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University of Otago 1869-2019

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University of Otago 1869-2019

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The ‘latest’ health science – nursing

11 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by Ali Clarke in health sciences

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1920s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, Christchurch, home science, medicine, mental health, nursing, public health, Wellington, women's studies

Matrons conference

Some of New Zealand’s leading nurses of the 1920s, when the university attempted to set up a nursing diploma. They were photographed at the first conference of hospital matrons, held at Wellington Hospital in 1927. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, S.P. Andrew Ltd collection, reference 1/1-018313-F.

The University of Otago is perhaps most famous for its health science courses, but many people are unaware of its contributions to the largest of the health professions: nursing. There have been many twists and turns in the path to nursing education at Otago, which this blog post attempts to map.

Nurse training in this country started out with ad hoc programmes in various hospitals; it was an apprentice-style system, with nurses learning on the job and providing the bulk of the hospital workforce as they did so. In 1901 New Zealand introduced the registration of nurses. From that date general nurses could become registered after completing the required years of training and passing a state examination. Separate registration was later added for obstetric, psychiatric and psychopaedic nurses, along with another roll for nurses who had completed shorter training programmes, with greater restrictions on their practice (known initially as nursing aids, then community nurses, then enrolled nurses, then nurse assistants, then enrolled nurses again). The hospital-based education of nurses slowly improved, with more time dedicated to teaching from dedicated nurse tutors, but there was no higher education available for those tutors. Advancing education programmes became a priority for those who wished to increase the professional standing of nurses and improve the care they offered.

When Otago’s home science school started out in the 1910s, nurses took notice. In 1912 leading nurse Hester Maclean, who edited the nursing journal Kai Tiaki, published there the response of home science professor Winifred Boys-Smith to Maclean’s enquiries about the potential of the school’s new courses for women who intended to enter the nursing profession. Boys-Smith suggested that the diploma course would be ‘incalculably useful to a girl who wanted to become a really efficient hospital nurse, for it would enable her to obtain a sound and much more advanced knowledge of physiology, sanitary science and household economics, than she could afford the time to gain, while she was training at a hospital’. The courses might also benefit nurses already trained who wished to improve their qualifications: Boys-Smith hoped to attract ‘quite a number of the more intelligent nurses, who wish to make themselves especially efficient for the higher posts which offer’. It is unclear whether or not any nurses or potential nurses enrolled at the home science school at this point, but the courses there did become the core of a new venture a decade later.

In 1922, in response to various concerns about the state of nursing education, and advocacy from the Trained Nurses’ Association, the University of Otago council began planning a five-year nursing diploma. In consultation with the home science and medical schools, it approved a curriculum consisting of two years of university courses, two years of ‘ward work and general hospital training’, and a final year of specialised nursing education. An attractive feature of this programme was that it used existing courses at the home science school and hospital and would not require the council to employ any additional academic staff until the fifth year. Meanwhile, the government’s department of health was keen to see an advanced course for already-trained nurses, and suggested the fifth year of the proposed Otago diploma could become that course; it offered to send two senior nurses overseas to be educated as lecturers for the programme. Janet Moore headed to London and Mary Lambie to Toronto in 1925, with the fifth year/advanced programme scheduled to commence in 1926; meanwhile several women started the first years of the programme through the home science school.

Unfortunately, the scheme then fell apart due to a series of misunderstandings between the university and the health department. Neither had explicitly stated who was to pay the salaries of the specialist nursing lecturers. The university council assumed the health department’s involvement and support meant they would stump up the cash required, while the health department assumed the university would pay its own staff. Those council members who had only supported the project on the basis it would cost the university nothing stubbornly refused to commit any funding, even after the nurses’ association offered to pay a contribution. The health department proved equally stubborn over the matter. Admittedly the university was strapped for cash, but it is sad that a programme that could have changed the course of New Zealand nursing education collapsed over the cost of two salaries. Moore and Lambie approached Victoria College (later Victoria University of Wellington), where they got a more sympathetic response to a proposal for a short diploma course for already-registered nurses. The government proved more willing to offer funding for this course, which commenced in 1928 at Wellington Hospital, jointly supervised by Victoria, the health department and the hospital boards association. For 50 years the School of Advanced Nursing Studies, as it became known, was to provide New Zealand’s only advanced education for nurses. The first two students in Otago’s collapsed programme, who had already completed the first 4 years, went on to complete the new Wellington course. One of them, Winifred Fraser, applied to Otago for a diploma of nursing, becoming the one and only person awarded that qualification. Most of the other women partway through their course switched to home science.

After this unfortunate episode, the University of Otago kept out of nursing education for many decades. Meanwhile, dissatisfaction with New Zealand nursing education remained, with high attrition rates, a failure to keep up with new developments and a continuing focus on student nurses as a labour force rather than learners. In 1970 the government approached the World Health Organisation, which appointed Helen Carpenter (director of the University of Toronto’s nursing school) to review the current system. Her report (An improved system of nursing education for New Zealand) led to major reforms. The education of registered nurses shifted from the health sector to the tertiary education sector. Commencing at Wellington and Christchurch in 1973, technical institutes around the country established nursing schools, and registered nurse programmes at hospitals were gradually phased out (though hospitals continued to train community/enrolled nurses). The technical institutes also later developed advanced diploma courses in various clinical fields, taking over the role of the School of Advanced Nursing Studies.

One of Carpenter’s recommendations was that a proportion of nurses should be educated to a still higher level, through universities. She suggested that Otago’s preventive and social medicine department, along with the education departments at Victoria, Massey and Canterbury, could start by appointing a nurse to their academic staff, with a view to building up nursing research and later courses. Otago’s medical faculty proved largely supportive of the idea, but over the next decade various proposed schemes came to nothing. Meanwhile, Victoria and Massey began offering a few BA papers in nursing studies. Proposals from Otago included a diploma in nursing administration, and later a basic-level bachelor’s degree, but neither made it past the University Grants Committee. In 1979, faced with various proposals for new nursing courses, the UGC appointed a special committee on nursing education, which recommended turning down Otago and Massey’s proposals for basic degrees, and another from Auckland for a post-basic bachelor’s degree. Victoria, it suggested, could develop its existing programme into a full nursing degree, complete with clinical education, while Massey should continue its existing courses. Victoria approached Otago’s Wellington clinical school to see if they might cooperate in an undergraduate nursing degree. That scheme got quite advanced but eventually fell through due to the government’s unwillingness to supply funding. Victoria’s nursing programme went into abeyance for a while in the early 1980s, but it later built up a postgraduate school. There were many differing opinions about university-level nursing education but it was, generally, finance that prevented many a dreamed-of programme from getting going. In Dunedin, any sense of urgency for an undergraduate programme that would lead to nursing registration ended once the Otago Polytechnic opened its nursing school in 1984.

Of course, nurses did enrol in a variety of other University of Otago courses. A good example is nursing academic Beverley Burrell, who trained as a nurse at Dunedin Hospital in the 1970s. After developing an interest in education through the playcentre movement, she enrolled in education courses at the university, going on to complete a BA and MA in women’s studies. There was a close synergy between her nursing experience and her university study.

2012

Robyn Beach leading a class in the ‘nursing – high acuity’ paper in the Centre for Postgraduate Nursing Studies premises in Oxford Terrace, Christchurch, 2012. Image courtesy of the Centre for Postgraduate Nursing Studies.

In the end, it was on the Christchurch campus that Otago finally got a successful programme specifically for nurses off the ground. The medical school there offered a wide range of postgraduate courses, undertaken by a variety of health professionals, including nurses; for instance, many nurses completed public health and mental health postgrad qualifications. With the government injecting money into ongoing clinical training for healthcare workers, and increasing demand for nursing-specific courses, in 1997 the Centre for Postgraduate Nursing Studies opened. Initially hosted by Christchurch’s Department of Public Health and General Practice, it grew quickly and soon became an independent centre. Christchurch nurses had long wanted a local alternative to the postgraduate nursing programmes offered by Massey and Victoria universities, but flexible teaching methods, including block courses and distance education, meant the new Christchurch courses soon had students from all over the South Island, and a few from further afield. Starting out with papers on nursing practice and mental health nursing practice, the centre soon developed a range of papers, some generic and others in specialist fields of practice. Students could complete a postgraduate diploma or master’s degree in health sciences, endorsed in nursing, or various shorter certificate courses in specialist fields; the centre also offered PhDs. From 2006 a new master of health sciences option allowed an alternative to the papers plus thesis requirement: students could now complete papers and a ‘clinically applied research practicum’ for an endorsement in ‘nursing – clinical’. This was an important development because it met the clinically-oriented master’s degree requirement for those who applied to the New Zealand Nursing Council for registration as a nurse practitioner, a new level of practice which included prescribing rights.

