University’s open day

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34120, 5 April 1976, Page 16

University’s open day

Staff at the University of Canterbury will complete preparation this week for an “invasion” of the 175-acre university campus at Ham on Saturday.

They will be preparing to welcome the public of Christchurch to the campus with a wide-ranging display of teaching and research activities in more than a score of academic departments.

There will be music and upper atmosphere research, painting — a life class under Mr W. A. Sutton will e open — computers, up-to-the-minute lasers, Greek pottery’ going back to 2000 8.C.. dozens of brief lectures in history, sociology, classics, philosophy, religious ■

studies and mathematics, and an opportunity for visitors to discover something about themselves in the psychology department. Hourly lectures will be given on chemical energy and about the difficulties of getting one’s tongue round Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, German, French, or Russian in the language laboratories. Individual departments have opened their doors to the public at Ham in the past, but this is the first time more than 20 departments have combined to present such a wide-ranging programme.

The university’s information officer (Mr E. T. Beardsley) says the public day has two main aims: to show the people of Christchurch something of the size and complexity of the university and its teaching and re-

search activities, and to help retain at Ham the links between town and gown that existed for a century when the university was sited near the heart of the city. “I think we can promise visitors an informative, interesting and enjoyable day,” Mr Beardsley said. “But if they are going to attempt to see everything they will be very busy indeed. We have been preparing a programme to hand to visitors, and it has been quite a problem to keep it down to eight pages.”

In addition to the academic programme, which will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., there will be student entertainments, including a play and a folk concert, and films for children. There will also be demonstrations of sports in the gymnasium and I games on the playing fields.