Learning to lecture

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1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, classics, economics, education, English, French, geology, Higher Education Development Centre, history, medicine, philosophy, physics, psychology, teaching, technology

WR Morris lecturing in the ‘old anatomy lecture theatre’ – now the Gowland Lecture Theatre – in the Lindo Ferguson Building, 1949. Anatomical drawings and skeletons were popular visual aids from the medical school’s earliest classes onwards. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, University of Otago Medical School Alumnus Association archives, MS-1537/441, S17-550c.

The University of Otago’s founders followed Scottish precedent in their choice of curriculum and also in teaching methods: rather than the Oxbridge-style tutorial, teaching was based on the professorial lecture. That had the advantage of being economical and many subjects got by with just one staff member for the first few decades. The professor did all the teaching, except in the sciences, which were first to acquire assistants, necessary because of the laboratory classes which supplemented lectures. Humanities subjects had no tutorials until the 1940s, though in some cases the classes were small enough that professors became well acquainted with their students. As mentioned in a recent post about the history department, history professor John Elder told a young lecturer whose students showed marked progress after he introduced seminar discussions: ‘These young men like to hear themselves talk but you’re paid to lecture and you’ll therefore lecture. So long as I’m head of this department, there’ll be no discussions’.

Elder was not the only professor suspicious of tutorials. They eventually sneaked into arts subjects as the rehabilitation department funded tutorials for returned servicemen and women in the wake of World War II; they became standard additions to the lecture programme soon after that. Sometimes the impetus for this innovation came from students and sometimes from staff. In 1948 Frank Mitchell, the education professor, reported that ‘this year the Honours students on their own initiative organised tutorials for students taking Education I. I hope that it will soon be possible to conduct regular tutorials for all stages’. In the same year departing philosophy professor David Raphael noted that tutorials were ‘not just a desirable luxury’ in that subject, but ‘essential for adequate training. Philosophy is a way of doing things with one’s mind, not a set of facts to be learned, and consequently the student must be in a position to practise the accomplishment in question’. Tutorials required a bigger investment in staff, but the growing student roll justified that.

Academics of course varied greatly in their teaching styles. Founding classics professor George Sale, notorious for his disdain of students’ abilities, preferred the stick to the carrot. John Murdoch, in reminiscences of his own teaching career, wrote of meeting some of Sale’s honours students after a lecture in 1907: ‘They had just received their corrected Latin proses, and the most successful had gained a mark of “minus 300”. Sale deducted marks, 10, 50, 100 or more for a mistake, according to his estimate of its seriousness’. Murdoch had little respect for the methods of the early 20^th century professors: ‘Otago University as I knew it was in effect a glorified coaching school’. Although the academic staff were ‘capable and well-qualified’, suggested Murdoch, their teaching was determined by a system whereby courses were ‘set by regulations applying to all four [University of New Zealand] colleges, and the success of their efforts was gauged by examiners in England’. Such conditions made ‘inspirational teaching almost hopeless if not quite impossible’, at least in English, ‘a notoriously difficult subject to teach’. Future high school principal Muriel May, an Otago student of the 1910s and 1920s, recalled that Thomas Gilray, the English professor, ‘taught by dictating at a relentless pace to his benches of scribbling students in the Lower Oliver classroom …. at the prearranged dates we regurgitated. There were no seminars, no discussions, originality was not fostered nor were personal opinions encouraged’. There were always, of course, some inspiring teachers. May also recalled that George Thompson’s French lectures ‘were invariably stimulating and enjoyable. (Latin students made comparable claims for the classes of Professor Adams.)’ Lecturer Agnes Blackie was in love with physics, which she found ‘brimful of interest’. ‘I can’t imagine a better subject for a lecturer’, she wrote in her reminiscences. ‘Lectures can be illustrated with fascinating demonstrations which bring the subject to life for the students and are fun for the lecturer to operate’.

From the 1950s, with greater local control of the curriculum and the widespread use of tutorials in addition to the traditional lectures, labs, clinical teaching and field trips, academic staff had greater flexibility in teaching. Their adoption of new technologies varied. Visual aids did not have to be high-tech: the beautiful anatomical drawings of John Scott, who was a skilled artist as well as first dean of the medical school, were used at Otago for many decades. Others used glass slides and a ‘magic lantern’ projector to show images. John Mackie recounted its use by Noel Benson in 1929 first-year geology lectures; it was ‘a contraption on a tripod which stood behind the lecture bench. Believe it or not, this projector incorporated an arc-lamp which spluttered, fizzed and made other dangerous noises, although as a source of light it was quite spectacular’. The notoriously absent-minded professor occasionally tripped over its wires ‘and the whole contrivance would crash to the floor’; that happened also on the day he rushed to extinguish the light after discovering students had replaced his first slide with a full-frontal nude. Slides remained a popular teaching tool, though shown through a more compact slide projector from the mid-20^th century, with the slides themselves shifting from glass to film negative to digital format.

