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Geo-News

Professor Jane Soons,honorary doctorate

On 2 July 2009, the honorary degree of Doctorof Science was conferred on Emeritus ProfessorJane Soons by the vice-chancellor of the Univer-sity of Glasgow. This year marks the centenaryof the formal establishment of Geography as asubject taught and researched at the Universityof Glasgow.Jane was one of the first female PhDgraduates in Geography at Glasgow, her 1958thesis being entitled The Geomorphology of theOchil Hills. After appointment as a lecturer inGeography at the University of Canterbury in1960, she was appointed to a Chair in 1971,becoming the first female professor at that insti-tution. She retired in 1993.

Professor Soons signing the book of doctoralgraduands

The oration, given by Professor Trevor Hoey,a PhD graduate of the University of Canter-bury, said that ‘Jane Soons’ approach was, andremains, one that is based on careful fieldobservation and interpretation of evidence.

Using these skills, Jane has made major contri-butions to the understanding of landscapehistory in New Zealand – the evolution of thatcountry’s landscape, sitting as it does at thejunction of major tectonic plates, is now rou-tinely used as a test of modern models of land-scape development. The work of Jane, herstudents and colleagues, has been fundamentalin introducing geoscientists worldwide to oneof their main natural laboratories, and also incorrecting some of their misconceptions trans-ferred in error from less dynamic localities’.

Professor Soons has served the disciplinewidely, notably as President of the Interna-tional Union for Quaternary Research from1982 to 1987. In 1988, she was awarded theDavid Livingstone Centenary Medal for South-ern Hemisphere Research by the AmericanGeographical Society. In 1994, she received theSilver Medal of the Royal Society of NewZealand, followed in 2001 by the DistinguishedNew Zealand Geographer Medal from theNew Zealand Geographical Society.

Professor Soons has been a leader and inspi-rational figure for generations of students, col-leagues and sabbatical visitors to New Zealand.The oration ended with the words: ‘With refer-ence to the Ochil Hills of central Scotland, tothe upper Rakaia valley, to the Cass basin andto other areas in the South Island of NewZealand, it can be said,“That we know as muchas we do is a tribute to Jane Soons” ’.

Jim HansomDepartment of Geographical and

Earth SciencesUniversity of Glasgow

Tertiary teaching nationalaward winners

Geography continues its success in the nationaltertiary teaching awards, which are given eachyear ‘for sustained excellence’ to up to 10people across the university, polytechnic andprivate sectors. In 2005, Regina Scheyvensof the School of People, Environment andPlanning and Massey University was the firstwinner in the discipline, followed in 2006 by

New Zealand Geographer (2009) 65, 229–233

© 2009 The AuthorsJournal compilation © 2009 The New Zealand Geographical Society

doi: 10.1111/j.1745-7939.2009.01166.x

Juliana Mansvelt of the same school andWarwick Murray of the School of Geography,Environment and Earth Sciences at VictoriaUniversity of Wellington. The two most recentwinners are Sean Weaver, also of Victoria’sSchool of Geography, Environment and EarthSciences, in 2008, and Eric Pawson, of theDepartment of Geography at the Universityof Canterbury, in 2009.

Sean has had a dual career in education andenvironmental management for the last 20years and is the cornerstone of Victoria’sEnvironmental Studies undergraduate major.His practice enriches his teaching and histeaching enriches his work as an environmen-tal practitioner. He describes his students as‘my favourite colleagues’. He believes that80% of good teaching is encouragement, fos-tering students’ confidence in their own abili-ties to make a difference. He tries to coachstudents to use information to design solutionsto problems that they already see, rather thanmerely to fill them up with facts and concepts.Ultimately, Sean says, ‘I only teach one thingreally: the world is interconnected. I consis-tently invite students to find ways to discoverand expand their passion and then press thisinto a professional form capable of taking intothe workforce’.

Sean Weaver

The awards ceremony is held each year inParliament. When Eric was presented with hisaward in July 2009, he described how much hehad enjoyed a teaching career of more than 30years as a ‘co-learning adventure with genera-tions of students and some remarkably resilient

colleagues’. Like Sean, he has a student-centredview of education as a process of ‘drawing out’rather than ‘filling up’, so that his preoccupa-tion in teaching is ‘not with what people learn,or how much information they retain, it is withhow they learn, how they think, how ourencounter might help them to make more senseof their own world’. He tries many differentways of attaining this, from the ongoingCanterbury experiment with ‘integrated’ 100level curriculum in which physical and humangeographers teach with each other, to morerecent engagements with problem-based andservice learning.