NURS424

Beverley Burrell teaching a course for the ‘nursing – leadership and management’ paper in 2011. The class was held in the Philatelic Society rooms, one of many temporary premises used after the usual venues were closed due to earthquake damage. Image courtesy of the Centre for Postgraduate Nursing Studies.

As the nursing centre grew, so did its research. Staff attracted considerable research funding, including from the Health Research Council, and also benefited from Tertiary Education Commission funding targeted at developing research capability in nursing and other health professions which had not done well under the PBRF system. In 2008 Lisa Whitehead received the university’s early career award for distinction in research, recognising her achievements in research on the management of long-term conditions (a field of particular interest for the nursing centre). As its research capability grew, the centre attracted more PhD students from both New Zealand and overseas; by 2012 it had 10 PhD candidates enrolled among its 350 students and had the largest postgraduate programme on the Christchurch campus.

Temp clinical teaching at Addington  Raceway

The Addington Raceway was another stand-in venue for nursing courses following the Christchurch earthquakes. Here it is set up ready for clinical teaching for the ‘health assessment and advanced nursing practice’ paper in 2011. Image courtesy of the Centre for Postgraduate Nursing Studies.

The nursing centre has never been short of initiative and has introduced a variety of new courses to meet needs in the health sector. In 2016 it enrolled the first students in perhaps its most exciting venture to date: a new master of nursing science degree, which allows people with a bachelor’s degree in any discipline to complete the professional education required for registration as a nurse in a concentrated two-year programme. While this type of programme has been available in North America for decades and in Australia for several years, it is the first qualification of its type in New Zealand and required new regulations from the Nursing Council. Finally, some 90 years after the first ill-starred attempt, the University of Otago is offering a course which leads to the registration of nurses!

Nourishing science

01 Monday Sep 2014

Posted by Ali Clarke in health sciences, sciences

≈ 1 Comment

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1880s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, consumer and applied sciences, food, food science, home science, human nutrition, medicine, physiology, public health, Wellington, women

One of Otago's best known nutrition researchers, Dr Muriel Bell. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Margaret Madill papers, r.6653, S14-589c.

One of Otago’s best known nutrition researchers, Dr Muriel Bell. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Margaret Madill papers, r.6653, S14-589c.

Otago’s Department of Human Nutrition is the largest such university department in the Southern Hemisphere, and boasts an enviable international reputation. Its staff are often called on for their expertise in this country and beyond – two of the fifteen members of the World Health Organization’s Nutrition Guidance Expert Advisory Group are Otago human nutrition professors, Jim Mann and Murray Skeaff. Otago’s history in nutrition research goes back over a century, long predating the creation of a specialist department. It involves the story of some remarkable people, including several pioneering women scientists.

It could be argued that the university’s first nutrition researcher was Frederic Truby King, appointed Lecturer on Mental Diseases at the medical school in 1889 to complement his role as Superintendent of Seacliff Lunatic Asylum. Among many other things, he was interested in the role of diet in mental health. This later evolved into his famous work on infant nutrition and the founding of the Plunket Society, which promoted infant health and welfare.

The arrival of John Malcolm as Otago’s first Professor of Physiology (previously combined with anatomy) in 1905 marked a new step in research into nutrition at the university. Malcolm, a Scot, researched the nutritional values of various New Zealand foods, most notably local fish. His introduction of vitamin assays to this country led to practical advice on diets. This benefited animals as well as humans, with the diet he devised ensuring the survival of the dogs on Admiral Byrd’s 1928 Antarctic expedition.