In 1940 the dean of arts and sciences, Robert Bell, reported that several departments took advantage of a new scheme for borrowing ‘sound-films’, finding them ‘an extremely valuable and effective addition’ to teaching methods. Not every academic liked new technology; John Howells, who retired from the economics department in the 1990s, commented ‘my major advancement in the technology area stopped with the biro pen’. The emergence of the Audio Visual Learning Centre (AVLC) in 1973 ‘was regarded with suspicion by some staff members who had visions of classes being handed over to various mechanical gadgets’, reported the staff newsletter in 1977. By then, the ‘prejudice’ was ‘disappearing’, with 30 departments already using the AVLC. Its use ranged from ‘tape/slide/workbook programmes’ for anatomy courses to a ‘film providing “evidence” for a simulated Supreme Court trial’ for law students. The impetus for the centre came from the medical school, which was concerned about how it would manage its larger intake of students; it provided space for AVLC academic director David Teather and his team, with a production centre in the Adams building and a study centre with library of audio visual resources in the Scott building.

By the time this photo was taken in 1983, medical school lectures had become much more relaxed and technology enabled the use of film and other audiovisual aids. Please get in touch if you can help identify the lecturer or class! Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, University of Otago Photographic Unit archives, MS-4368/086, S17-550b.

Academics using the AVLC ‘face some adjustment of their teaching methods and their attitudes’, noted the staff newsletter in 1975. There was already wider consideration of teaching and learning methods in the university, which new technology helped accelerate. In 1971 the lecturers’ association ran a well-attended seminar on teaching methods and suggested the university set up a research centre on higher education. In 1973 Otago appointed Terry Crooks as a lecturer in the education department, with half of his time devoted to research and advice on university teaching. He, the lecturers’ association and AVLC ran occasional sessions on teaching methods; for instance, a 1976 session looked at the use of film in university teaching, with staff discussing Otago-made films they had used in anthropology, physical education and medicine. Psychology lecturer Louis Leland ‘introduced a film which demonstrated the training of laboratory rats’. He made ‘a similar film each year with rats trained by the current year’s students and uses this to demonstrate to the following year’s students that training rats is within their capability’. In 1976 senate established a higher education research and advisory centre (HERAC) committee. HERAC and the AVLC often worked together and in 1978 they merged under a new acronym, this time destined to last: HEDC, or the Higher Education Development Centre.

Although HEDC had few staff in its early years, it performed a significant role; ‘there was growing awareness of the need for stimulating teaching’ reported the director, David Teather, in 1983. A recent two-day seminar on ‘helping students succeed’ had attracted 140 staff and ‘there was now hardly a department which did not make regular use of the resources at HEDC’ for producing teaching aids. That was just as well, since students ‘now came from school expecting to make use of technology in their work’. Computers became a significant part of that technology, and in 1986 Graham Webb joined the HEDC team; his ‘major responsibility’ was ‘to advise staff members on the educational uses of computers on campus’. Otago’s computing services centre also developed a team with expertise in computer-aided learning and in the 1990s HEDC’s audio-visual production section joined them as part of information technology services. HEDC continued to research and disseminate information on tertiary teaching, provide advice and run courses, notably for new academic staff; from 1996 staff could obtain a formal qualification – a postgraduate diploma in tertiary teaching – taught by the centre. The centre also supported Otago staff from other departments working on teaching-related research and new innovations. To help ‘enhance’ learning and teaching, the university offered special grants for research and innovation in teaching.

HEDC assisted with course evaluations, which gave students an opportunity to provide feedback on their teachers and courses. Staff could use them to identify weaknesses in their teaching which required work, or as evidence of their skills when seeking promotion. In an era of growing emphasis on quality assurance, they helped ‘measure’ courses in departments which were up for review. With a growing body of research from staff and postgraduate students on many aspects of higher education, plus a range of courses and support services for academics wanting to make their teaching more effective, Otago had travelled a long way from the days of Sale scoring papers at ‘minus 200’ and Gilray ‘dictating at a relentless pace’.

A class underway in the late 1980s or early 1990s in the Castle Lecture Theatres. The overhead transparency was a popular teaching tool for many years, later largely overtaken by Powerpoint digital slides. Unfortunately, the resolution of this old negative isn’t good enough to read what’s on the screen – if you can identify the class, lecturer or year, please get in touch! Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, University of Otago Photographic Unit archives, MS-4185/060, S17-550a.

Scientific women

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1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, botany, chemistry, home science, marine science, microbiology, physics, psychology, women, zoology

Winifred Betts, Otago’s first specialist botany lecturer. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Botany Department archives,  r.6461, S14-586a.

There’s been a fair bit of discussion recently about sexism in science. This has inspired me to write about some of the women academics who led the way for women in the sciences at Otago. Their path was not always easy, and for many decades the university was more willing to employ gifted women than to promote them, but they made important contributions to teaching and research and deserve better attention. Some have already appeared on this blog: marine biologist Betty Batham here; and Muriel Bell, Elizabeth Gregory and Marion Robinson all feature on this post about nutrition research. Today’s story, therefore, concentrates on some of Otago’s other women scientists.

