17 June 1994 Past, Present and Future All Important in Education at Lincoln

Education is a very special activity in that it has past, present and future parts to it, all of which have to be carefully balanced when devising, planning and presenting programmes.

Achieving a responsible balance has been a task Lincoln has faced up to squarely since becoming a full and autonomous university in 1990.

After more than 100 years of intimate involvement with agricultural education, what was Lincoln's role to be in the environment of the 1990s with New Zealand's economy having expanded to encompass a whole raft of new export earning enterprises far removed from the farm gate?

What the University has done is to recognise the new elements in the Kiwi economic, social and cultural mix and provide programmes appropriate to what is important from the past, what is essential for the present and what it sees to be vital for the future.

Lincoln's Professor of Farm Management, Tony Bywater, puts it this way in relation to his own department:

"Maintaining contacts and relationships within the agricultural sector will continue to be the Farm Management Department's primary objective and teaching responsibility, even though our student numbers in this area have fallen.

"We cannot afford to fulfil this traditional role only. If we are to maintain our credibility inside Lincoln as well as outside, we have to be active in areas which are central to the new Lincoln's concerns. We believe there are three such areas, each only a short step from our traditional concerns and each drawing on our traditional strengths - agribusiness, natural resource management and international rural development".

Looking at the wider University context, the "new Lincoln's concerns" are identified in its Mission Statement as Commerce and Management, Primary Production and Natural Resources, Science and Engineering, and Social Science. Some are just a "short step", as Professor Bywater puts it, from Lincoln's traditional concerns  -  for example agriculture and horticulture  are covered by "Primary Production and Natural Resources" and "Science", while others have involved broader steps but on related roads.

The University is now focused very much on land and natural resource based disciplines in general. Indeed another of Lincoln's Mission Goals is "to become pre-eminent in natural resources teaching and research in Aotearoa/New Zealand and to be a leader in these fields internationally".

The emphasis on natural resources is to be seen, for example, in the change of name of Lincoln's Engineering Department from Agricultural Engineering to Natural Resources Engineering, the offering of a degree in Resource Studies (BBS) and the offering of degrees such as the Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science and the Bachelor of Science in Conservation and Ecology.

The breadth of courses now available at Lincoln is epitomised in the Commerce area with a choice of five different majors within the Bachelor of Commerce and Management degree (Accounting; Applied Computing; Business and Marketing; Economics; and Financial Management) and seven within the Bachelor of Commerce degree (Valuation/Property Management; Farm Management; Horticultural Management; Tourism; Transport; Forestry; and Hotel & Institutional Management).

Future directions? A Bachelor of Social Science degree to be offered from next year will clearly express the University's commitment to the social sciences and a Bachelor of Maori Studies degree, also in the offing, will be an extension of Lincoln's already strong commitment (expressed in its Mission Goals) to recognising the Treaty of Waitangi and the status of the takata whenua.

A policy of "internationalisation" will also play a strong part in Lincoln's future. Already overseas students make up about 15 percent of the University's roll and over 40 different countries are represented on the campus. Lincoln believes its students must be prepared for life in a global environment and that tomorrow's graduates will be seeking work in an increasingly "borderless" job market.

Past, present and future ... Lincoln University recognises the importance of all three elements in its approach to education.

Ian Collins, Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand.