and intellectual history (the history of ideas, incorporating science and religion), while world history provided an antidote to specialism in particular places and eras. A growing – if belated – awareness of the significance of Māori perspectives of history saw the appointment of Michael Reilly to a joint position in history and Māori studies in 1991. He later became full-time in Māori studies, but in the 21^st century the history department was fortunate to recruit two brilliant young Ngāi Tahu scholars, Angela Wanhalla and Michael Stevens.

History, like any other department, had its ups and downs through the years; funding was often tight and the trend towards lower enrolments in the humanities led to a loss of two staff in 2016. Art history joined the department in 2001, with a change in name to the history and art history department in 2008. Throughout, it remained a highly productive department with an excellent research record, ranking first in New Zealand for history and art history in the 2003 and 2006 PBRF rounds. It was no slouch in teaching either; in 2002, when OUSA gave its first teaching awards, history was the only department to have two people – Tom Brooking and Tony Ballantyne – in the top 10. As a proud graduate of Otago’s history department, I can testify to the great skills of its staff!

Recruiting a new generation of students, 2016-style. These secondary students, photographed at Toitū Otago Settlers Museum, were attending a ‘hands-on history’ course run by the university. Photograph by Jane McCabe, courtesy of the history and art history department.

 

The class of 1871

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1870s, classics, law, mathematics, mental science, teaching, theology

Robert Stout, future Premier of New Zealand, claimed the honour of being the University of Otago’s first student. This photograph was taken four years later, in 1875, by the NZ Photographic Co., Dunedin. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Box-030-001, S10-021a.

When classes commenced at the University of Otago in July 1871, the first student to sign on was a 26-year-old lawyer named Robert Stout, admitted to the bar just a few days previously. Though nobody knew it at the time, Otago’s first student was an omen of a good future: Stout became Premier of New Zealand and later Chief Justice. He arrived in Dunedin from his native Shetland in 1864 with teaching experience and surveying qualifications in hand; after a few years teaching he commenced legal training. The energetic Stout was well known around town for he was involved in numerous organisations and notorious as a leading freethinker, who loved debating against religious orthodoxies. His student career was not a long one and he did not complete a degree, but it had important consequences, for he was greatly influenced by the mental science professor, Duncan MacGregor, and later recruited him to become one of the country’s top public servants. Stout’s political career began in 1872, when he was elected to the Otago Provincial Council, but he still found time to serve as the university’s first law lecturer from 1873 until 1875, when election to parliament spelled the end of any academic career. However, his influence on New Zealand universities was immense. He was a member of Otago’s university council for several years and later that of Victoria College (now Victoria University of Wellington), of which he was ‘principal founder’; he also served on the senate of the University of New Zealand for 46 years and was its chancellor from 1903 to 1923.

Peter Seton Hay, the brilliant young mathematician who was one of New Zealand’s earliest graduates. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, P2010-011/1-024, Album 605, Hay family portraits, S16-683a.

 

The university attracted 81 students to its first session. Few student records survive – those identified from various sources are listed at the bottom of this post. Only 20 successfully passed their exams. The others presumably failed or abandoned their studies: ‘not a few dropped attendance, finding the task of preparation too burdensome’, noted council member Donald Stuart. Many, like Stout, were full-time workers and part-time students. Others may have had more time to devote to their studies, but found themselves ill-prepared for tertiary-level education; some did not have the privilege of a high school education. When the Evening Star in 1878 referred to maths and physics professor John Shand as ‘the lucky tenant of one of the University sinecures’, former student Gustav Hirsch rushed to his defence, noting Shand’s heavy workload and the success of his teaching: ‘One of his first students was taken from an elementary school at a very small place up-country, and had just managed to pick up a little mathematical knowledge from the mathematical volume of the “Circle of the Sciences”. Under Professor Shand’s guidance this student a few years afterwards graduated a first-class, with honors in mathematics, and is now an M.A.’ That student was Peter Seton Hay, who had migrated from Scotland as a child and grown up on the family farm at Kaihiku, in the Clutha district; he subsequently became a noted engineer, known particularly for the railway viaducts he designed. He was also famous for ‘prodigious mental calculations’ and ‘solved abstruse mathematical problems in his leisure hours’.

Hay was one of the few early students to complete a degree; most attended classes for a year or two, or even longer, but did not graduate. Otago’s first degree, a BA, was awarded to Alexander Watt Williamson in 1874; it then put aside its power to award degrees in favour of the University of New Zealand, which remained the country’s sole degree-granting body until 1961. Williamson was a young school teacher in the Whanganui district who came to Dunedin to attend the new university. At least one other foundation student came from the North Island, indicating Otago’s status as a national university from the start; Thomas Hutchison also hailed from Whanganui. Hutchison, just 16 years old, was destined for a career in the law and as a magistrate; lawyers and future lawyers were quite a feature among the founding students. Sitting alongside Stout in MacGregor’s mental science classes was 28-year-old William Downie Stewart, the lawyer who had trained Stout; meanwhile, another of Stewart’s law pupils, his future legal partner John Edward Denniston, attended Latin classes. Denniston, who was 26, had been a student at Glasgow University before migrating to New Zealand with his family in 1862; his father was a Southland runholder. Denniston later became a judge.

William Downie Stewart was one of several lawyers or future lawyers among the first students. He was called to the bar in 1867, and this photo was perhaps taken to mark that occasion. Stewart later served in the House of Representatives and Legislative Council. His son, William Downie Stewart junior, was also a well-known lawyer and politician. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, William Downie Stewart papers, MS-0985-057/073, S16-683d.

