Building for the arts

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1960s, art history, classics, economics, education, English, geography, history, languages, music, philosophy, politics, religion, teacher education, theology

The new Arts Building, photographed around 1970 by Arthur Campbell. The open area at the northern end was later built in to create more teaching spaces. Image courtesy of Arthur Campbell.

“We hope to give the people of Dunedin an arts building they can be proud of,” commented vice-chancellor Arthur Beacham in 1964. Fifty years later, that building is listed for replacement as part of the university’s 15-year building development plan. A new arts building – indeed a whole new humanities precinct – is planned, with construction scheduled to commence late in 2019. It seems timely, then, to look back to the beginnings of the original Arts Building.

Beacham made his 1964 comment as he welcomed the news that the government had granted approval for the University of Otago to obtain sketch plans for a new building to house some of the Faculty of Arts. This was a period of strong central government control over university development. The national University Grants Committee juggled requests for new buildings from the various institutions and made recommendations, which were then approved and funded by the government.

Otago arts student numbers were growing steadily, having doubled to reach nearly 1000 over a decade; they were predicted – fairly accurately as it turned out – to double again by the early 1980s. “Students are being taught in every basement, attic and old house we can bring into use,” noted Beacham. The English department was based in Cameron House, a grand old house which would later make way for Unicol; it also shared space in Lower Studholme, a neighbouring house, with the geography and education departments. Education, one of the largest university departments, also used Marama Hall, while geography had space in Mellor House. Political science and history occupied St Anne’s, yet another old house, once part of Studholme Hall’s accommodation, which would be demolished to create the Unicol site. Classics and modern languages had their home in the old professorial houses, while music, economics and philosophy were in the houses at 403, 411 and 421 Castle Street. Some classes took place in the revealingly named “arts hut”.

A new library was under construction and would open in 1965. Plans were for this to house some of the arts departments – political science, English and geography – until the library expanded to fill the whole building. The new Arts Building would supply teaching space and offices for most of the remaining arts departments. Its site, which had been set aside for a proposed building by the university council as early as 1960, expanded the campus in a new direction.

The site of the new Arts Building is marked ‘Phase I’ in this plan from the 1964 Design Report. The Student Union building is under construction at front left, while in this photo work on the library is yet to commence. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Angus Ross papers, MS-1050/014.

The new building was designed by J.O. Aimers of old Dunedin architectural firm Mason and Wales. His design report of 1964 noted that the long narrow building of six floors would allow for future developments nearby while providing well for “Staff Studies, Seminar Rooms and Research Rooms requiring good daylighting and aspect”. Larger lecture rooms would take up the ground floor space: “This avoids problems in vertical circulation.” Seminar rooms for smaller classes and tutorials were located at the centre portion of each floor, meaning staff offices were in “quiet cul-de-sacs which are desirable in a Faculty of Arts.” Those “cul-de-sacs” would not always be as quiet as the architect anticipated. Ninian Smart, a distinguished religious studies scholar who visited Otago in 1971, recalled “the former dean of arts, reprimanded by the registrar for playing cricket on the matted corridors of the new arts building” (please tell me if you know who that was!). The long corridors would prove a temptation to cricketers of later generations as well – I recall corridor cricket taking place in the history department early in the 21st century.

Building, noted the Otago Daily Times, was “dogged  by Government delays at each stage of planning,” but in 1966 the university received the good news that cabinet had approved a tender from Dunedin firm Mitchell Brothers Ltd for construction of the new building. The total cost, when equipped, would be around £550,000. Occupation was scheduled for 1969, but in September 1968 the builders made an “all-out effort” over two weeks to complete two of the larger ground floor lecture theatres so they could be used by the Dunedin Teachers College. The college’s buildings were destroyed by a large fire on 3 September 1968 and the university – then a separate institution – offered this, along with some other accommodation, as “rescue aid.”

The Minister of Education, Arthur Kinsella, formally opened the Arts Building on 5 March 1969. He noted that the building “was a particularly fine one. The planning had been done economically, and he felt it was good value for money.” These comments were presumably a reaction to the criticism of Prof Eric Herd, dean of the arts faculty, who informed him that the building was “already too small …. Surely it is less expensive in the long run to design a building which will last for 20 years instead of three.” In 1972 the government approved preliminary planning of another larger “arts-library block” – the future Hocken/Richardson Building – which would house several arts departments, allowing others to expand within the 1969 Arts Building.

People sometimes refer to the Arts Building as the Burns Building, as its larger teaching areas are known as the Burns lecture theatres. I was asked recently if these are named after Reverend Thomas Burns, the spiritual leader of the Otago colony and first chancellor of the university, or his nephew Robbie Burns, the poet. I haven’t managed to find the answer yet, but either – or both! – would be appropriate for a building which is now home to the Department of English and the Robert Burns Fellow as well as the Department of Theology and Religion. Others who call the Arts Building home at present are the Departments of Politics, Classics, Languages and Cultures, History and Art History, and the administrative staff of the Division of Humanities.

Like all parts of the university, the Arts Building has seen many interesting people come and go through its history. Though few of its current occupants seem to regret its planned future replacement, it does hold many memories. Do you have any to share?

Beginnings of te reo Maori

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1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, languages, Maori, teacher education, university extension

Tarewai Wesley, standing on the right, was probably the university’s first te reo Maori tutor. This photograph was taken by the Otago Daily Times in 1948 at Otakou Marae, during the celebrations marking the centenary of Bishop Selwyn’s first visit to Otakou. The official party also included (left to right): George Karetai, Margaret and Thomas Bragg (of Stewart Island) and Bishop William Fitchett. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, S14-184.