Winifred (Winnie) Betts was Otago’s first botany lecturer, though it is telling that botany officially dated its beginning as an independent department from 1924, when her male successor, John Holloway, commenced as lecturer. Botany classes were taught from the university’s early years by the professor of natural science, later the professor of biology, but these men specialised in zoology rather than botany, and it was irksome having to teach both subjects to the growing student body. Recent zoology honours graduate Winifred Farnie was assistant lecturer in biology in 1917 and 1918, but in 1919, after some years of trying, biology professor William Benham managed to persuade the university council that it was time that botany had its own lecturer. Winnie Betts was just 25 years old when she commenced this new position at the beginning of 1920. Born in Moteuka, she was educated at Nelson College for Girls and the University of Otago, graduating BSc in 1916 and MSc in 1917. She then received a National Research Scholarship – one was awarded at each university each year. This provided her with an income of £100 a year along with lab expenses so she could carry out independent research. In 1919, at a lecture to an admittedly partisan audience in Nelson, distinguished botanist Leonard Cockayne described Betts as ‘the most brilliant woman scientist in New Zealand’. In December 1920 Winnie Betts married another brilliant Otago graduate, the mathematician Alexander Aitken. Aitken, whose studies were interrupted by war service (he was badly wounded at the Somme), was by then teaching at Otago Boys’ High School. This was an era when most women left paid employment when they married, so it is intriguing that Winnie Aitken continued working as botany lecturer for some years. That came to an end in December 1923, when the Aitkens moved to Scotland to further Alexander’s academic career (he eventually became professor of mathematics at the University of Edinburgh).

Several other women were appointed to the biological sciences between the wars; all had started out at Otago as outstanding students. Marion Fyfe became a zoology lecturer in 1921 and when Beryl Brewin joined her in 1936 women thereby accounted for two-thirds of the zoology academic staff! They remained to teach generations of Otago students: Fyfe retired in 1957 and ‘live wire’ Brewin in 1963. Both were by then senior lecturers and Fyfe, described as ‘the backbone’ of the zoology department, had acted as its head on some occasions. Ella Campbell became assistant lecturer in botany in 1937, leaving to become the first woman academic at Massey University in 1945. An expert on liverworts, she was made a Dame in 1997 for her contribution as ‘a pioneer in the field of university botanic research’. When Campbell left, Brenda Slade (later Brenda Shore) became assistant lecturer in botany; she had just finished a BSc in the department. She later took leave to complete a PhD at Cambridge in her specialist field of leaf development, then returned to Otago, eventually retiring as associate professor in 1982. Two other biology students of that generation returned to Otago after overseas study and research. One was the aforementioned Betty Batham, who returned with a Cambridge PhD in 1950 to become first director of the Portobello Marine Biology Station, newly taken over by the university. Another was Ann Wylie, recruited back to Otago’s botany department in 1961 to take responsibility for teaching in the rapidly-developing field of cytology and genetics. Like her colleague Brenda Shore, with whom she had first taught in the botany department in 1945 when lecturer John Holloway became ill, Wylie eventually rose to the status of associate professor, retiring in 1987. I have had the pleasure of interviewing Ann Wylie, who is still active and sharp-witted in her nineties. She recalls that women were well accepted in zoology and botany and she did not experience prejudice, though she also notes that women lecturers behaved as ‘honorary men’; it was they who had to adapt rather than the men. There was a strong sense of collegiality between women academics from various departments and they often socialised together.

Agnes Blackie, photographed around the 1960s, at the end of her long career as a physics lecturer. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, c/nE5302/11A, S16-521e.

The physical sciences weren’t so welcoming of women staff in this period. The school of mines and departments of geology, mathematics and chemistry remained resolutely male until later in the twentieth century. Indeed, the only woman academic in the physical sciences at Otago for many decades was Agnes Blackie in physics. She was appointed assistant lecturer in the department in 1919, eventually retiring as senior lecturer in 1958, though she continued teaching part-time for some years after that. The petite Blackie, who fell in love with physics as an Otago undergraduate, stood out in this largely male domain. Long-serving physics technician Stan Hughes, who started in the mid-1920s, recalled: ‘In the distance I saw this schoolgirl who later turned out to be Miss Agnes Blackie …. Agnes was very quiet with very thin features and my first impression was that a couple of mutton pies would do her the world of good’. In her early years, working with students sometimes older than herself (including returned servicemen), she had to endure considerable teasing, but was a gifted teacher who earned the affection and respect of generations of students, especially those who struggled with physics. She taught a range of students in addition to those specialising in physics, such as physiotherapy students learning about electricity and radiation, music students studying acoustics and home science students learning about household electricity and appliances, energy and calories, ventilation and humidity. Many a future doctor or dentist only made it through their compulsory physics course thanks to Blackie’s helpful teaching.

Not all of Otago’s pioneering women scientists were home-grown. Englishwomen Winifred Boys-Smith and Helen Rawson were the founding staff of the new home science school, whose courses commenced in 1911. Both had completed the natural science tripos at Cambridge but were unable to obtain degrees because they were women. Boys-Smith was Otago’s – and New Zealand’s – first female professor and Rawson succeeded her in the chair of home science. Otago chemistry professor James Black, by then in his seventies, had his doubts about these women’s scientific abilities. The first two home science degree students later recalled that when they progressed ‘from Professor Black’s Chemistry to take Applied Chemistry under Miss Rawson, they were informed in no indefinite words as to his grave doubts of Miss Rawson’s knowledge of things chemical. “A fine lassie, but is she sound on the soda-ammonia process? I’ll put it down on paper for her,” said the dear old man’. Rawson’s ‘brilliant career’ at Cambridge and London evidently counted for nothing to him. Home science did, to some extent, segregate capable women from the ‘pure’ science courses, but it also offered them opportunities. The degree students took advanced courses in chemistry, and many went on to become school teachers in the pure sciences as well as home economics. Some became highly-regarded researchers and academics, either overseas (Neige Todhunter is a good example) or in New Zealand (such as Elizabeth Gregory and Marion Robinson, mentioned above).