For several other founding students, the university was a step on the way to a career in the ministry. David Borrie of West Taieri, Charles Connor of Popotunoa, John Ferguson of Tokomairiro and John Steven of Kaitangata all studied at Otago before undertaking specialised theological training to become Presbyterian ministers. Ferguson and Steven were already school teachers, pupil teaching being a common route to ‘improvement’ for pupils who did well at school. Connor was just 15 when he signed on at the university. His father, the Presbyterian minister at Popotunoa (Clinton), wrote to the council to enquire if his son could undertake university education without a good grounding in Greek. The cash-strapped clergyman would, he noted, find it impossible to support his son in Dunedin for another full year at the high school, but could stretch to the shorter university session. Charles was ineligible for the university scholarships offered students for the Presbyterian ministry as he was under 16. Meanwhile, Ferguson was able to fund his studies thanks to his success in a competitive exam for the Knox Church Scholarship, worth £30 a year for three years. Connor managed to win a scholarship in his second year; this one was offered only to second-year students, suggesting it was tailored for him, the only candidate. Ferguson and Connor both later travelled ‘home’ for further study in Scotland, while Borrie and Steven completed their ministerial training locally. Thomas Cuddie was another founding student intent on a career in the ministry; sadly he died (probably of tuberculosis) just a couple of months after classes began.

Charles Connor was one of several future Presbyterian ministers among the founding students. His photograph sat alongside that of Peter Seton Hay in the Hay family album – they lived in the same country district. It is tempting to think these photos date from the time they began at the university, when Peter was about 18 years old and Charles just 15. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, P2010-011/1-025, Album 605, Hay family portraits, S16-683b.

These men were just the sort of people the university’s founders had in mind. They helped boost the ranks of well-educated teachers, lawyers and ministers, making the country less dependent on imported professionals. Most had arrived in the colony as children or young men and they and their parents had aspirations for a good education. Most might be described as middle class, but some were of humbler means. Thomas Cuddie, for instance, was the son of labouring parents with a struggling small farm at Saddle Hill; he was born aboard the Philip Laing, which brought some of the earliest colonial settlers to Otago in 1848. It would have been impossible for this pious but poor family to fund an education further away without substantial help. Some influential people believed the country would have been better to set up scholarships for New Zealanders to obtain a university education overseas rather than founding a local institution so early, but others were concerned about sending their young people far away and beyond the influence of family; furthermore, some of the most talented might not return. In any case, once a local university was a reality, it became the most accessible option.

Ferdinand Faithfull Begg – Ferdie to his family – photographed in the 1880s. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Album 398, p.17, Cargill family portraits, S16-683c.

There is some evidence of a ‘brain drain’ among the founding students. As would remain the case, some of the brightest were attracted to further study or other opportunities in Europe and not all returned. Peter Hay’s professors were keen to send him to Cambridge, notes one biography, but Hay ‘did not concur, having other than mathematical plans in which Cupid played a part’. For others of this migrant generation the ties to Otago and New Zealand were not so strong. Two went on to interesting careers in Britain. Cecil Yates Biss was born in India, where his grandfather was a Baptist missionary. He came to New Zealand in his teens with a brother and worked in various civil service jobs, including for the post office. After studying Latin and Greek at the University of Otago in 1871, Biss headed to Cambridge, where he completed the Natural Sciences Tripos with first class honours in 1875; he then qualified in medicine. He became a respected physician, researcher and lecturer in England, though his career was cut short by illness. He was also well known as a leading member of the Plymouth Brethren, and a colleague recalled that the non-smoking teetotaller was ‘rather given to admonishing his patients in regard to excesses and irregularities in living, in addition to ministering to their immediate ailments’.

Ferdinand Faithfull Begg was one of several businessmen among the founding students. He was the son of a prominent Edinburgh Presbyterian cleric. Begg joined his brother in Dunedin in 1863, acquiring good business skills in a bank and a large land agency. He performed well in the advanced maths class at the university in 1871 and returned to Scotland with his father, who had been out on a visit, the following year. There he became a prominent stockbroker, chairing the Edinburgh Stock Exchange and later the London Chamber of Commerce; he was also a member of parliament. One of Begg’s other claims to fame was to be ‘the first to ride a bicycle on the streets of Dunedin’; in 1871 he imported a ‘boneshaker’, complete with wooden wheels, brass pedals and iron tyres, backbone and handles.

There were no women among the founding students, but several joined classes the following year – I’ll feature the story of the admission of women in the next blog post!

University of Otago founding students – an incomplete list

From newspaper reports of exam passes:

• Begg, Ferdinand Faithfull
• Biss, Cecil Yates
• Borrie, David
• Cameron, J.C. [John Connelly?]
• Connor, Charles
• Denniston, John Edward
• Dick, Robert
• Duncan, James Wilson
• Dunn, John Dove
• Ferguson, John
• Fraser, J.M.
• Hay, Peter Seton
• Hirsch, Gustav
• Hutchison, Thomas
• Lusk, Thomas Hamlin
• Steven, John
• Stewart, William Downie
• Stout, Robert
• Wilding, Richard
• Williamson, Alexander Watt

Named in Williamson’s diary:

• Cuddie, Thomas Alexander Burns

Entered in university cash book paying fees:

• Allan, Alexander George
• Heeles, M.G. [Matthew Gawthorp?]
• Hislop
• Holder, H.R.
• Holmes, G.H. [George Henry?]
• Johnston
• Morrison
• Smith, F.R.
• Taylor, W.
• White, Clement

Wrote to secretary stating their intention to attend classes:

• Adam, Alexander
• Colee, Robert Alexander
• Hill, Walter
• McLeod, Alexander

I’d love to hear of any other 1871 students, or further details of those listed.

The accounting night school

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1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, accounting, economics, law, management, marketing

The Otago University Commerce Faculty Association in 1922. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Paterson and Lang records, 83-070 Box 3, S16-571a.

The University of Otago has been teaching commerce subjects for over a century, but for the first 50 years it was a part-time enterprise. While lectures in economics date back to the 1870s, other commerce disciplines started in the 20^th century. In 1904, in response to advocacy from business leaders who wanted ‘keener, better educated, more live young men’ in the business world, the University of New Zealand approved a new degree, the Bachelor of Commerce. It was closely modelled on similar degrees recently introduced in England’s northern universities. The degree included a mix of subjects, some not yet taught at Otago, so it had little impact to begin with, but a few years later further advocacy from the business sector helped get commerce classes going.