Eric Pawson on the beach with 100 level students

National teaching award winners from acrossthe sectors belong to the Ako AotearoaAcademy of Tertiary Teaching Excellence. AkoAotearoa is the National Centre for TertiaryTeaching Excellence, and the Academy is acommunity of practice that exists to shareideas, innovation and best practice. Teachingprofiles of all awardees are available on theAko website (http://akoaotearoa.ac.nz), andin its annual booklet, Supporting Excellence inTertiary Education.

Warwick MurraySchool of Geography, Environment and

Earth SciencesVictoria University of Wellington

Obituaries

Bill Packard, OAM (1925–2009)Bill Packard died in Canberra on 11 March2009, aged 84. His life was divided between his

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New Zealand homeland and the UK until age35. In 1961, he became foundation warden ofBruce Hall, a co-educational hall of residenceat the Australian National University (ANU).This position he held for the next 25 years, aswell as being part-time lecturer in biogeogra-phy at ANU. Bill became a well-known identityin Canberra, his legacy being reflected in thehundreds of students he mentored. There is aPackard wing at Bruce Hall, a cottage called‘Packard’s’ at the ANU’s coastal field station,Kioloa, and a Packard prize in third-year geog-raphy. In 1987, he was awarded the Order ofAustralia ‘for service to the ANU communityparticularly as Warden of Bruce Hall’.

Bill was one of a group of teacher trainees,who towards the end of World War II, attendedChristchurch Teachers College, and alsostudied at Canterbury University College(CUC). With the Southern Alps as a backdrop,he became a highly competent mountaineerand field worker. He completed his Mastersthesis on the Lake Coleridge catchment as ajunior lecturer in geography at Canterbury, andwas then awarded a Rhodes Scholarship toOxford University, which he took up in 1948.There, both his academic and outdoor prowesswere recognized, and early in 1950, before com-pleting his studies, he was invited to join theTilman Expedition to the Himalayas ‘as geog-rapher and mountaineer, in particular formapping of high altitude territory’. He was themost successful climber of that expedition,getting to within 200 m of the summit ofAnnapurna II, a peak of 7937 m that was notconquered until Chris Bonnington’s expeditionin 1960. On the way down, he contracted polio-myelitis, requiring Sherpa portage and a longconvalescence in the UK and New Zealand.

In 1951, he was elected to the prestigiousAlpine Club, and became a lecturer in geogra-phy at University College, London from 1951to 1954. Bill and Geraldine returned toChristchurch and CUC where he lectured ingeography until 1960 and was warden of themen’s residence Rolleston House. He was oneof a quartet of young geographers with LeighPownall, Murray McCaskill and Barry Johnstonwho stimulated a generation of geography stu-dents, his forte being practical and fieldwork.Few who went through geography then couldforget first-year plane tabling in Hagley Park

and sketch mapping from the Sign of the Kiwi,and second-year field camps at Windwhistle orOxford. In the third and fourth year, there werepre-exam field trips to Arthur’s Pass and MtCook. For many of us, Bill Packard’s enthusi-asm and professionalism epitomized what wasgood and exciting about geography, and theCUC department in the late fifties, thoughthose qualities were subservient to his enduringhumanity.

Roger McLeanSchool of Physical, Environmental and

Mathematical SciencesUniversity of New South Wales

Australian Defence Force Academy

Reg Golledge (1937–2009)Reg(inald) Golledge, an Australian, has aworldwide reputation in geography andbeyond, especially in the cognitive and disabil-ity areas of specialization, but many in NewZealand may not realize that he began hiscareer in their country. In 1961, Leigh Pownall,then Geography Chair at the University ofCanterbury, appointed Reg, Les King, and meto our first faculty positions. Les, a NewZealander and new PhD from Iowa, broughtwith him ideas of applying scientific methods tohuman geography. I was a climatologist fromEngland via McGill.At that time, Reg’s interestwas in railway transportation. He had obtaineda large body of data on punched cards, and Iworked with him on its analysis using the newand ‘advanced’ university computer, an IBM1620.

The three of us became close both academi-cally and socially. In the days of six o’clockclosing, we discovered which hotels had a backdoor in the evening! Reg and I taught survey-ing, using plane tables, alidades, and levelsin Hagley Park. We registered for doctoraldegrees on the same day in 1961, but he wasthen courted by Les’ mentor, Harold McCarty,a Canterbury Visiting Professor and an earlyleader in the quantitative movement. Regmoved to Iowa in 1963 with him for hisdoctorate. During his time in Christchurch, Regwas already reading broadly in the field of psy-chology, which formed the basis of much of hisfuture work.

