Veterinary Education Turns 50

MasseyThe magazine for alumni and friends of Massey University | Issue 30 | May 2013 Veterinary education turns 50 THE ENGINE www.definingnz.com OF THE NEW NEW ZEALAND | Massey University | January 2013 | MASSEY | 1 Massey May 2013 SPECIAL FEATURES RESEARCH 12 50 years of veterinary 18 Calls of the wild education Masterate student Jonathan Cope has Contents A timeline showing the storied history of been in China studying the vocalisations veterinary education at Massey, plus an of the enchanting golden snub-nosed interview with senior lecturer Liz Norman. monkey. 29 New Zealand in 2050 21 Life under pressure In the first of an ongoing series looking at Did life have its origins in the deep the nation’s future, we talk to Professor sea? Doctoral student Chris Lepper is Martin Hazelton about the perils of working on finding out. prediction, Professor Paul Spoonley about New Zealand’s changing demography, 22 Fields of gold Associate Professor David Tripe about Chris Anderson intends to use plants banking, and Dr Chris Wilkins about illicit to extract gold from Indonesian mine drug use. tailings. 24 Origins Computational biologist Associate Professor Murray Cox has come to startling conclusions about the early settlers of the island of Madagascar. Website: definingnz.com Editor: Malcolm Wood [email protected] Writers: Kelly Burns, Josie Brennan, Bonnie Etherington, Bryan Gibson, Michele Hollis, Jennifer Little, Paul Mulrooney, Andrea O’Neil, Bevan Rapson, Jessica Sutton, Sidah Russell, Sarah Massey is published by Massey University, Wilcox, Malcolm Wood, Sonia Yoshioka Braid, Redmer Yska Private Bag 11-222, Palmerston North 4442, Thanks to: Jeannette McKinnon New Zealand. Design: Grant Bunyan Proofreading: Foolproof Subscription enquiries: [email protected] Copyright: You are generally welcome to reproduce material provided you first gain permission from the editor. 2 | MASSEY | May 2013 | Massey University ALUMNI PROFILE DEPARTMENTS 25 In the beginning 4 Campus wide In 2012 Timor-Leste celebrated its 10th A round-up of news from Massey’s three anniversary as a nation. Massey alumnus campuses – and from further afield. Aurélio Guterres, who heads the impoverished country’s sole university, 41 Mixed media faces a mammoth task. Stories and reviews, featuring Shelter from the Storm: The Story of New Zealand’s Backcountry Huts, Your Unselfish Kindness: Robin Hyde’s Autobiographical Writings, Dinner at Rose’s, Great Kiwi Firsts, Dogfight: The Battle of Britain, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome M.E.: Symptoms, Diagnosis, Management and the work of Bryce Galloway, author of the fanzine Incredibly Hot Sex with Hideous People. 51 Alumini notes and news All about the Massey alumni community. definingnz.com You’ve picked up the magazine, now visit the website or download the app. | Massey University | May 2013 | MASSEY | 1 First word Vice-Chancellor Steve Maharey writes. The jubilee is also a good time to think about how far the veterinary profession has come and where it is heading. e don’t know led to Massey Agricultural College – it stalwarts of the Massey revues. The when the was declared a university a year later – multitalented satirist, cartoonist and first veter- being chosen over the University of Otago writer Tom Scott began his career as a inarian arrived in New Zealand, but we as the site of New Zealand’s first working vet student (before being gently advised may know how the first one – a member veterinary teaching facility. In the 50 that his talents might be better employed of the Clare family – met his end. In 1843 years since, veterinary science at Massey in other realms). Some members of the he was felled by a kick from a horse he has gone from strength to strength. The Hokowhitu community may remember was landing in the Taranaki surf. He student roll has grown, new advanced the infamous 1984 hoax in which they would have been missed. Colonial New degrees and specialisations have been were invited to bring dog and cat faecal Zealand was powered, fed and paid for offered, and veterinary education at samples to the vet clinic – some of the by animals: horses as transport; cattle Massey has achieved an international vet clinic staff certainly do. Even in for beef; cows for milk; and sheep for reputation. Massey is one of a select few today’s more buttoned-down times that both mutton and the wool that was New universities outside North America to spirit lives on. The Barely There vet Zealand’s principal export. hold American Veterinary Medical calendar instituted in 2006, showing New Zealand, as the saying goes, lived Association accreditation for its veterinary tastefully unclad students in rural on the sheep’s back, and it carried on degree, and many of its veterinary alumni surroundings, has become an institution, doing so right up until the 1950s, its – people like United States-based equine with the proceeds going towards fun and exports measured in wool bales and lamb academics, surgeon Professor Wayne philanthropy. carcasses. McIlwraith and virologist James What happens to these young