History of the Department

Professor James Ritchie

Fifty years ago, way back in the dazzling '60s, it was mushroom season for new Universities around the world. No one really knew how to start one so, true to form, the NZ Government set up an Advisory Committee. This called for a new university at Hamilton to carry the name Waikato and boldly venture into innovations in degree structures, methods of teaching and governance. The first degree was to be taught over four years. Psychology was not one of the six subjects recommended in the report, but a Chair in it was amongst the six initially established.

James Ritchie was appointed to this Chair and began teaching in 1965 in the multidisciplinary School of Social Sciences. He proposed that the subject should develop in close association with the others, history, social and political philosophy, social economics, English and social mathematics, as well as teaching the traditional core of psychological theory, content and method. Furthermore he brought with him his own special interest in comparative cultural psychology and social relations. Thus both anthropology and sociology were initially to be part but soon took on their own stance.

A commitment to the pragmatics of the field was vital; this was to be a useful science having, from the outset, a strong emphasis on social research, the servicing and solution of social and personal problems as well as the psychology of mental health, child development, of work, counseling, family psychology and policy. Teaching was to be through small groups, seminars and tutorials, in courses of varying length, internally, continuously and variously assessed, dominated by what psychologists knew about effective learning and teaching. The initial success was extraordinary and heartening. This was the right way to go.

But such innovation was hard to sustain. It was hard to attract new staff. The other Universities were unsupportive. Students became insecure about the new environment. Four years reverted to three. The interdisciplinary ideal slipped back into separate departments on the usual model. The School notion lapsed back into traditional faculties.

Psychology not only survived all of this but continued to grow and flourish. Its internal resilience and vigor arose from its internal culture and by its adherence to the core values to which it was originally committed. For three decades it was the largest department in the University and established a recognizable profile nationally and it remains a strong and distinctive presence, still lively, still radical, still attractive, still changing.