Helen Thomson (centre back) teaching a laboratory class on the chemistry of the household at the School of Home Science in 1936. Thomson was one of numerous women who made an academic career in science through the school. After completing undergraduate and master’s degrees there, she was appointed lecturer in 1931 and remained on staff for 30 years, taking leave for overseas research. She graduated with a PhD in textile chemistry from Leeds University in 1947. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Consumer and Applied Science records, 97-081/4, S16-521a.

Another English import was Betty Bernardelli, who arrived at Otago in 1948 and took charge of the psychology laboratory (then part of the philosophy department). She had qualifications from Oxford and Cambridge, and had been officer in charge of psychological testing in the vocational advice service of the Royal Air Force during the war. She came to New Zealand with her husband Harro Bernadelli, who became lecturer in the economics department; in 1961 they left Otago for posts at the University of Auckland. The appointment of Bernardelli, a married woman, represented progress; an earlier generation of women academics had been single on appointment and mostly resigned if they married (a notable Otago example was home science professor Helen Rawson, whose academic career ended on her marriage to geology professor Noel Benson in 1923). It would be many years, however, before most people welcomed the advent of married women on the academic staff. Margaret Loutit came from Australia to Otago in 1956, when her husband John Loutit was appointed lecturer in the microbiology department. Already armed with an MSc, she obtained part-time work as a botany demonstrator and then microbiology lecturer while working on a PhD. As the working mother of young children she experienced considerable criticism, often from other women (notably the wives of other academic staff). Her salary was mostly absorbed in paying for private childcare; there were no crèche facilities at that time. However, her hard work was rewarded with the completion of her PhD in 1966 and in the following year she became a full-time staff member. Margaret Loutit was a gifted teacher and productive researcher in soil and water microbiology; she also made important contributions to university administration. She was promoted to a personal chair in 1981. John Loutit had become a professor in 1970, so they had the then rare status of ‘professorial spouses’.

There were other scientific women who held academic posts in the medical school: noted researchers Marianne Bielschowsky and Barbara Heslop, for example. However, there isn’t room to do justice to their achievements here, so I’ll have to save those for another time …

Otago’s pioneering women scientists – some of whom ended their careers not so very long ago – achieved remarkable things in the face of considerable difficulties. In proving the capability of women in the academic world of science they made things a little easier for those who followed and I am delighted to be able to pay tribute to them here. Do you have any stories to share of women in science at Otago?

Our oldest building

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1860s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, Arana, geography, psychology

J.W. Allen took this photograph in the late 1860s from around where Marama Hall is today, on what was known as Tanna Hill. On the right in the middle distance is a circular garden, part of the original Botanic Garden on Albany St. On the left is the Cook family home (now Mellor House). The Leith, which is not visible, wound around the bottom of the hill. The university moved to this site in the late 1870s. Parts of Tanna Hill were levelled for building, notably the land where the Archway Theatres and Applied Sciences Building are now. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Album 68, S14-434b.

I’ve been on an intriguing mission to identify the oldest surviving building on the Dunedin campus. Assisting me were two architectural history experts – David Murray (Hocken Collections), keeper of the wonderful Built in Dunedin blog, and Michael Findlay (Department of Applied Sciences), who sparked the idea for this project and then helped me identify likely suspects. I’m most grateful to them, and also to Chris Scott of the city council archives, who helped with clues in old rates records.

When considering old University of Otago buildings, most people probably think first of the old stone buildings at the centre of the campus. When the university council decided to move operations from the original location in Princes Street, it commissioned two large buildings on its new site beside the Leith in North Dunedin. Work on the chemistry and anatomy building (now the geology building) was completed in 1878, and on the main building (now the registry) in 1879. Both were smaller than they are today, with extensions added in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The St David Street homes for four professors (now known as Scott/Shand House and Black/Sale House) were also completed in 1879.

As the university expanded, it began acquiring properties neighbouring its original block of land. Often these included old houses, which ranged from tiny cottages to substantial residences. Some were later demolished to make way for new buildings but others have survived, including a few which pre-date the geology building. Their original residents had no idea they would one day be living close to a university, let alone that their house would one day be part of it!

The east side of Mellor House, photographed by Ali Clarke, August 2014.

We are pretty certain that the honour of being the oldest building on campus belongs to Mellor House, one of the old Union Street houses now occupied by the psychology department. The house was originally built in 1862 for Thomas Calcutt, a printer who migrated from England to Otago in 1858. As well as continuing to work in the printing trade, Calcutt served as a court clerk and later became a valuer of land taken for public works. He probably picked up the latter job because of his experience as a land speculator, for his 1895 obituary notes that “he displayed much natural shrewdness in matters of business, and made many profitable speculations in landed property.” Early on – certainly by 1861 – he acquired all of the land in the block bounded by Clyde Street, Union Street, Leith Street and the river; there were no houses on the land at that stage. In March 1862 advertisements appeared in the Otago Daily Times for carpenters and painters for “a Dwelling House now building for Mr Thomas Calcutt, Pelichet Bay. Apply to the foreman on the Ground.” By October of that year, Thomas and Mary Calcutt were living in their new home, dubbed Leith Cottage, where Mary gave birth to their son Arthur.

Mellor House as it appears from Union Street. Photographed by Ali Clarke, August 2014.