The New Zealand Society of Accountants, which controlled entry to the accountancy profession, in 1911 negotiated with the University of New Zealand to have its examinations run by the university; the university amended its BCom syllabus so that its papers and topics met the qualifying requirements of the NZSA. Funding from the NZSA helped smooth the path of the new system. It offered a five-year subsidy to each of the university colleges; when supplemented with a matching subsidy from the government plus student fees this enabled the cash-strapped University of Otago to take on the new venture of teaching specialist commerce subjects in addition to its existing economics programme. In 1912 young Dunedin accountant George Reid, who had completed a BCom with honours at Victoria University College in 1910, commenced as Otago’s first part-time accounting lecturer, and economics lecturer Harry Bedford added to his schedule the business law teaching required by commerce students (mercantile law, rights and duties of trustees, law of bankruptcy and law of joint stock companies). The new classes met ‘a felt want, a fact which is amply demonstrated by the large number of students who have availed themselves of the facilities offered’, noted the university’s annual report; 46 students enrolled in commerce subjects in that first year.

For the first five decades, almost all commerce students were part-timers working towards their professional accountancy exams; they already had full-time jobs. They could have studied at the technical school or by correspondence from one of the commercial colleges, but the University of Otago courses were an attractive option for southerners, for the commerce faculty soon developed a reputation for high quality teaching, with students typically scoring very well in external exams. Though the early teachers were lauded for their professional knowledge, dedication and teaching skills, they were not, of course, without flaws. One accounting lecturer resigned suddenly in the middle of 1947 after he was accused of embezzling bank funds, hardly the desired behaviour of a man educating the next generation of accountants.

Very few students went on to complete degrees in the early decades. By 1920 just five Otago students had graduated with a BCom; the first, in 1915, was Owen Wilkinson. Before he had even received his certificate, Wilkinson had signed on with the Field Artillery and headed to Gallipoli; he later became an accountant in Christchurch and presided over the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce. It was a very masculine world. The first woman enrolled in the commerce faculty in 1914 and by 1917 the female roll had reached 13. The dean, George Reid, reported that ‘during the latter part of the war period, exceptional opportunities opened up for women in the more advanced branches of commercial work’, with a ‘large number of women seeking to qualify themselves by attendance at the classes in commerce’. But in 1920 female enrolments fell, with just 6 women studying alongside 130 men: ‘evidently the reinstatement of returned soldiers in commercial occupations has made commercial training less attractive to women’, noted Reid. The faculty wanted to attract women, stating in bold print in the 1920 calendar that classes were ‘open to persons of both sexes, without restriction as to age or occupation’. But numbers remained low, and by the time the next world war broke out there were just 9 women studying alongside 118 men.

Classes were held outside business hours to suit both students and lecturers, who were practising accountants and lawyers. Tom Cowan, a student of the 1930s and part-time lecturer from the 1940s, noted they ‘shivered through law lectures in the early mornings and … at the end of the day returned to their desks in the Lower Oliver classroom to study accounting’. An anonymous commerce student noted the advantages and disadvantages of part-time study in a 1946 Review article. ‘Because he dissipates his energy for eight hours a day in an office, [the part-time student] invariably approaches his study with a weary mind, which is not conducive to the clearest thought and greatest absorption’. Part-timers had to develop an ‘orderly and efficient’ attitude, ‘qualities to be commended in all who seek advancement and success, at least in the commercial world’. They had ‘little time for the frivolities and interests so precious to the average student’. However, commerce students did support one another through their own students’ association. This organised various social events, including an annual dinner and ball and rugby matches against the law faculty; debating flourished in the 1920s and by the 1930s there was an annual fancy dress post-exam party at the Gardens tea kiosk.

It wasn’t all grim – the 1933 commerce faculty ball, held in the Dunedin Town Hall Concert Chamber. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Box 237-005, S16-548c.

The 1960s were revolutionary for commerce education at Otago. In 1960 – 48 years after teaching had begun – Tom Cowan became the first ever full-time staff member and was promoted to a new chair of accountancy the following year. He set up in an office ‘right under the clock tower, then in a shaky condition. Perhaps there was some hope that an Act of God might crush the Commerce intruder and his fledgling Department, and, with him, the threatening aspirations of his Faculty’, recalled Cowan. From 1962, controversially, Otago’s commerce lectures shifted from the evening and early mornings to daytime, with the advanced accounting courses on Saturdays as part of a compromise with local employers. It was all part of a strategy to recruit more full-time and degree students; the 1960 Parry report on New Zealand universities was highly critical of part-time study, which was associated with high attrition rates, and commerce faculties were the worst offenders. The faculty was now able to introduce tutorials in the evenings, giving students more contact time with their teachers; course standards rose. Employers became more reluctant to employ part-time students, since they needed to be released during business hours for lectures, and full-time study became more attractive. By 1970, two-thirds of commerce students were full-time, a dramatic change from the 8% of 1960, and in the same period degree completions in commerce jumped from 8 to 76. The roll also grew dramatically, like that of the university as a whole; there were 238 commerce students in 1960, but 580 in 1970 (together with an additional 92 external students, mostly in Invercargill). Some of these new students were attracted to the greater diversity of subjects on offer. From the mid-1960s BCom students could choose between three majors: accounting, economics or management. Otago’s first management course was taught in 1962 and marketing courses commenced in 1966; both proved popular immediately and acquired their own professors the following decade … but that’s another story!

Do you have any memories to share of the accounting night school days? I’m keen to track down photographs relating to the commerce faculty (right through to the 1990s) – I’ve found plenty of formal portraits, but would love to see some more interesting images!

