Massey News from Massey University I Issue 26 I October 2013 www.definingnz.com THE BIG Massey celebrates 50 its 2014 Jubilee THE ENGINE OF THE NEW NEW ZEALAND STARTERS CHRONICLES Timelines and images from Massey’s history. 4 The question of quicksilver Why is mercury a liquid? Einstein’s theory of 17 Origins: 1913 to 1927 general relativity. The idea of a North Island-based agricultural college. 6 More than academic As part of a 200-level Global Health paper, 18 Laying the foundations: 1927 to 1964 students travel to Alice Springs via Sydney, Foundation, depression, war and Queensland and the Northern Territory. rejuvenation. 8 To be a pilgrim 22 The rise of the multidisciplinary A social anthropologist investigates the university: 1964 to 1990 enduring appeal of the Himalayas for Growth, social turbulence and consolidation. seekers of all descriptions. 30 Becoming multicampus: 1990 to 1999 New Zealand’s national university. FEATURES 38 A university for a new millennium: 2000 to 2014 12 The way we were The engine of the new New Zealand. A new book charts the eventful life of CHAFF, 1934-2011, Massey’s former student Contents newspaper. 16 Keeping the presses rolling CHAFF may be gone, but its successor, the magazine MASSIVE, marches on. Cover image: A composite of the main building (now the Sir Website: www.definingnz.com Geoffrey Peren Building) in 1961 and more modern images. Editor: Malcolm Wood [email protected] The photograph being held up against the backdrop is itself Writers: Kelly Burns, Bonnie Etherington, Bryan Gibson, Michele Hollis, Paul Mulrooney, Sidah Russell, Sarah Wilcox, a composite of dignitaries gathered at the official opening Malcolm Wood, Sonia Yoshioka Braid of Massey Agricultural College in 1928 and the main building Design: Grant Bunyan during its pre-creeper-clad days in the early 1930s. Proofreading: Foolproof Subscription enquiries: [email protected] Copyright: You are generally welcome to reproduce material provided you first gain permission from the editor Many thanks to: Michael Belgrave, Louis Changuion, Mason definingnz is published quarterly by Massey Durie, Heather Kavan, Jeannette McKinnon, Lucy Marsden, University, Private Bag 11-222, Palmerston North 4442, William Muirhead, John Redmayne, Kerry Taylor, Margaret New Zealand. Tennant, Bryan Walpert, Ian Watson Students at work in the Massey library during the 1940s. BRIEF HISTORIES DEPARTMENTS 20 Beyond the walls 10 Campus wide Massey pioneers distance learning. A round-up of news from Massey’s three campuses and from further afield. 26 Green fields A new kind of campus appears on 40 Mixed media Auckland’s North Shore. Religion, media analysis, a memoir, war history, and poetry: Destiny: The Life 28 Creating the creative campus and Times of a Self-Made Apostle, White Wellington joins the Massey fold. Vanishing, The Lie that Settles, The Battles – of Monte Cassino: The Campaign and its 31 Maori at Massey Controversies, A Man Runs into a Woman. A history of partnership. 34 The good stewards Massey has been led by one principal and five vice-chancellors during its 87-year history. Each has left an imprint. 36 Women at Massey Once rare, but not for a while. 37 International ties Massey has been an internationally connected university since the 1940s. 39 Leaning into it Supreme Award winners at the 2013 New Zealand Food Awards, Vice-Chancellor Steve Maharey talks about from left to right: Toscane De Rouvroy, Thibaut de Roulhac his history with Massey and how he sees the (TOMeTTe), Minister of Trade Hon. Tim Groser, Jennifer Zea, university’s future. Thomas Dietz, Ken Leeming (TOMeTTe), Sarita Males (The Foodbowl), Vice-Chancellor Steve Maharey. www.definingnz.com You’ve picked up the magazine, now visit the website or download the app. | Massey University | October 2013 | definingnz | 1 First word Vice-Chancellor Steve Maharey writes. Many of us were the first in our families to attend university; we knew we were lucky. Education let the sons and daughters of labourers and factory workers become engineers, veterinarians, accountants and, as it turned out, politicians. t is 1964. The Catholic Church the first in our families to attend university; Its history attests to its qualities. When condemns the oral contraceptive we knew we were lucky. Education let the baby boom came to an end in the pill; Goldfinger debuts in cinemas; the sons and daughters of labourers and 1980s, it would have been easy for the Bob Dylan releases his perfectly factory workers become engineers, university to settle for diminished timed album, The Times They Are veterinarians, accountants and, as it turned expectations. It didn’t. Instead, in 1992 a-Changin’; the first of the baby out, politicians. My time at Massey as Massey opened a new campus amidst boomers hit university age; and, student and later lecturer was formative. the paddocks