9 July 1984 Lincoln College life - a feature article for NZ Times

Into the frosty, clear air they spill off the red city buses and fan out across the campus to lectures, laboratories, studies, library desks, computer terminals ; men, women, New Zealanders, Chinese, Africans, Pakistanis ...... checked bush shirts, quilted parkas and back packs predominate.

This is Lincoln College Monday 8.30 a.m. ; mid-term, mid-winter, readying itself for another working week.

Across the frosted lawns students, with the mix the same as those from the buses, also head for work.

Two from a bus walk towards a lecture room together, chatting about the day ahead ; one is a student, the other a lecturer.

New Zealand and foreign faces, men and women, students and staff, looking alike in the way they dress typifies Lincoln College 1984.

One senior academic said :"These days the only way we tell students from staff is that the men on the staff wear ties."

All this adds up to an ambience based on the size of an academic community that still allows people to know each other.

This year Lincoln College has about 1800 students - about one quarter of them women – with about one tenth from overseas.

Lincoln College has long lived down the notion of being only for the sons of Canterbury farmers, tramping around the campus in gumboots and overalls.

Students come from all over New Zealand, and about one third of them are from the North Island.

One hundred and fifty academic staff to look after these students means smaller classes and lots of personal contact.

There would be few students not known to their lecturers by their first names.

Common concern for both students and staff at Lincoln is in making the best use of the land for farming and for horticulture.

There is now much greater awareness of making the best use of New Zealand land resources.

There is more concern about protection and management of the environment.

Much of this awareness and concern has been spearheaded by thinking and teaching at Lincoln College.

And the college also lays very heavy emphasis on the increasing importance of horticulture in this country's primary industry.

Horticultural research is being spurred on by development of a 28 ha property, known as Lincoln Springs, about five kilometres from the campus.

And horticulture has extended into the recreational and amenity use of land, and the development of landscape architecture.

Diplomas in horticultural management, landscape technology, and parks and recreation are offered by the college.

This year about 1100 students are taking courses leading to degrees in agriculture, agricultural science, commerce - in both agriculture, and valuation and property management - horticulture and horticultural science.

There are also the degrees of Master of Science in biochemistry ,and in Resource Management, Master of Engineering, and Doctor of Philosophy.

Diplomas in agriculture, agricultural science, farm management, rural secretarial practice and wool technology are also offered.

Lincoln College is a constituent college of the University of Canterbury, with a campus some 25 km south of Christchurch.

Officially Lincoln College was given the name in 1961, but Lincoln College had been known by that name for many years before that.

Lincoln College started as the School of Agriculture of Canterbury College in 1878 and became the third agricultural college in the then British Empire.

Eighteen years later the school became the Canterbury Agricultural College of the University of New Zealand.

Some stone gateposts on the college farms still carry the carved initials C.A.C.

One hundred and sixty three hectares of land was purchased in 1877 for a college farm, and the first building was Ivey Hall, in classic Italianate design, later named for the first director of the school, Mr W.E. Ivey.

Over the years more land was purchased and today the campus is dominated by the eight-storey Registry block, which also houses the George Forbes Memorial Library.

Across the campus road are the Hilgendorf and Burns buildings, main teaching and research blocks of the college.

High rise blocks on the Canterbury Plains seem unusual, but came from the need for more teaching accommodation in the university expansion of the 1960s.

Theory and practice are closely linked at Lincoln College, and all students must have experience of working in the field.

Some work for up to two years on farms, in orchards or in research institutions.

Seven farms are staffed and managed by the college, with a dairy farm, a sheep breeding unit, a mixed cropping farm and a research farm neighbouring the campus.

Two experimental farms, one 15 km from the college on thin stony soils subject to summer drought, and one more than 100 km away, on steep, low-fertility hill country, allows research into the economics and management of developing such land.

There is also an irrigation farm, some 50 km from the college. Grassland farming is emphasised, and many different types of permanent and temporary pastures are grown.

The widely-different soil types on these farms provides for teaching pasture establishment and management.

Students further widen their experience by field trips to Banks Peninsula farms, tussock lands and irrigated farms of the plains.

Research is very important at Lincoln College.

On campus are the New Zealand Agricultural Engineering Institute, the Agricultural Economics Research Unit, and the Tussock Grasslands and Mountain Lands Institute.

Researchers at the college co-operate closely with nearby establishments of the DSIR botany, crop research and grasslands divisions, MAF, and the Wool Research Organisation.

Extension activities are co-ordinated by the Rural Development and Extension Centre at the college, and all departments are involved.

Each year the college runs a farmers' conference - this year for the first time held off-campus at Gore in Southland - and field days.

Throughout the year the extension centre organises short courses on many facets of rural life, from woman's role to computer workshops.

The library, of more than 69,000 volumes and seats for 278 readers, has expanded once since being established in 1960, and presently plans to expand again.

The intention is to move the library into a restructured Ivey Hall, presently virtually empty because the building is seen as an earthquake risk.

Ivey Hall facade will be retained, while the interior will be demolished and then reconstructed.

Suggestions some years back that Ivey Hall might be demolished as having outlived usefulness brought protests from many.

Lincoln College graduates see Ivey Hall as the centre of the college, and many lived, played, worked and studied in the building.

Recently a visitor to the college on leave from his job overseas made a special pilgrimage just to stand in his old room once more.

This is the heart of Lincoln College : the feeling of belonging and relating to all that goes on.

Director of the extension centre Des Mcsweeney says that Lincoln College has a quality of concern for and interest in the individual student.

"That has been a feature of Lincoln since the foundation in 1878, and staff are determined to keep it that way."

But life at Lincoln College is not all study and work ; recreation is important, too.

Playing fields that see the high standard of college Rugby, a year round swimming pool and modern recreation centre keep students and staff physically up to the mark.

Seldom is there not someone jogging around the campus or on nearby lanes.

Snowcapped peaks, seemingly just beyond the college farm boundaries in the cold, crisp air, are a reminder that good skiing is not much more than an hour's drive away.

And at the end of the day on Friday when the snow is right they are tying their skis on car roofs and heading for the slopes.

Further information from James Homes, Lincoln College, Canterbury