Sadly, baby Arthur Calcutt died at just four months, but in January 1864 another child was born at Leith Cottage, this time to its new owners, George and Ann Cook. While the Calcutts’ stay in the house had been brief, the Cook family were to own it for eight decades. George Cook was an English solicitor who arrived in Otago late in 1860 and was admitted to the New Zealand bar in January 1861; intriguingly, his wife Ann and one of their children migrated a couple of years earlier, on the same ship as Thomas Calcutt. The final reference I have found to the name “Leith Cottage” dates from 1868, when Ann Cook advertised for a general servant. Perhaps this name was dropped as the house was extended: like many houses of the period it has clearly been enlarged from humbler beginnings.

The house at 93 Union Place, which dates from the early 20th century, was moved there from the site of the new Commerce Building. Photographed by Ali Clarke, August 2014.

By the time George Cook died in 1898, aged 82, he was Dunedin’s longest serving lawyer. He was a careful and conservative practitioner: “an upright, estimable lawyer of the old English school – a man who brought with him to the colony all the traditions and all the prejudices of the English bar, and who resented all innovations.” The Cooks lived in splendid isolation on their property until around 1902, when further houses were added to the block; presumably Ann Cook sold off some of the land after her husband died. Some of the houses built around that time also survive and are now occupied by the psychology department, including those at 99 Union Street (next to the Commerce Building) and 97 Union Street (Galton House). The charming two-storey house on the corner of Leith and Union streets was originally at 103 Union Street, but moved to its current location at the top of the hill in 1990 to make way for the new Commerce Building.

Galton House was built in the grounds of the Cook family home in the early years of the 20th century. Photographed by Ali Clarke, August 2014.

When Ann Cook died in 1907 she left the original family home to son John Alfred Cook. John Cook was another solicitor; indeed he practised together with his father for some time. Law ran in the family: another son, Reginald Cook, was a lawyer in Sydney, while daughter Clara Cook married lawyer Frederick Chapman, who became a well-known judge. Their brother George was a government engineer, while Spencer was a banker and Montague worked for Dalgetys. Later Cook generations also entered the law, and the name survives as part of legal firm Gallaway Cook Allan. John Cook died at his Union Street home in February 1945 at the ripe old age of 92 years and his wife Margaret died four months later.

At that time the university was on the lookout for houses suitable for student accommodation. The roll was on the rise, and would shoot up in 1946 as returned servicemen came to university. It purchased the Cook family home and named it Mellor House in honour of one of Otago’s most successful graduates, chemist Joseph Mellor. A blueprint drawn up for the university in 1945 reveals it as a substantial residence, with six bedrooms, a study and a bathroom upstairs. Downstairs were a drawing room, dining room, library, kitchen, scullery, pantry and bathroom, and there were a couple of outbuildings as well.

The growing university needed room for classrooms and offices as well as student bedrooms, and in 1946 Mellor House began its life as a university building with a dual purpose. Upstairs the bedrooms became an outlying part of Arana Hall. The “Mellor House boys” – a mixture of returned servicemen and young school leavers – had their meals at the main college but slept in the old Cook family bedrooms. Arana still has a delightful photograph of one of the residents dressed in some old Victorian woman’s clothing they discovered upstairs! Downstairs became the home of the newly established Department of Geography. Two rooms were knocked together to create a classroom and the pantry became a staff office. Tea on the verandah was a departmental tradition.

The mixed use of the building could be interesting at times. Saturday morning geography labs were often accompanied by the “Mellor House boys” singing in the shower, and fuses frequently blew due to residents plugging toasters into light sockets. As the geography department grew, it gradually expanded upstairs and into a prefab hut in the garden; the last Arana “boys” lived at Mellor House in the late 1950s. Late in 1964 geography moved to the newly built Library/Arts Building (since replaced with the ISB Building). Mellor House then became home, once again, to a newly established department: this time it was psychology.

The Department of Psychology now has a claim to one of the university’s most modern large buildings – the William James Building, completed in 2010 – and what is almost certainly its oldest building – Mellor House, completed in 1862. I wonder what colonial property developer Thomas Calcutt and the legal Cook family would think of the current use of their home!

 

The first four professors

Tags

1870s, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, chemistry, classics, English, geology, mathematics, philosophy, physics, psychology

The physically and intellectually imposing Professor George Sale, photographed around 1876. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Rolleston album 2. Reference PA1-q-197-11-2.

You’d think it would be pretty tricky to recruit four good candidates to be the inaugural teaching staff of a tiny institution, located as far as it was possible to get from Europe, in a town which was the centre of a colony only a couple of decades old. But Otago managed to secure the services of four outstanding men as its first professors. All were young and presumably attracted to the idea of shaping a new university in a lively new colony; they must have had a considerable taste for adventure.

The oldest, George Sale (1831-1922), was just 39 years old when appointed Professor of Classics in 1870, while the youngest, Duncan Macgregor (1843-1906), was only 27 on his appointment as Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy. Joining them on the foundation staff were John Shand (1834-1914), Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, and James Gow Black (1835-1914), Professor of Natural Science.

Sale, a Cambridge graduate, had already spent some years in New Zealand. He migrated in 1860, partly for health reasons, but probably also to escape the conventions of the life of an English gentleman. He worked on a Canterbury sheep run, was first editor of the Christchurch Press, joined the Otago goldrush as a miner, and then returned to Canterbury to become Provincial Treasurer; he later held various official posts on the West Coast goldfields. The illness of his father, a master at Rugby School, prompted his return to England in 1869; there he was selected over 61 other applicants for the Otago chair of classics.

