Uni staff recognised
A staff member who has been at Otago for 33 years has received the 2019 Award for Exceptional Performance by a member of Professional Staff. Brian Donnelly, a Senior Adviser, Superannuation, Retirement & Staff Benefits in HR’s Promotions & Remuneration team, received his award at a special ceremony last week. The Professional Staff Award was created in 2004 to recognise and reward members of the professional staff who have made an outstanding contribution to the University. Today Otago employs professional staff in a wide range of roles, including librarians, administrators, cleaners, accountants, cooks, nurses and gardeners – just to name a few. But it wasn’t always this way. As Dr Alison Clarke notes in her history Otago: 150 Years of New Zealand’s First University, it started with just
one man: janitor Alexander Purdie. Like many staff who followed, Purdie brought various useful skills to the University. He was a wire worker by trade but a naturalist by inclination. He worked with the New Zealand Exhibition of 1865, caring for the natural science exhibits that became the nucleus of the Otago Museum. When the collection moved to the ‘new post office’ building in Princes Street he went with it as caretaker, and when the University started in the same building in 1871 it employed him as janitor. He eventually went on to become Otago’s fulltime caretaker. By the 1980s Otago employed around 1000 professional staff and in 2002, general staff became the majority for the first time. Some growth came through the addition of services that nobody imagined in the early days – from Disability Support and Campus Watch to the numerous information technology staff. New legislation in 1990 gave professional staff a voice on the University Council and last week eight staff members put their names forward for the four-year term beginning in 2020. Voting for the candidate closed on Friday. As part of the 150th anniversary of the University, a photo exhibition featuring 150 staff, both academic and professional, opens in the Link on Wednesday. Curator Lisa Dick says the exhibition features 150 stunning portraits of current staff, taken by photographer Sharron Bennett, along with a quote from each person.