Boosting human capital

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1990s, 2000s, 2010s, benefactors, funding, law, leading thinkers, marine science, medicine, peace and conflict studies, science communication, Scottish studies

Professor Jim Mann, director of the Edgar Diabetes and Obesity Research Centre, with donors Jan and Eion Edgar at the official opening. It was the first project funded under the Leading Thinkers scheme. Image courtesy of the Edgar Diabetes and Obesity Research Centre.

Inspiration for policy and practice at Otago has come from many different places. Canada may not be the first country that springs to mind, but that was where the concept for a significant new initiative for the university was sparked!

In the 1990s and 2000s, as student numbers surged while the government tightened its belt, the university sought to diversify its funding. Unlike some countries, notably the USA, New Zealand did not have a strong tradition of large-scale philanthropy to tertiary education, though there were of course many gifts and bequests which established scholarships, prizes and the like through the years. During the early decades of the twentieth century Otago also benefited from some more substantial donations and bequests which enabled the teaching of new subjects (home science, anthropology and music), a boost to teaching and research in others (physics, chemistry, economics, English, dentistry) and the establishment of several new professorial chairs (physiology, medicine and surgery). Reaching out to Otago’s growing body of alumni was one way to attract a new wave of generosity. Functions for graduates around the world began to take off at the time of the university’s 125^th anniversary celebrations in 1994.

In Toronto the dynamic Gill Parata, first head of Otago’s alumni office, met Brian Merrilees, an Otago graduate who had a distinguished academic career as professor of French, also holding various administrative roles at the University of Toronto. He told Gill of the university’s very successful fundraising campaign and arranged for Graeme Fogelberg, Otago’s vice-chancellor, to meet with Toronto’s president and other key figures in the campaign. One aspect of Toronto’s campaign was to raise funds to attract ‘superstar’ academics to the university. Though they suspected the ‘superstar’ idea might not work in New Zealand, the Otago group liked the idea of focussing a fundraising drive on increasing the university’s intellectual capacity; they believed this would have more appeal than bricks and mortar, comments Graeme Fogelberg. Otago’s executive and council liked the concept, and so a scheme for ‘knowledge leaders’, later known as the Leading Thinkers initiative, was born. In 2002 Clive Matthewson, a former member of parliament and cabinet minister, was appointed as Otago’s Director of Development to oversee the project.

The government was also keen for tertiary institutions to attract more funding from the private sector and established a Partnerships for Excellence scheme, which matched dollar for dollar funds raised for major capital developments. The scheme was targeted at building development; one of its best-known outcomes was the University of Auckland’s large business school, funded by a multimillion-dollar donation from expatriate businessman Owen Glenn. However, after much hard work, in 2003 the Otago team managed to convince a sceptical government that human capital was also worth funding under the scheme. The government agreed to match funds raised over the next 5 years up to a total of $25 million, a goal the university eventually exceeded 6 months ahead of time.

The ‘advancement’ team had already raised funds for some new Otago projects before the government came on board, but projects funded through the official Leading Thinkers scheme eventually totalled 27. It took a gift of $1 million, matched by another $1 million from the government, to fund a permanent chair, and most of the projects enabled the university to establish a professor, often with an associated research centre. The initiative got a great kick-start with a generous donation from the charitable trust of Dunedin businessman Eion Edgar, who happened to be the university’s chancellor; this funded the Edgar Diabetes and Obesity Research Centre. Donations came from a range of individuals, charities, businesses and other organisations. Some provided permanent funding for existing projects with precarious sources of income; for instance, Cure Kids funded a chair in child health research which enabled Otago to retain Stephen Robertson, the gifted paediatrician and clinical geneticist whose post had been based previously on short-term funding. Cure Kids also funded a second chair in paediatric research under the scheme, awarded to Christchurch neonatologist Brian Darlow.

Children in the Apple programme, one of the Edgar Diabetes and Obesity Research Centre’s first projects. This seminal study showed that community-based initiatives could successfully reduce the rate of excessive weight gain in primary school-aged children. Image courtesy of the Edgar Diabetes and Obesity Research Centre.

Not all of the initiatives were in health sciences, indeed, they included all of the university’s academic divisions. And not all related to existing fields of teaching and research at the university: some took it in brand new directions, sparked by the particular interests of the donors. A good example is the Legal Issues Centre and associated chair. This was endowed by philanthropists Grant and Marilyn Nelson through the Gama Foundation, inspired by their frustration with a drawn-out legal case. It aimed to act as a ‘critic and conscience’ of the legal profession and system, and provide insights to ‘reorient the legal system so that it works better for people’. The Gama Foundation also funded a research fellowship in bipolar disorder through the Leading Thinkers scheme. One interesting donor was the Stuart Residence Halls Council, the organisation which founded and ran Arana and Carrington Colleges. Having sold the colleges to the university, it generously donated much of the money back to endow two new chairs, in science communication and Scottish studies. There was just one exception to the rule that the Leading Thinkers scheme was about people. It wasn’t precisely bricks and mortar, but the ocean science research vessel Polaris II certainly wasn’t human! There isn’t space here to describe all of the initiatives, but you can read a little about each in an article published to celebrate the scheme’s tenth anniversary.

The Polaris II, a former fishing vessel purchased and refitted to serve as a research vessel for a wide range of marine and environmental science activities. Image courtesy of University of Otago Marketing and Communications.

The Leading Thinkers scheme proved an enormous boon to research, teaching and public engagement at Otago, bringing inspirational scholars of international reputation to the university and helping retain other excellent minds. The dynamism of these people led to impressive results, quickly achieved, and drew other good people, both staff and students, to work with them. Thanks, Canada, for the idea!

Staff and students of the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (plus a few from tourism) at Otakou Marae in 2013. Foundation professor Kevin Clements is the tall figure with white hair in the middle. The centre began in 2009 as a Leading Thinkers initiative and quickly developed a great record of research, teaching and public engagement. By 2014 it had 6 academic staff and 24 PhD students from 19 countries. Image courtesy of the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies.