Sale’s three professorial colleagues were all Scots of humble backgrounds whose academic ability had served them well; all had more conventional CVs than the colourful Sale. Black came from a poor Perthshire crofting family and started teaching at 14 years of age; he eventually obtained three degrees from the University of Edinburgh, including in 1869 a doctorate, an unusual and elite qualification in those days. Shand hailed from Morayshire, where his father was a farm steward. Capable in many fields, he excelled particularly at mathematics and obtained a master’s degree from the University of Aberdeen. After that he taught in various Scottish academies and also in the military mathematics department of the Royal Academy in Gosport, England. Macgregor was a mason’s son and another Aberdeen graduate; like Black he came from Perthshire. After completing his MA at Aberdeen, where he excelled in mental and moral philosophy, he graduated in medicine from the University of Edinburgh in 1870.

Fortunately all four men had broad academic interests, because they had to teach a variety of subjects in Otago’s early years. Sale was responsible for teaching English as well as Latin and Greek until the appointment of the first Professor of English, John Mainwaring Brown, in 1880. Shand taught both mathematics and physics (then termed natural philosophy) until 1886, when he was appointed to a newly-created chair of natural philosophy and Frederick Gibbons became Professor of Mathematics. As Professor of Natural Science, Black was responsible for teaching both chemistry and geology until 1874, when Frederick Hutton, newly appointed Provincial Geologist, became lecturer in geology and zoology, allowing Black to concentrate on chemistry. Macgregor’s subject, mental and moral philosophy (sometimes known as mental science) incorporated both philosophy and psychology.

Macgregor left the University of Otago to become national Inspector of Lunatic Asylums, Hospitals and Charitable Institutions in 1886. His Otago career of 15 years may seem long, but it paled next to those of his early colleagues. Sale retired in 1908, Black in 1911, and Shand was eventually forced to leave due to failing eyesight in 1913 after 42 years as an Otago professor. These four remarkable men not only shaped New Zealand’s first university, but also played an active part in the local community and were well-known citizens of Dunedin.

What did the students make of these men? Reminscences written by early students for the university’s jubilee help bring the professors to life. David Renfrew White, who later became Otago’s first Professor of Education, recalled that Macgregor was unconventional, had “no professorial airs or restraint,” and was much loved by his students. His lectures were very interesting and challenging: “there was no drudgery and wearisomeness about this class; the hour was all too short.” He once lit a cigar while supervising a written exam, and “one at least of the students thought that if he, too, were allowed to smoke he would do a better examination paper.”

Shand was “patient with the dullest student, and of a quiet, philosophic temperament. He looked with clear common-sense on men and things,” commented White. Violet Greig, another early student, remembered Shand’s “radiant smile and glorious white hair … I can see him now looking over his spectacles as he stands with that metre rule in his hand waiting for the students to assemble, and I can hear him now dictating our ‘expiriments for tu-marra’ …” The kindly Shand was a “born teacher,” commented Thomas Pearce: “who will ever forget his blackboard performances, his cancellations and eliminations and reductions from complexity to simplicity.”

Black was energetic and genial and “always doing kindnesses to someone” remembered Greig; he was a popular president of the university’s football association. His classes could be exciting and sometimes literally explosive. Greig could “still hear the thud of the rock sulphur on that table as the doctor held it high and threw it noisily down to impress upon his students that it was one form of sulphur.” Pearce  commented on his “ebullient nature” and original turn of phrase; “students flocked to his classes not to learn chemistry, but to feel the magic force of his originality.”

Sale was a highly respected scholar who was “a splendid guide” to anybody with an interest in classics, recalled 1890s student John Callan. Unfortunately many Otago students did not have an interest in, or gift for, Latin, which was a compulsory subject: “our knowledge of classics must have been a source of continual torture to the professor,” wrote John O’Shea. Callan commented that, if Sale struggled to teach adequate Latin to “the rest of us, he at least kept us in order, partly by his gift of crushing sarcasm, but more just by being what he was, a silent, massive man, full of unutterable possibilities.” He was a keen athlete, who preceded Black as president of that all-important football association.

1890s student John O’Shea sums it all up well. “I have heard it said by older students that when Sale, Shand, Black, and Macgregor taught the University the students felt that they were led by giants. I knew the first three in their later days, and I can believe the statement.”

 

New blood in the 1980s

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1980s, 1990s, computer science, dentistry, gender studies, Maori, medicine, psychology, women's studies

In the late 1980s, the powers that be decided it was time to inject a little new blood into the university – some new young scholars working in emerging fields. The general stability of the existing academic staff meant there were few opportunities to appoint new people and the increasing age of staff was a matter of concern. In 1988 the Academic Staffing Committee, which controlled all academic appointments, decided to appoint three “new blood” lecturers, inspired by an Oxbridge model. The posts would be funded from a special Development Fund rather than usual faculty budgets for a three year period. The committee invited the various faculties to propose areas of scholarship for the new blood posts. Priority was to be given to new areas of scholarship or areas seen to be of strategic importance, to the appointment of “women and any other groups under-represented on the academic staff” and to outstanding young scholars for whom there was no current post.