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In 1966, Reg, Les, and I were together againat the Ohio State University. Here, Reg and Icollaborated on a number of projects aboutspatial cognition funded mainly by the NationalScience Foundation. He was the leader andconceived the topic, but called on me for cri-tiques and mathematical analysis, but alwaysgave equal recognition in our joint publica-tions. In 1977, he moved to the University ofCalifornia at Santa Barbara, but we continuedto work together for several years. He wentvirtually blind from degenerative disease of theoptic nerve in 1984. This changed the directionof his research towards understanding spatialmobility of the handicapped and developingpractical applications of his findings. Despiteongoing health problems, he remained gener-ally in high spirits. To the end, he was full ofideas for current and new research activities.He was a compassionate individual and a dearfriend to many.

He was author (or, as was typical of his char-acter, co-author) of at least 15 books, 86 chap-ters in books, 125 articles in scientific journals,hundreds of other articles, monographs andresearch reports, and recipient of more than 90grants totalling over $10 million in researchfunds. He was elected President of the Associa-tion of American Geographers, Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Science,Fellow of the American Association for theAdvancement of Science, and GuggenheimFellow. He was awarded honorary degrees atSimon Fraser University and Göteburg Univer-sity, and received a Gold Medal from the Insti-tute of Australian Geographers. An interviewwith Reg, shortly before his death, appeared inNature on 11 June 2009.

John N. RaynerDepartment of GeographyThe Ohio State University

Seventh International Conferenceon Geomorphology

The conference was held in Melbourne in July2009, organised by the Australian and NewZealand Geomorphology Group, Inc.The orga-nising committee included David Kennedy andMike Crozier from the School of Geography,Environment and Earth Sciences at Victoria

University of Wellington. Among the 630attendees from around the world were geogra-phers from every university in New Zealand.Professor Paul Williams (The University ofAuckland) was made an Honorary SeniorFellow. He, along with John Chappell (nowliving in Dunedin), is the first New Zealander toreceive this prestigious international honour.

At the closing ceremony, the new Interna-tional Association of Geomorphologists (IAG)Executive Committee was introduced, includ-ing Professor Mike Crozier as incoming Pre-sident. ‘The business of geomorphology isunderstanding the behaviour of the earth and itsprocesses’, he said. ‘Geomorphologists can helpmeet goals of sustainable management, reducelosses from natural hazards and prepare com-munities to cope with rapid global change. Weare willing and able to help engineers, policymakers and planners to cope with the future’.

Outgoing IAG President Professor AndrewGoudie (Oxford) said in his final address that‘There will be huge changes in the geomorphol-ogy of our environment, but we must not losesight of the fact that there are other humanpressures on the environment, not just climatechange.There are many people in the world whodepend on soil and water and geomorphologistswork to understand the processes that affect oursoil and water to help in their management. Weare also finding that more and more people aresubjected to geomorphologic hazards such asearthquakes,floods, landslides and tsunamis andgeomorphologists will continue to work on waysto mitigate the risks to people living in riskprone areas’.

This was the first time the International Con-ference on Geomorphology had been held inthe southern hemisphere since the series begannearly 30 years ago. The next IAG RegionalConference will be held in February 2011 inAddis Ababa, Ethiopia – Geomorphology forHuman Adaptation to Changing Tropical Envi-ronments and the Australian and New ZealandGeomorphology Group (Inc.) 14th BiennialMeeting will be held in Oamaru, New Zealandin 2011.

Michael CrozierSchool of Geography, Environment and

Earth SciencesVictoria University of Wellington

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Journal SSCI impact factorand ranking

In December 2007, we reported (in volume 63(3), p. 159) that the New Zealand Geographerhad been selected for coverage by ThomsonScientific in the Social Science Citation Index(SSCI). The journal has now received its firstimpact factor, a full year earlier than wasexpected. In June 2009, it was ranked 36 out of51 journals in the SSCI Geography list, with a2008 impact factor of 0.667.

The then editors, Robin Kearns and ScottNichol, thanked ‘the authors who, over recentyears, have contributed to this success through

choosing to submit to the New Zealand Geog-rapher’. They went on ‘May this achievementprompt you, our readers, to view our journalas a publication of choice and to spread theword about the new-look New Zealand Geog-rapher. For, like the Cordyline australis on ourcover, we are occupying an increasingly dis-tinctive place in the publishing landscapeof the Southern Hemisphere’. The new SSCIranking of the journal only underlines thesewords.

Eric PawsonManaging Editor

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