Ursula Cheer reflects on 30 years at the Faculty of Law

Since 1995, I have worked with five Vice Chancellors. I have survived the horrors of marking end-of-year exams, the Christchurch quakes, the terrorist attack, Covid, and watching Stephen Todd pretend to be Mick Jagger every year in the Law Revue.

I was proud to be awarded my PhD in 2009, completed over 8 years while working full-time. I gave birth to two daughters while working full-time too, made possible in part because of the excellent UC Early Childhood Learning Centre. I later joined other UC staff to fight a battle to ensure the University’s continued commitment to that same Centre. I am a paradigm example of how UC can make the most of the female staff who need to balance childcare and working life. What is more, I contributed further to the University by paying fees for my two daughters to study and graduate with two degrees each!  What goes around comes around.

There has been remarkable change in the make-up of Law Faculty staff during those 30 years. Gender equality was achieved in professorial appointments and generally, from 2012, ahead of many other faculties at UC. In that year I was appointed the second female law Professor (after Liz Toomey); and went on to become the first female Law Dean in 2016. As well as in terms of gender, the Law Faculty is now much more ethnically and culturally diverse than at any time in its history, a welcome change. Our amazing professional staff continue to serve us faithfully and well.

I discovered I quite like teaching, and won a UC teaching award in 2013, the UC Teaching Medal in 2015, and a National Sustained Excellence in Tertiary Teaching Award in 2017. The Law School has significantly extended its teaching offerings. After the quakes, we  became a unique two-degree Law Faculty by offering New Zealand’s only Criminal Justice Degree, and many of our students now do double degrees in both. Now we have staff who are not actually lawyers teaching in the law school, and that also enhances our diversity.

The location of the Law Faculty has provided 30 years’ access to the amazing UC campus gardens, as they explode with the colour and smell of rhododendrons and azaleas each spring, and the pathway of blossom trees near the old Music building attracts blossom tourism. Fresh small miracles are the joy of bellbird song and a wild flower meadow.  After severe restriction within the Meremere building of sharing our space following the quakes, the Faculty has recently moved to refitted digs in the first four floors of the Karl Popper building nearby. We are delighted with our new home.

These 30 years would have been nothing without the care, support and mentorship  of my friends and colleagues in the Faculty and wider UC community. You know who you are, whether still here or retired. Thank you with a tear in the eye for what you have done for me, for the University of Canterbury Faculty of Law, and for our fantastic students!