One of Malcolm’s students, Muriel Bell, became a well-known nutritionist and long-serving member of the Department of Physiology. She graduated in medicine in 1922, then lectured in physiology while completing a doctorate on goitre. After some years working overseas, she returned to the department in 1935. As her entry in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography notes, her “forte was applied research into subjects of practical everyday importance, such as the vitamin content of New Zealand fruit, vegetables, fish and cereals.” She was a public health campaigner as well as a research scientist, and the Department of Health employed her part-time as a nutritionist for many years. She provided advice on war and post-war food rationing, and famously published a recipe for rosehip syrup to provide 1940s youngsters with adequate Vitamin C.

These three significant nutrition researchers were part of the Otago Medical School, but in 1911 another location for nutrition research arrived with the establishment of Otago’s School of Home Science. Food was a key topic within the home science syllabus, though this involved, in addition to nutrition, the study of food preparation and science, including the development of new food products. These were the origins of today’s two separate departments, human nutrition and food science. A Master of Home Science degree, introduced in 1926, brought a new focus on research to the school, with nutrition by far the most popular topic for dissertations.

Elizabeth Gregory, one of the University of Otago's best-known experts on nutrition. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, reference 1/2-C-024999-F.

Elizabeth Gregory, another well-known Otago nutrition expert. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, reference 1/2-C-024999-F.

One early master’s graduate of the Home Science School, Elizabeth Gregory, went on to further postgraduate study in nutrition. She completed a PhD – A study of fat metabolism, with special reference to nutrition on diets devoid of fat – at University College, London, before returning to Otago as lecturer in chemistry and nutrition in 1932. She was Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Home Science from 1941 to 1961. Like her physiology colleague Muriel Bell, with whom she often consulted, Gregory was frequently looked to for her expertise in public health issues relating to nutrition.

Among the 1940s home science students taught by Gregory was a woman who became a world-leading nutrition researcher: Marion Robinson. After completing a master’s degree at Otago she went on to further study at Cambridge. In 1958 she returned to Otago’s Faculty of Home Science, where she worked for the next thirty years. In a new laboratory set up in an old shed, Robinson studied the metabolism of various trace elements, becoming famous for her work on selenium. Meanwhile, Robinson also developed the teaching programme in human nutrition further, and it became available as a subject for BSc, including an honours programme, in the 1970s, as well as remaining a significant part of the home science degree.

The arrival of Jim Mann from Oxford as the new Professor of Human Nutrition in 1987 marked a new phase of nutrition teaching and research. In particular, it increased the links with the health sciences, for Mann is a medical doctor who was also appointed professor in the Department of Medicine and clinical endocrinologist for the health board. Human nutrition soon split out from its longstanding home in home science (which had by then become the Faculty of Consumer and Applied Sciences) and became an autonomous department within the Faculty of Science.

Research in the department also branched out from the previous work on micronutrients to new work on macronutrients and chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer. With changes in society, over-nutrition had joined under-nutrition as a major concern. Of course, under-nutrition remained a big problem in the developing world, and as the department grew the 1996 appointment of Rosalind Gibson brought in new international expertise in the study of micronutrients, especially zinc and iron deficiency.

After World War II rationing was over, the only future health professionals to take nutrition very seriously were those studying home science in preparation for their postgraduate training as dietitians. More recently, that has changed, with nutrition widely recognised as highly significant for human health and included more extensively as part of health science programmes. And research is no longer confined to the Department of Human Nutrition, with some health science departments – Otago’s Department of Public Health in Wellington for instance – active in research into nutrition and health. In true interdisciplinary fashion, the university’s Edgar Diabetes and Obesity Research Centre brings together researchers from the departments of anatomy, biochemistry, medicine (in both Dunedin and Wellington), public health (Wellington), social and preventive medicine and human nutrition.

Do you have any stories to share from Otago’s long history of nutrition research? Any suggestions as to what Muriel Bell is investigating in the wonderful photograph taken in her laboratory? Some of that equipment looks intriguing!

 

 

 

 

Otago beyond Otago

03 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by Ali Clarke in commerce, health sciences, humanities, university administration

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1920s, 1930s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, Auckland, Christchurch, clinical education, executive programme, Invercargill, medicine, public health, radiation therapy, teacher education, university extension, Wellington

In the late twentieth century changing government education policies allowed universities to become very entrepreneurial and expand into the territories of other institutions. Massey University opened a new campus in Albany, not far from the University of Auckland, in 1993 and merged with Wellington Polytechnic, not far from Victoria University of Wellington, in 1999. Otago’s first expansion into other territories came decades earlier, when New Zealand’s universities were under much stricter central control and direct competition was discouraged. The expansion resulted from a desire to provide improved clinical education for senior medical students, at a time when Otago had New Zealand’s only medical school.