people In some ways, we have hardly changed. Maclachlan – are regarded as pioneers after they leave Massey? All sorts of Overwhelmingly urban though we are, within their fields. things. Massey’s veterinarian alumni agricultural products, particularly those Ahead lies a $75 million expansion and have become cabinet ministers (Labour’s derived from pastoral farming, still account refurbishment, which will enable another Peter Hodgson), CEOs (Chris Kelly of for most of our overseas income. The 180 students to join the roll. Landcorp), entrepreneurs (Sarah Kennedy sheep’s back has become the cow’s udder. The vet school also brought something of Healtheries), distinguished scientists We are that strangest of creatures, an special to Massey’s DNA. Taught in a (too many to mention) and authors, both advanced Western nation whose economic pressure-cooker environment and exposed fiction (Danielle Hawkins’s recent debut standing is partly determined by the to life in all its gloriously messy organic novel Dinner at Rose’s has charmed world price of milk solids. reality, the students established a work- reviewers) and non-fiction ( such as Cock In 1963, it was that connection between hard, play-hard reputation. In the ’60s and Bull Stories by Blenheim vets Peter agriculture and veterinary practice that and ’70s, vet students were some of the Jerram and Peter Anderson). 2 | MASSEY | May 2013 | Massey University There is a reason why reality TV so keeps our shores safe from introduced often features vets: they really do have pests, predators and diseases, or in treating better work stories. And, as the attendees individual animals, as happens at Massey’s at this year’s July Jubilee Dinner here in Wildbase facility. Palmerston North are sure to discover, Or they may choose to work in the new they also tell them better. space that has opened up at the intersection The jubilee is also a good time to think of human and animal health, for when about how far the veterinary profession you know that of the 1415 known human has come and where it is heading. pathogens, 62 percent arose in animals, Scanning through the class photographs the division between the two makes little over the years is revealing. The first intake sense. in 1964: 30 earnest-looking, clean-shaven This ‘One-Health’ philosophy is the young men sporting woollen jerseys and reason why Massey is now at work in ties, and just two young women. A class Asia, in partnership with the World Bank, from 1975: 40-or-so young men with wild educating veterinary and medical hair and staunchly folded arms, not a tie professionals, creating the first line of to be seen, and this time a handful of defence against the next worldwide women. A graduating class from 2010: pandemic. In an act of extraordinary philanthropy, beneath the tumble of thrown mortarboards, All of which is not to diminish the Palmerston North couple Kenneth and the mass of faces is almost entirely made importance of the veterinary profession Elizabeth Powell have left more than up of young women. (The turnover year to New Zealand’s agricultural prosperity. $1.2 million to the Massey University Foundation. when women outnumbered men in the The Government’s Economic Growth The two decided several years ago classes was 1984.) Agenda calls for a near trebling of the that they wanted upon their deaths to establish a fund to support the study of According to the Companion Animal Council, technology in engineering and health. Mr Powell, an engineer and specialist in collectively New Zealanders spend upwards of aircraft maintenance, said at the time $1.5 billion on their pets annually. that as technology and health had been central to their lives they wanted to give young enthusiasts in their home Massey maintains a tradition of turning real value of agri-food exports, from $20 city "an extra edge". out graduates who have a passion for billion to $58 billion. If this is to happen, Mrs Powell was a registered nurse, working in large animal veterinary enlisting the veterinary profession in the who trained at Wellington Hospital and practices; however, unlike the members endeavour will be essential. completed her training as a midwife of the class of ’64, most of these more Partly this has to do with animal welfare, at Palmerston North Hospital, where recently qualified vets will not see their as a matter of both moral obligation and she worked as well as at the former futures as tied to farming. of economic self-interest. Well-cared-for Rostrata Maternity Home in the city. She died in October 2006, aged 96. Perhaps they will work in companion animals are, by and large, more likely to Mr Powell, a World War II veteran who animal practices, looking after the 1.4 be more productive, and the people we served in the Pacific as an instrument million-or-so pet cats, 700,000 dogs and want to buy our premium products – those fitter with the Royal New Zealand Air assorted birds and reptiles that enrich grass-fed cuts of meat, that gourmet ice Force, died in February this year, aged and console our lives.

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