After a few weeks of campaigning and investigation, the three posts were awarded to the fields of artificial intelligence, Maori health and women’s studies. Others which came close to making the cut were bio-organic chemistry and family policy. Intriguingly, all of these fields had a strong interdisciplinary component. That was particularly the case for women’s studies, whose working party attracted support from staff in English, history, classics, Maori studies, German, theology, religious studies, law, education, drama, social and preventive medicine, surgery, psychology, physical education and consumer and applied science. As the proposal pointed out, Otago would soon be the only New Zealand university without a women’s studies programme, and risked losing students to other institutions, including a new extramural course from Massey.

Anna Smith, Otago’s first lecturer in women’s studies. From the University of Otago Newsletter, August 1989.

The three new lecturers were appointed in 1989. Anna Smith, a doctoral student in English at Canterbury and critical editor of Landfall, became Otago’s first lecturer in women’s studies. She established a Stage 2 paper in feminist theory and coordinated an interdisciplinary Stage 2 programme in women’s studies. The programme slowly built up and in 1994 it became possible to major in women’s studies for a BA. By then Smith had left (she now teaches English at Canterbury). Annabel Cooper, an Otago English PhD graduate who had been tutoring in women’s studies from the beginning, became a lecturer in women’s studies in 1993, together with American scholar Sarah Williams. The Otago programme may have been slow off the starting blocks, but it proved to have more staying power than others and is today the strongest in New Zealand. It gradually evolved from “women’s studies” into “gender studies”. After being part of various administrative structures, including the Department of English, the School of Liberal Arts and the Department of Anthropology, it now forms part of the Department of Sociology, Gender and Social Work.

The other new blood lecturers remain at Otago to this day, and both are now professors. John Broughton, of Ngati Kahungunu and Kai Tahu, became lecturer in Maori health in 1989. He was an Otago dental graduate who had been working in private practice, as well as teaching part time at the dental and medical schools for some years. He was also a well-known playwright and chair of Dunedin’s Te Araiteuru Marae. Thanks to funding from the National Heart Foundation, Otago was also able to appoint Paparangi Reid as a half-time lecturer in Maori Health at the Wellington School of Medicine in the same year (she now teaches at Auckland). Not all 1990s medical students shared the University of Otago’s growing concern for Maori health issues, especially when a dentist rather than a doctor was doing the teaching, but Broughton became a respected educator in the field. In dentistry, he developed an innovative and popular programme of clinics run by students for Maori communities, both in the Dunedin school and far afield. This proved significant in developing the university’s links with various iwi, several of which now have formal memoranda of understanding with Otago; it was also a highly signficant experience for the students. Thanks to his links with mana whenua, Broughton has been frequently called on to consult and advise on things Maori for the university, particularly before the Office of Maori Development was established in 2007. He has been a professor since 2012 and his inaugural professorial lecture, “A Bro-fessor in the Whare,” can be viewed on iTunesU.

John Broughton (right) with Greg Seymour, Dean of Dentistry (left) and John Ward, University of Otago Chancellor, at Waitangi after signing a Memorandum of Agreement with Ngati Hine Health in 2011. Photograph courtesy of John Broughton.

The new blood post in artificial intelligence went to Anthony Robins, a Canterbury psychology graduate who had recently completed a doctorate in cognitive science at the University of Sussex, where he studied computational models of categorical structure. His appointment meant Otago could expand into the rapidly emerging field of cognitive science, offering this as a MSc programme from 1990. Robins’ appointment was a joint one between the Departments of Computer Science and Psychology for his first three years; after that he was based in computer science. This was a real interdisciplinary project and the cognitive science course also had papers from philosophy, anatomy, anthropology and information science. It was New Zealand’s first foray into this field. Robins, who was promoted to professor in 2013, continues to teach and research in the field of cognitive science, where his particular interest is in neural networks as a tool for modeling aspects of memory and forgetting. But he also teaches introductory computer programming and has developed a special interest in researching computer science education. He has been involved in the wonderful Robocup and other robotics programmes which introduce school pupils to the exciting world of robots, helping recruit the next generation of programmers. His inaugural professorial lecture – “Teaching, Learning and the Music of Memory” – is available on iTunesU.

Anthony Robins teaching in the robotics lab in 2012 with Otago student Louis Lepper (left) and Philip Anderson of Kings’ High School (right). They are training for the Robocup soccer event. Photograph courtesy of Anthony Robins.

The three new lectureships were clearly very successful in bringing “new blood” to Otago and their impact has been long-lasting. They allowed Otago to catch up in the emerging fields of Maori health and women’s studies, and to become the New Zealand pioneer of cognitive science. Not least, they brought some fine young scholars to the university, with two of them remaining for many years to become leading researchers and teachers who are also notable for their community engagement. All credit to the Academic Staffing Committee of 1988!

50 years of psychology

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1880s, 1960s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, mental science, philosophy, psychology, technology

The Department of Psychology neuroscience lab in the 1980s. From the University of Otago Handbook for Intending Students – Science & Surveying, 1989.

One of the university’s significant milestones this year is the 50th anniversary of one of its largest departments, psychology. In 1964 Stephen Griew arrived from Bristol to become Otago’s first Professor of Psychology and in the following year, assisted by two lecturers, began teaching papers which would enable students to major in psychology for a BSc or BA degree and go on to postgraduate study.