In 1923 the undergraduate medical degree was expanded from five years to six, with the last year to concentrate entirely on clinical work. Finding sufficient clinical experience in Dunedin for the lengthened course proved difficult. Dunedin was New Zealand’s largest urban centre when the medical school began teaching in 1875, but by the 1920s Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch were all home to larger populations. The medical school began sending some of its sixth-year students to hospitals in the other main centres and in 1938 these were formally established as the Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch Branch Faculties of the Otago Faculty of Medicine. The Auckland Branch closed in 1972, as the first students of the new University of Auckland Medical School reached senior level (the Auckland course began in 1968).

An aerial view of Wellington Hospital in 1971, soon before its Branch Faculty of the Otago School of Medicine became a full Clinical School. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, negatives of the Evening Post newspaper, reference EP/1971/0946-F.

An aerial view of Wellington Hospital in 1971, soon before its Branch Faculty of the Otago School of Medicine became a full Clinical School. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, negatives of the Evening Post newspaper, reference EP/1971/0946-F.

Meanwhile, big changes were afoot in Wellington and Christchurch. A major 1968 review of the Otago Medical School, undertaken by Professor Ronald Christie (Medical Dean at McGill University, Montreal), recommended big changes to the Otago programme. Noting the inadequate experience then available in Dunedin, Christie advised that, unless the medical school was to be downsized, it needed to expand its Christchurch or Wellington facilities into full clinical schools. After considerable political negotiation (with considerable resistance from advocates for the alternative of the University of Canterbury or Victoria University of Wellington opening their own medical schools) both Christchurch and Wellington became full clinical schools of the University of Otago, in 1971 and 1973 respectively. After the first three years of education, medical classes were divided into three groups, destined to spend the final three years of their education in either Dunedin, Christchurch or Wellington.

Since the 1970s the Christchurch and Wellington campuses, originally known as the Christchurch/Wellington Clinical Schools, have had name changes which reflect their expansion beyond the teaching of undergraduate medical students into other courses, and their significant roles in research and postgraduate education. In 1984 they were renamed the Christchurch/Wellington Schools of Medicine and in 2007 the University of Otago, Christchurch/Wellington. The Wellington campus now has nine academic departments, including radiation therapy, for which it is the sole national provider of undergraduate and postgraduate education. Its Department of Public Health also provides an undergraduate Certificate in Health Promotion by distance education. Wellington researchers, especially public health professors Philippa Howden-Chapman and Michael Baker, frequently appear in the national news. The Christchurch campus today has eleven academic departments, together with a Centre for Postgraduate Nursing Studies and Maori Indigenous Health Unit. Its postgraduate students have outnumbered its undergraduate medical students since the late 1980s.

The University of Otago’s activities beyond Dunedin have not been confined to the health sciences. In the late 1990s it moved into the competitive Auckland education market, offering an executive MBA and opening its Auckland Centre. That centre evolved into an information and liaison facility for Otago in the north, but still offers some Summer School papers and postgraduate distance courses. Closer to home, the university has run numerous courses around Otago and Southland over the years as part of the former Department of University Extension. Its adult education programme was very active in Invercargill and the Faculty of Commerce, among others, also offered various distance papers there for its degrees. The university opened an administrative centre in Invercargill in the 1970s, located in the Southland Polytechnic grounds – a sign of the cooperation between the two institutions in that period. The merger with the Dunedin College of Education in 2007 brought a new relationship between the University of Otago and Invercargill, because the college also had a Southland campus. The university now offers various teacher education programmes in Invercargill, including a degree specialising in primary bilingual education.

When people think of the University of Otago they often think of its iconic Dunedin campus, but it is clearly much more than that! Do you have any stories to share of the northern, and southern, campuses?

Experts on the radio

10 Sunday Nov 2013

Posted by Ali Clarke in health sciences, humanities, sciences, university administration

≈ 1 Comment

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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.

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.

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!

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