and market gardens of not uncoincidentally, out in It gave me my passport to the world. Albany. And when, in the late 1990s, provincial New Zealand Massey University That is why, in the end, I chose to come the opportunity arose to merge with comes into being This makes 2014 the back to Massey as its Vice-Chancellor: Wellington Polytechnic, Massey responded university’s 50th Jubilee and its second because I believe in the power of universities with alacrity and energy, establishing a foundation – the first foundation being to be change-makers, and because I believe Wellington campus in 1999. the establishment of Massey Agricultural that Massey, as the most engaged, energetic These three physical campuses com- College in 1927 as a degree-granting and outward-looking of New Zealand’s bined with the fourth ‘virtual’ campus of institution within the University of New universities, is uniquely well qualified to 16,000-strong extramural students, gave Zealand. make a difference. Massey the greatest national geographical The 1960s was a good decade for reach of any New Zealand university – and universities. In Britain the number doubled, it has become increasingly multinational with new arrivals picking up the nickname as well. In 2008 it began offering its ‘plate glass universities’ after their Bachelor in Food Technology (Hons) architecture. In New Zealand we went programme through Singapore Polytech- from four to six. nic; and in 2010 it was engaged to deliver These were universities imbued with a Postgraduate Diploma in Arts (Defence the spirit of the age: young, ambitious and and Strategic Studies) at the Royal Brunei charged with a belief in the transformational Armed Forces Defence Academy, and by value of what they were doing. the World Bank to deliver two public And what they were doing was health-related Master degrees, one for transformational. The baby boomers were medical doctors, the other for veterinarians, the first generation to think of access to to students throughout much of Asia. tertiary education as a right. When, as a This is the recipe for staying young: leading-edge baby boomer, I came to never stand still. Massey may be turning Massey in the 1970s, I remember the Served at the opening of foodHQ was Scoop, a non-fat 50 next year, but it is a very sprightly 50. ‘icecream’ with the velvety, rich mouthfeel of the real absolute passion for learning among my thing. The secret: a foaming technique discovered by a Massey has developed into an classmates and teachers. Many of us were fourth-year student in 2012. extraordinary national asset. The question 2 | definingnz | October 2013 | Massey University now is, how do we use it to New Zealand’s Massey is deeply engaged in each of milk formula. We are the eighth largest best advantage? these challenges and in many others. I producer of milk in the world, with the The idea of setting national goals and think, for example, of creating citizens capacity to provide dairy products for then harnessing the educational and who will thrive in the 21st century, of 165 million people according to the research skills harboured by universities turning scientific innovation into International Dairy Federation. to achieve them is not new. In the United commercial technology, and of – in the Yet in total, New Zealand’s annual States, such drives led to the atom bomb age of the user experience – realising the agrifood exports, at around NZ$20 and the Apollo moon landing. value embedded in good design. billion, and the compounded annual In South Korea, a commitment to And New Zealand’s moonshot? As it growth rate of our agrifood industry, at export-led manufacturing took the per happens, I do have a candidate in mind. around 4 percent, are a fraction of Nestlé’s. capita annual income from around US$80 Food. Or, more specifically, agrifood – the We need to do better. A lot better. in the early 1960s to nearly that of New farm-gate-to-plate integrated production We just might. The Government’s Zealand today. Will South Korea – the and marketing of sophisticated, high- Business Growth Agenda calls for a land of Hyundai, Samsung and LG – added-value food products. In good times trebling in the real value of food exports overtake us? If the growth rate it has and in bad, everyone has to eat. There is in the next 12 years. In July, Science and managed in the past decade is maintained, money to be made. In 2010, Nestlé, the Innovation Minister Steven Joyce launched it certainly will. And here is a statistic world’s largest food company, earned the second stage of an enterprise called that tells you the secret of its success: at US$105 billion – a 6.2 percent increase FoodHQ, Food Innovation New Zealand. 53 percent, South Korea has the highest on 2009 – of which US$32 billion was As part of the enterprise, six partners proportion of graduates among 25- to profit.