Psychology had been taught at Otago for many years prior to the foundation of the department, but it was part of the philosophy programme. The roots of the discipline are reflected in one of its early names, experimental philosophy. At Otago it formed part of the subject known as mental science, or mental and moral philosophy. In 1882 the course in mental science covered three areas: psychology, ethics and logic. The psychology lectures examined “Outlines of the physiology of the nervous system; Instinct; the senses and the intellect; Abstraction, with outlines of the Realistic Controversy; Perception, with outlines of the chief ancient and modern theories.” Though courses in psychology expanded over the years, they remained part of the philosophy programme and it wasn’t possible to study psychology at an advanced level without majoring in philosophy. Students completing a science degree could complete a psychology paper without also studying philosophy, but had to do more laboratory work than arts majors, and had no options for more advanced study.

The introduction of the full degree programme for psychology in the 1960s reflected a growing demand for this field of study and about 90 students completed the first-year course – described in the calendar as “a synoptic introduction to the experimental study of behaviour” – in 1965. Otago was certainly not ahead of the times: Victoria, Canterbury and Auckland universities had all separated their philosophy and psychology departments in the 1950s. The department’s first PhD graduate, in 1968, was Michael Davison, who came to Otago from Bristol to study with Griew; he went on to a distinguished career at the University of Auckland. Another early PhD graduate was Geoff White, who had been one of those pioneering first-year students in 1965. After some years teaching at Victoria University of Wellington, he returned to Otago in 1985, becoming professor and head of department in 1988; his success in developing the research culture of the department resulted in his later appointment as the university’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research). His successor as DVC was another professor from the department, Harlene Hayne, who is now Otago’s Vice-Chancellor. The department takes pride in its ranking as New Zealand’s top academic unit for research, across all disciplines, achieved in the 2012 Performance-Based Research Fund assessment.

In 1986 the department set up a new first-year laboratory course using a new microcomputer network, developed using the staff’s DIY skills. This proved very popular and some of the experiments are still used in courses nearly thirty years later. By the mid-1990s there were over 1000 first-year students; fortunately there were also numerous PhD students who could serve as demonstrators. The rapidly growing department put a strain on resources, especially buildings. For many years it was scattered around various old houses and prefabs, and parts of the department are still there today. The Goddard Laboratories were purpose-built in 1989 to cater for the growing undergraduate classes. They are named after Professor Graham Goddard, the head of department who tragically drowned in a flash flood while tramping in 1987. In 2000 another new building meant the animal laboratories finally had adequate housing, rather than a leaky Nissen Hut. The William James Building, opened in 2012, provided a large purpose-built space with facilities for teaching, research and staff offices.

Do you have any memories to share from the early years of the Department of Psychology? Do you recall performing experiments using the 1980s computer network, or in the neuroscience lab (pictured above)?

Anyone for mental science?

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1910s, jubilee, Knox, mental science, philosophy, psychology, St Margaret's, war

Professor Dunlop and mental science students in 1919. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Album 89, S13-215b.

In 1919, as part of its jubilee celebrations, the university commissioned Charles Armstrong to photograph its buildings and people. This image comes from the wonderful album which resulted, now among the treasures held at the Hocken Collections. It features Professor Francis Dunlop and the mental science students. I can’t help thinking there should be another person in the front row – did somebody develop stage fright and run away at the last moment, perhaps?

Mental science (sometimes known as mental and moral philosophy) was a significant part of the university’s offerings for many decades. It combined two fields of study we now think of as distinctly different: philosophy and psychology. In 1919 the mental science course for beginning students included psychology and either ethics or logic (deductive and inductive). The advanced class included logic (“mainly viewed as the methodology of scientific enquiry”), psychology, and ethics (“in its full extent, treated both theoretically and historically”). There was also an honours class in the history of philosophy. Eventually psychology emerged from the shadow of philosophy and the arts faculty to become an independent department within the science faculty in 1964.

Dunlop, himself an Otago graduate, was Professor of Mental Science from 1913 until his death in 1931. Like his predecessor in the chair he was a Presbyterian minister; he completed his doctorate in Germany under Rudolf Eucken, a proponent of Lebensphilosophie, a form of idealism. Dunlop was famous for his enormous book collection and his steam-powered car.

An interesting feature of the class photograph is that several of the men are wearing prominent Returned Soldiers’ Association badges. There was a big jump in Otago student numbers in 1919 as men returned to, or began, their studies after the war. One of the returned servicemen in the class (second row from back, on the far right) is Hubert Ryburn. Ryburn returned to his Otago studies after serving in France, eventually completing a master’s degree in mathematics. He then went to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, finished off his training in theology in New York and returned to New Zealand as a Presbyterian minister. In 1931, while minister of St Andrew’s Church, Dunedin, he married Jocelyn Dunlop, the daughter of his former mental science professor. From 1941 to 1963 Hubert Ryburn was Master of Knox College, where he was renowned for being “firm but fair”. After his retirement he moved to St Margaret’s College, where Jocelyn Ryburn was Warden until 1974. She was a stalwart of many organisations and served as president of one of New Zealand’s most influential bodies, the Plunket Society. Hubert Ryburn’s most significant contribution to the University of Otago came through the University Council, which he sat on from 1946. From 1955 to 1970 he was the highly capable Chancellor of his alma mater.

Do you recognise any other students in this photograph? If so, please get in touch!