Kia ora koutou! In honour of Te Wiki o te Reo Maori – Maori language week – this post takes a look back at the beginnings of te reo Maori at the University of Otago. It is perhaps unsurprising, in view of the distribution of the Maori population, that Otago was the last New Zealand university to establish courses in Maori studies. It wasn’t until 1981 that a limited number of Otago students could take an introductory Stage I course in Maori language, taught by linguist Ray Harlow. After Godfrey Pohatu was appointed in 1986 a full programme in Maori studies gradually developed, proving very popular.

But there is an interesting and little known pre-history to the development of undergraduate Maori language courses at Otago. The first courses in te reo began more than twenty years earlier, through the Department of University Extension, which offered community programmes designed to reach out to the general adult population, particularly the many people who had not received any higher education. The Otago extension department’s annual report for 1957 noted: “For the first time a course was offered in the Maori language; this was well attended by members of the local Maori community.” Fifty-one people, two-thirds of them women, enrolled for the 12-class course. The tutor was Mr H. Wesley. This was almost certainly Harold Tarewai Wesley, a respected kaumatua of the Kai Tahu community at Otakou. He was renowned as a native speaker of Maori in a community where the language seemed to be dying.

After this successful beginning, the university extension department continued to offer evening courses in te reo Maori. Mr Rua Bristowe, a public servant whose iwi links were to Ngati Porou, took over as class tutor in 1958, and was himself succeeded by Mr Te P. Tawhai in 1960. As the 1961 prospectus made clear, the classes had a strong oral focus: “The aim of the course is to equip a student with a framework on which to build a speaking use of the language.” Enrolments in the late 1950s and early 1960s were not as impressive as in that first 1957 class, but varied between 10 and 30 people per year.

It appears that there were no Maori evening classes in 1963. Perhaps there was no teacher available that year, because in 1964 they resumed under a new tutor, Reverend J.N.A. Smith. Jack Smith was the minister of Kaikorai Presbyterian Church, but had previously served for over ten years in various North Island stations of the Presbyterian Maori Mission, where he presumably developed some fluency in te reo Maori. The extension department was responsible for coordinating adult education throughout Otago and Southland, and their report for 1964 also notes what may have been their first course in te reo Maori beyond Dunedin: 11 people enrolled in a language course at Balclutha, where the tutor was Mrs Kaye O’Connell.

As the Maori renaissance gathered momentum through the 1960s, demand for language classes was clearly increasing. In 1967, 45 people enrolled for the Dunedin class, 29 in Invercargill, 24 in Oamaru, and 11 in the small settlement of Otematata. Tutoring was taken over by some of the permanent lecturing staff of the Department of University Extension, Alexander Skinner and Pieter de Bres. De Bres was a Dutchman who had recently completed an anthropology thesis at the University of Auckland on Maori and religion, while Skinner was a linguist (he took leave one year to lecture on African languages at the University of California). Technology became increasingly important: “tape recordings will be used to improve spoken Maori,” noted the 1966 prospectus. Textbooks used in the late 1960s included Lessons in the Maori Language by W.H. Wills and Te Rangatahi 1 and 2.

As more people completed a first course in te reo, the department began offering level 2 and level 3 classes. In 1971 they introduced an “extension certificate,” which provided a formal qualification to those who passed an examination after three years of classes. The first six people successfully completed their certificates in 1973. The certificate course boosted enrolments, though, as ever, many people did not move past a first year of introductory language classes. The mid-1970s saw a return to a native speaker of te reo Maori as tutor in Dunedin. This was thanks to the Dunedin Teachers College, which was ahead of the university in offering Maori language courses to its students. Muru Walters of Te Rarawa became lecturer in Maori at the college in 1974, and the Department of University Extension employed him as a tutor for their Maori evening classes. Walters was a qualified teacher with expertise in Maori arts and crafts (he taught in the teachers college art department before taking on the Maori language role). He had also gained fame as a Maori All Black; he later became an Anglican priest and is now Bishop of Te Upoko o te Ika. Another 1970s tutor was Reverend Jim Irwin, Dean of Maori and Polynesian Studies at the Presbyterian Theological Hall, Knox College. English-born Irwin had worked for many years in the Maori Mission and was fluent in te reo Maori.

Enrolment forms for the occasional year have survived in the archives of the Department of University Extension to provide a little insight into the Maori evening class students. The earliest, for 1967, only give names, but those reveal that quite a few of those enrolling were Maori, particularly in the classes outside Dunedin (of course people of Maori descent did not necessarily have identifiably Maori names). The 1975 enrolment forms for Dunedin also include occupations. These varied from typist and mother to boilermaker and journalist. Quite a number worked in the civil service or “helping” professions – police officer, nurse aide, pharmacist, librarian, teacher, university lecturer. But the largest group by far were students, who accounted for 26 of the 48 enrolments. Some gave details of their studies – two were divinity students, one was a dental student and three were student teachers. But the rest were simply “students”, presumably at university. The failure of the university to provide undergraduate classes in te reo Maori had forced them to enrol in the extension department’s evening classes.

Do you have any memories to share of the Department of University Extension’s classes in te reo Maori? I’d love to hear more about them!

 

 

Otago beyond Otago

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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.

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?