Among the brightest and the best

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1900s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, anthropology, botany, economics, geology, law, medicine, physics, Rhodes, scholarships, sports, vice-chancellors, women

James Allan Thomson, New Zealand’s first Rhodes Scholar, as he appeared in the Auckland Weekly News, 7 July 1904. Image courtesy of Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, AWNS-19040707-7-2.

The Rhodes Scholarship – one of the most prestigious academic awards in the world – has shaped the lives of some of Otago’s most gifted graduates. The scholarship, which provides for study at Oxford University, has been awarded since 1902 thanks to a generous bequest from Cecil Rhodes. Rhodes, an English clergyman’s son and Oxford alumnus, made his fortune as a mining magnate in southern Africa. He was an ardent promoter of the British Empire and played a large hand in African politics as Prime Minister of Cape Colony in the 1890s. His business ethics and racial views seem highly suspect today, but the purpose of the scholarship he founded – to promote peace and civic leadership by bringing together young people from the British colonies, Germany and the USA to further their education – remains admirable. The scholarships provide tuition and living costs for two or three years of study at Oxford; they are awarded to young people who demonstrate a combination of intellect, moral character, leadership, physical vigour, and an unselfishness which will lead to a commitment to public service.

There have now been 219 Rhodes Scholars from New Zealand. This country was generally allocated one scholarship per year from 1904, with two per year from 1926 until 1993, when the allocation was increased to three. Otago has a proud record of producing 61 of New Zealand’s Rhodes Scholars, and for some years now has been neck-and-neck with the much larger University of Auckland for first place honours. Rhodes Scholars are, by definition, outstanding people. All have interesting stories and it is not possible to recount them all here. Some feature in items produced to celebrate the centenary of the scholarship, including an Otago Magazine article and an exhibition at the University of Otago Library Special Collections.

Otago’s – and New Zealand’s – first Rhodes Scholar was a geologist, Allan Thomson. He taught at Oxford and worked in Australia before returning to New Zealand, where he was a palaeontologist with the Geological Survey before becoming director of the Dominion Museum. He made major contributions to the organisation of science in this country before his life was sadly cut short by tuberculosis (his initial diagnosis prevented him from taking up a position on Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova expedition to Antarctica).

A considerable number of Otago Rhodes Scholars continued their careers beyond these shores. For example, there were several from the 1930s – when there were fewer scholarly opportunities in New Zealand – who became well known: doctor and Olympic champion Jack Lovelock (1931), journalist and war correspondent Geoffrey Cox (1932), Oxford English professor Norman Davis (1934), and writer and publisher Dan Davin (1936). Quite a few, like Davis, continued their academic careers at Oxford and other overseas universities.

Arthur Porritt in 1923, the year he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, S P Andrew Ltd :Portrait negatives. Ref: 1/1-018584-F.

Other scholars brought their overseas experience back to New Zealand. Where leadership is concerned, the best known is Arthur Porritt (1923).  At Oxford he completed the medical studies begun at Otago and went on to a stellar surgical career in England, becoming president of the Royal College of Surgeons and British Medical Association. He was also a stellar athlete; his bronze-medal win at the 1924 Paris Olympics was represented by the fictional Tom Watson in the film Chariots of Fire. From 1967 to 1972 Porritt returned to New Zealand and served as the first locally-born Governor General.

Sir Arthur and Lady Porritt in vice-regal splendour for the opening of parliament in 1968. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Further negatives of the Evening Post newspaper. Ref: EP/1968/2679/6A-F.

Some Otago Rhodes Scholars returned to their alma mater and took up significant leadership roles. Hubert Ryburn (1921) was a mathematics scholar and Presbyterian minister; he sat on the University Council from 1946 and served as Chancellor from 1955 to 1970. Otago managed to entice another former Rhodes Scholar, Robert Aitken (1924), back to New Zealand to serve as its first full-time administrative head in 1948. Aitken left his position as Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Aberdeen to become Otago’s vice-chancellor; he left in 1953 for a position as vice-chancellor at Birmingham. A more recent vice-chancellor, David Skegg, was also a Rhodes Scholar (1972). Skegg, who graduated top of his class at the Otago Medical School, relished the opportunity to study at Oxford with distinguished medical epidemiologist Richard Doll. In 1980, at just 32 years, Skegg returned to Otago as Professor of Preventive and Social Medicine, skilfully leading that department until 2004, when he became a popular vice-chancellor. He left that role in 2011, but continues as a highly respected research professor to this day.

David Skegg outside the Bodleian Library at the time of his graduation with an Oxford D Phil. Image courtesy of David Skegg.

Others also returned to Otago, sometimes briefly, and sometimes to make a career. A couple of recent examples are Jesse Wall (2008), now on the law faculty staff, and bioethicist Tom Douglas (2003), who remains at Oxford but visited last year to foster research links with Otago staff.

Athletes Porritt and Lovelock weren’t the only famous sportsmen on Otago’s Rhodes list, which also features two All Black captains, Chris Laidlaw (1968) and David Kirk (1985). For Kirk, like some others, the scholarship provided an opportunity to branch out from his original field of study. He was a medical graduate, but studied PPE (politics, philosophy, economics) at Oxford, returning to a career in politics, then business, in New Zealand and Australia. For Kirk, Oxford also provided a welcome respite from his celebrity status in New Zealand as Rugby World Cup-winning captain.

Cecil Rhodes’s will limited the scholarship to men. By the 1960s this had become a sore point, and from 1968 to 2000 Rhodes Visiting Fellowships were awarded so women who had already embarked on academic careers could also benefit from time at Oxford. Only 32 of these fellowships were awarded, so it is remarkable that 11 went to New Zealand women, two of them from Otago: archaeologist Helen Leach (1980) and lawyer Mindy Chen-Wishart (1992). In 1977 an Act of Parliament overturned the gender restriction and made the original scholarships open to women. Otago’s first woman Rhodes Scholar was law student Christine French (1981); since then women have accounted for just over half of the Otago recipients. The Rhodes Project, established by one of the first American women Rhodes Scholars to promote public understanding of female achievement, provides information about some of the Rhodes Scholar women and their subsequent careers.

