Company Endows University Chair

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30924, 3 December 1965, Page 1

Company Endows University Chair

A chair of industrial administration will be established at the University of Canterbury. Endowed by the Tasman Pulp and Paper Company, Ltd., to mark the retirement of Sir James Fletcher as chairman of the company, it will be known as the Sir James Fletcher chair of industrial administration.

Making the announcement al a dinner given by the board of directors in Auckland last evening to honour the retiring chairman, the manag-ing-director (Mr G. J. Schmitt) said that the council of the University of Canterbury had accepted the company’s offer, made in recognition of the outstanding service given by Sir James Fletcher as chairman of the

company since it was incorporated in 1952.

The new diploma course will be one of two optional courses leading to the graduate diploma in business administration. Its emphasis will be towards production rather than marketing, and it will be directed primarily towards graduates in engineering. science, and forestry.

In addition to developing and guiding the course in industrial administration at Canterbury University, incumbents of the chair will also deliver an annual lecture, to be known as the Sir James Fletcher lecture, together with a short course of lectures, at Kawerau with special application to the forest industry. Mr Schmitt said that in offering Canterbury the new chair, the company had special regard to the fact that the University of Canterbury was the main centre of learning in New Zealand in the field of chemical engineering —a field of major significance to the pulp and paper indus-

try and other heavy indus-l tries—and would also be the location of the new School of Forestry. A scroll was presented at the dinner to Sir James Fletcher by Mr L. J. Stevens, a member of the first board, on behalf of the directors of the company, to mark the establishment of the new chair. Another early director of the company, Mr E. R. MeKillop. referred to the service given by Sir James Fletcher and announced that the board was commissioning a portrait to present to him.

Sir James Fletcher will re main a member of the board

The company’s offer was a I most generous and imaginative action, said the ViceChancellor of the University of Canterbury (Dr. L. L. Pownall). “It will enable the university to invite both from overseas and from within New Zealand distinguished teachers from the fields related to industrial administration as well as outstanding industrialists,” Dr. Pownall said. "The first incumbents of the Sir James Fletcher chair will help the university to design the course, which will be started in 1967 or 1968." Dr. Pownall said the University of Canterbury was honoured to have the name of Sir James Fletcher associated with it permanently, since it recognised his outstanding service to New Zealand as a leader in many fields of industrial enterprise.