Though Otago’s first Rhodes Scholar was a scientist, the list is dominated by arts, law and medical students; the most recent Otago science student to win a Rhodes was Jane Larkindale (1996), who majored in plant biotechnology and physics and is now a research scientist in the USA. Commerce students are even rarer, though Louis Chambers (2013) was a student of economics as well as law. Talented commerce and science students of today might like to consider this a challenge!

Early Chinese students

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1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, Aquinas, Asia, Chinese, dentistry, graduation, law, medicine

Dr Kathleen Pih, photographed by J.J. Webster, Dunedin, c.1930. Image courtesy of Presbyterian Research Centre, P-A154.19-59.

Chinese students have a long history at Otago. I’ve posted before about the big impact that Colombo Plan students from Asia had on the university from the 1950s to 1970s – many of them were Chinese Malaysians. As the Colombo Plan wound back and private international students grew in number, Malaysians remained an important presence on campus. The late 1990s also saw the beginnings of an influx of international students directly from China – their numbers peaked at 700 in 2005 and remain substantial today. But there is, of course, a long history of Chinese migration to New Zealand and the earliest Chinese students at Otago were homegrown – people who had been born or raised here.

I recently had the privilege of talking with two well-known members of Dunedin’s Kiwi Chinese community – James Ng, medical doctor and historian of the Chinese in New Zealand, and Peter Chin, lawyer, singer, and former mayor of Dunedin. Both have fond memories of their Otago student days and generously shared some insights into the Chinese community at the university. James Ng came from Ashburton to Otago to study medicine in 1954 – he describes himself as being at the tail end of the first wave of New Zealand Chinese university students. That wave resulted from the changing demographics of the Chinese community. For many decades immigration policy prevented the settlement of Chinese women in New Zealand, so many Chinese men here remained single or left families behind in China. When restrictions were reduced during World War II more women and families arrived in New Zealand. Peter Chin, who started his law degree at Otago in 1959, was born in Dunedin as part of the “baby boom” resulting from the influx of Chinese women to this country in the 1940s.

While some pioneering Otago Chinese trained in professions such as dentistry and law before these became university courses, and Norman Lo Keong graduated in engineering from Canterbury, the University of Otago’s first Chinese graduates were in medicine. The honour of being first goes to Kathleen Pih (Pih Zhen-Wah). Born in 1902 in Antung, China, she came to New Zealand in 1908 with her foster mother, a Dunedinite who had been working with the China Inland Mission. Special permission was required from the Governor-General for Kathleen to gain entry to New Zealand. She went to primary school in Waimate and had her secondary schooling at Otago Girls’ High School, enrolling as a university student in 1921. After graduating in medicine in 1929, she returned to China as a missionary for some years. She later completed specialist training in ophthalmology in London and married anatomy professor Francis Chang of Shanghai.They worked in China, Singapore and Hong Kong before retiring to New Zealand in 1969.

The next Chinese student at Otago was Roy Ting Shang Law, who commenced his medical course in 1937. He finally graduated in 1947 – this was a period when many students took extra years to complete their course, and the fact he had to work to support himself and his wife obviously didn’t help the progression of his studies. Dr Law established a very successful general practice in Wellington and this had quite an impact on New Zealand’s Chinese community. Once they saw how acceptable a Chinese doctor could be to wider society, they were happy to encourage their children to study medicine. James Ng’s parents were initially reluctant for him to undertake tertiary study, thinking business offered better opportunities, but Dr Law’s success swayed them to allow their son to come to Otago, albeit not to study in the field which originally interested him – geology!

The health sciences remained the most popular Otago courses for Chinese students, attracting people from all over New Zealand. Douglas Ngan Kee of Whanganui became the first Chinese dental graduate in 1950. The specialist courses in mining and home science also brought Chinese students to Otago, while arts and law attracted a smaller number, most of them southerners. By the 1950s Otago was also enrolling students from Fiji’s Chinese community, while the Colombo Plan brought Chinese students from elsewhere, notably Malaysia.

Jocelyn Wong, an arts student from Masterton, and Peter Chin, a law student from Dunedin, are at centre front of this group of students at a St Margaret’s College ball in the early 1960s. Image courtesy of Peter Chin.

There was no special club or society for Otago’s Chinese students, though many took part in activities of the local Dunedin Chinese Association. Some also participated in the International Club, which was mostly run by European women students. Other than this, they took part in activities according to their personal interests – for instance, James Ng joined the tramping club. Like many out-of-town students he also mixed widely with others by living in a residential college, thriving at Aquinas, where he was one of the founding residents.

The biggest priority for Chinese students was their studies – their reputation for diligence is a long-standing one. Extra-curricular activities came second to work, and Peter Chin notes that he was an exception in his generation for the extent of his involvement in campus activities. His first year was “a disaster” academically but a great success socially thanks to his talent for singing. Along with a few school friends he auditioned for the capping chorus, and as a result was asked to audition for the sextet. Becoming part of this elite group provided him with an instant introduction into student society. He sang with the sextet for 3 of his 5 years at Otago, and also became capping chorus master. In his final year he served on the OUSA executive, having been selected as their business manager, a role traditionally held by a law student.

Peter Chin (right) with the sextet c.1962. Image courtesy of Peter Chin.

In the 94 years since the remarkable Kathleen Pih first became an Otago student, many of New Zealand’s Chinese community have followed in her footsteps. My thanks to James Ng and Peter Chin for sharing memories and photographs of Otago student life in the 1950s and 1960s, along with some stories of their predecessors!

Evolution of an old building

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1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1960s, 1980s, dentistry, law, registry, staff club

The building in its Dental School days, c.1915. The large windows were designed to provide good natural lighting for dental practice. Image by Muir and Moodie, courtesy of Te Papa Tongarewa, reference C.012241.

I’ve been thinking about buildings recently, thanks to the university’s public announcement of its 15-year plan for building developments on the Dunedin, Christchurch and Wellington campuses. Right at the top of the priority list, with plans already well underway, is a new dental school. It seems a good moment, then, to look back at the university’s first dental school building, which has been through some interesting changes of use in its 107-year history.

The building, on the busy corner of Union and Castle streets and just across the Leith from the existing university complex, was designed by Dunedin architect James Louis Salmond specifically for the university’s new dental school, which commenced in 1907. The builders, McKinnon and Hamilton, completed the work that year. The stone building, with one wall finished in brick to allow for later extensions, cost £2421 (just under $400,000 in 2014 values). At the grand official opening in April 1908 the Otago Daily Times described the building as “well lighted, but at present rather bare”: that was probably because building costs had absorbed most of the budget of £2500 (a government grant of £1500 plus £1000 raised by the Dental Association), leaving little over for furnishings. It was, in the words of the newspaper, “a scholastic-looking edifice on the banks of the Water of Leith close to the University. On the ground floor is the director’s office, waiting room, examinations rooms, anaesthetic department, and mechanical laboratory; while above is the ‘filling’ room, the museum, and the lecture hall.”

There weren’t many dental students to begin with: just 2 in 1907 and 14 the following year; the roll didn’t exceed 20 until 1918. But right from the beginning there were plenty of patients; there was no shortage of Dunedin residents in need of dental care but unable to afford the going rates. At the official opening in 1908 the school’s director, Englishman H.P. Pickerill, commented that “he had been prepared for something bad, but the condition of the people’s teeth here was simply appalling.” To provide adequate space for all the patients, the building was extended upwards in 1909. As student numbers grew after World War I, yet more space was needed, and in 1921 the building was extended to the north. This time the design was done by Edmund Anscombe, who carried out much of the university’s architectural work in the 1910s and 1920s. The initial extension was just one storey, but a second storey was completed in 1923.

The dental school’s setting just beside the Leith was picturesque, but proved disastrous when, just after the extensions were completed, a flood undermined one corner (and led to Ian Chirnside losing his box brownie camera!). This damage, along with the steady growth of the school, prompted plans for a move to a more adequate building. Thanks to a government grant of £25,000, the university was able to build a new dental school in Great King Street, which opened in 1926. This second school is now known as the Marples Building; when the third and current dental school building was opened in 1961, the former school became the home of the Department of Zoology.

A 2008 aerial view of the building reveals the location next to the Leith which made it extremely vulnerable to flooding before extensive protection works. Image courtesy of University of Otago Marketing and Communications Division.

Meanwhile, the space in the original dental school building was too good to waste, especially after the city council invested in major flood protection work following the largest recorded flood of the Leith, in 1929. That year the University Council decided to make it the home of its administration, and architects Miller and White designed a suitable conversion. For a quarter of a century the building served as the Registry, the hub of university operations. Then, in the 1960s, the continuing growth of the university roll led to another change. The Dunedin campus expanded rapidly to cope with the growing number of students. With the opening of a new university library in 1965 (replaced by the current Information Services Building in 2001), and the beginnings of the development of major new science buildings, the old teaching spaces and library in the Clocktower Building were freed up to become the new home of the Registry in 1966.

The building then reverted to a space for professional education once again, this time for the law school. As I explained in a recent post, Otago’s law school was for many decades located off-campus, in the law offices of its part-time lecturers and the Supreme Court building. In 1966 it moved into the old Registry at the heart of the campus, with the law library downstairs and a lecture room and offices upstairs. The large old safe where the university had once stored its valuables now housed law journals. This was a big step up for law students and staff, but, just like the dental school, the law school soon outgrew the building. There were just 161 law students and 3 full-time academic staff in 1966, but ten years later there were 471 students and 12 full-time staff and conditions were very cramped. It was with some relief that the law school, including its ever-expanding library, moved into its new premises in the Richardson Building (now known as the Hocken Building) in 1980.

The old building then moved into its fourth – and current – stage of life, and was turned into the Staff Club. The Senior Common Room Association, which until then had met in the Student Union, raised funds for alterations, which were subsidised by the university. These converted the historic venue into a series of rooms where staff could gather over food and drink – an intriguing contrast from the days when students drilled teeth there. The club has since hosted many functions, both formal and informal, with the balcony overlooking the Leith and the Clocktower Building providing a pleasant outdoor lunch venue on fine days. Many an esoteric conversation must have taken place in this building over the years!

The building now known as the Staff Club is a charming one with a most interesting past. Its significance is recognised by Heritage New Zealand (formerly the New Zealand Historic Places Trust), who in 1988 listed it as an historic building. As their listing notes, together with the adjacent old university buildings, it “constitutes a major example of nineteenth and early twentieth century Gothic in New Zealand, impressive in its size and completeness.”

The Staff Club in 2004 – the exterior of the building is very little changed from its dental school days. Image courtesy of the University of Otago Marketing and Communications Division.

 

 

 

The legal night school

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1870s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, law

In this image taken from the Dunedin Railway Station looking up Stuart Street, c.1905, the court buildings feature at the front left. Until 1966 the University of Otago law classes took place here, or in the chambers of the part-time lecturers. Image by Muir and Moodie, courtesy of Te Papa Tongarewa, reference C.012290.

Today Otago’s law school offers a substantial full-time programme, located at the heart of the Dunedin campus, in the Richardson Building. But it hasn’t always been that way. Law is one of Otago’s oldest subjects – it was first taught in 1873, the third year that the university provided lectures – but for many decades it was a precarious and part-time enterprise. Qualifying as a lawyer in the nineteenth century involved being articled to a trained lawyer and passing the required exams; university classes supplemented this apprenticeship system.

Otago’s first law lecturer, future Premier and Chief Justice Robert Stout. Photographed in 1885. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, reference 1/2-098553-F.

Otago’s first law lecturer was the impressive Robert Stout, after whom the law library is named. He arrived in Otago from Shetland in 1863 and taught school for some years before training as a lawyer. He was one of the University of Otago’s founding students, undertaking courses in mental and moral science and political economy. In 1873 he offered lectures in common law to a class of 18 students – a number which would not be equalled again for some decades. Stout resigned in 1875 when he was elected to the House of Representatives. He went on to a distinguished political career, including 3 years as Premier of New Zealand and 26 years as Chief Justice. He also played a major role in New Zealand university administration and was a key figure in founding Victoria University of Wellington.

A series of local lawyers succeeded Stout as part-time law lecturer, teaching specialist papers for the LLB degree, for which the University of New Zealand provided regulations from 1877. There wasn’t much incentive to complete a degree, which wasn’t necessary for qualification as a solicitor or barrister, so classes remained tiny. Law students were generally employed in local law firms, with classes taking place after hours in their teachers’ offices or at the Supreme Court building. They studied in the Otago District Law Society’s library.

In 1901, with few law students and a financial crisis, the University of Otago’s council decided to “terminate the appointments of Dr. W. D. Milne, Lecturer on Jurisprudence, and Mr. A. R. Barclay, M.H.R., Lecturer on Constitutional History and Law, and to abstain for the present from teaching these subjects at the University.” In 1905 the District Law Society convinced the university to begin legal classes again, with the lecturers funded purely from student fees, and three years later the first full-time lecturer in law was appointed. Unfortunately for Otago, James Garrow only stayed three years, leaving to become foundation Professor of Law in Wellington. After another interval of a couple of years, the university reverted to its previous custom of appointing local practitioners as part-time lecturers, this time with the expense heavily subsidised by the District Law Society. In 1913, when the Faculty of Law was created, it boasted 47 students, probably all part-time. Numbers waxed and waned over the next four decades, reaching as high as 91 in 1928, and as low as 8 in 1942.

In 1959, more than 80 years after first offering lectures in law, Otago finally appointed its first full-time Professor of Law, Frank Guest, who also served as dean to a faculty of 14 staff and 99 students. Classes grew too large for the facilities in the court building and in 1966, with student numbers about to hit 200 for the first time, the law school moved onto the main campus, taking over the former registry building (previously the first Dental School, now the Staff Club). The decades of the part-time “night school” came to an end and law became, for most students, a full-time field of study. Prospective lawyers could complete a LLB degree in four years, followed by a year of study to complete their professional qualification. For decades law students had been somewhat geographically, socially and intellectually isolated from the university, but now they could take a full part in student life.

There have been many changes to the law school since it moved on campus in the 1960s, but I’ll save those for a future post. Do you have any memories to share of law at Otago in its “night school” years?

Compulsory languages

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1870s, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, chemistry, classics, French, German, Greek, languages, Latin, law, Maori, medicine, Russian

Proving an ability to understand a text like this, from a 1907 physics journal, was compulsory for science students until the mid-twentieth century. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Do you have a science degree? And can you read and understand a foreign language? We are accustomed these days to compulsory tests for competency in English, largely directed at students whose first language is not English. Some degrees also require or recommend learning te reo Maori; for instance, Otago PhD students in history have to complete a Maori paper. But for earlier generations of Otago students language tests meant proving they could read French or German.

The rationale behind this was that much academic work was published in German and French, so a good scholar needed to read these languages to keep up with the latest research. In 1899 Thomas Gilray, Otago’s English Professor and Chair of the Professorial Board, wrote of his regret that German was not being taught in more Otago schools: “A number of our ablest young men after passing through our University Colleges, now go to Europe to pursue their studies and it is a great disadvantage to them that they have no opportunity here of learning German. Every Student knows that it is impossible to get to the bottom of almost any subject without a knowledge of German.”

Latin was taught at Otago from its first year of classes, 1871, with modern languages – French, German and Italian – added to the syllabus in 1875. Italian only lasted a year, but French and German survived. The first compulsory language was Latin. A pass in a Latin paper was required for a BA until 1903, when students could chose between Latin and Greek. From 1918 this was replaced with a more general requirement to complete a paper in a language other than English as part of a BA. This lasted until 1971, though by then there were various exemptions (including for maths students). Latin remained compulsory as part of a law degree until 1953.

Science students did not have to complete a full language paper, but from 1919 they did have to pass a test proving they could understand a piece of scientific writing in French or German. This remained compulsory for a BSc until 1948; it then became compulsory for a MSc until 1959. Medical students who had taken a year out to complete the Bachelor of Medical Science research degree also had to pass a language test until 1962; it then became optional, depending on the field of research they had selected. By then the test could be in Russian instead of French or German.

For people who had studied languages at high school the language test was not too difficult, especially as they could use a dictionary. But for some science students without any flair for languages it was a big barrier; indeed, it could be the most difficult aspect of their degree. Ann Wylie already knew French when starting her BSc degree at Otago in the 1940s, but chemistry lecturer Stan Slater persuaded all his second year students to learn German. He had recently completed a doctorate at Oxford and knew that chemistry scholars who couldn’t read the German literature were severely handicapped. Ann felt considerable sympathy for the tutor who had to teach German to a bunch of reluctant science students! Alan Mark, who had no previous language experience, learned German to fulfill the requirements for his MSc in botany in the 1950s. When he went to Duke University in the USA to complete his PhD, he was dismayed to discover they required proof of competency to read two languages other than English! He had to add French to his repertoire. Language requirements were certainly common at universities beyond New Zealand; indeed, they were probably less stringent here than in many places.

Otago’s twenty-first century science students can be grateful that so much scholarly literature is now published in English, in part thanks to the strength of English on the internet. Could you read an article in your field in a second or third language? Do you have any memories to share of the dreaded language test?

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!