Interview with Margaret Evans – psychotherapist and university counsellor

Interview conducted February 2011, at Margaret’s home, Campbell ACT
Producer, Interviewer and Editor - Peter Stewart
Engineer - Nik Fominas

Biographical introduction: Margaret Evans was educated in New Zealand and trained as a psychotherapist in London. She and husband Lloyd, a plant physiologist, moved from the US to Canberra in 1956; Margaret joined ANU to establish its counselling service in 1964. She became a central figure in the development of the university’s student educational services more generally, and an elected representative of ANU Council in 1982-86.

Margaret retired in 1996, but continued to provide her services as a consultant to the ANU counselling group. Margaret and Lloyd continue to live in the family home in Campbell which they have occupied for 50 years. Their two sons are members of ANU faculty, and their daughter is an artist working in the Hunter Valley

Interview abstract:Margaret Evans (nee Newell) was born in 1927 in Coimbatore, India – sister to two older brothers. Her mother and father were both teachers and missionaries. In 1930, the family moved from India to Wellington, New Zealand, where her father became the minister at the Terrace Congregational Church and chairman of the Student Christian Movement. The children received their schooling and university education in New Zealand. Margaret graduated Bachelor of Arts from Canterbury University College.

In 1947 her parents moved to Geneva where her father had been appointed Assistant Secretary of the World Council of Churches. Margaret continued on to London for postgraduate studies. She began a PhD under the notorious Professor Cyril Burt at University College London, but transferred to the Maudsley Hospital Institute of Psychiatry under the supervision of Professor Hans Eysenck. When a Postgraduate Diploma in Clinical Psychology was inaugurated at the Maudsley she changed from research to clinical studies and on graduation was appointed to a lectureship there. Four years later she renewed a friendship with Lloyd Evans whom she had known from their student days in Christchurch NZ, and who was now studying for a DPhil at Oxford. On his graduation Lloyd was awarded a Harkness Fellowship to the USA, which paid a marriage allowance. They wed and spent the next two years in Pasadena California where Lloyd conducted research in the phytotron (a controlled environment facility for the study of plant growth) at California Institute of Technology. Margaret worked at the Psychiatric Clinic attached to the Huntington Hospital.

In 1956 Dr Otto Frankel, then Chief of CSIRO Plant Industry, visited the Evans and offered Lloyd a position in Canberra to design and build a phytotron, a proposal supported by Prime Minister Menzies and funded by his government.

In Canberra the couple were assigned rental housing in Griffith until their name came up on the government list for a house in O’Connor, where many ANU and CSIRO staff were placed. In 1961, as the family grew, they moved to a larger house in Campbell.

In 1964, returning from their first sabbatical leave in Maryland USA where the children had attended school and Margaret had worked in a child guidance clinic, she was approached by Professor Cecil Gibb (Deputy Chairman of the Board of the School of General Studies, the undergraduate school of the ANU) to establish a Counselling Service, a facility recommended in the 1965 Hone Report. Margaret would work half-time with a full time secretary and an advisory committee chaired by Professor Pat Pentony, a member of the Psychology Department who until then had taken care of student counselling informally. The advisory committee was composed of senior academic staff from both the Institute of Advanced Studies and the School of General Studies, together with Bill Packard (Warden of Bruce Hall) and Colin Plowman (then Academic Registrar). For Margaret, the committee was a source of great support and wisdom in the establishment of the service, which would provide assistance for both students and staff at ANU.

By the end of 1965 it was clear that the Counselling Centre was a successful operation. A full time counsellor, Eric Gough from the University of New South Wales, was appointed and Dr Bryan Furnass established the Health Service, as a separate entity.

The Counselling Service expanded to include Careers and Appointments advice, a Study Skills Unit, and a Part-time Studies function. By 1970, these groups had developed as separate entities, independent of the Counselling Service and with their own budgets and accommodation. A close and amicable relationship between the units developed and was sustained, with extensive cross referral between the units, and common managerial oversight provided by the Dean of Students.

With the promotion of the two personal counsellors (Eric Gough and Ken Robinson) elsewhere, Margaret was appointed Principal Counsellor (a title she preferred to Director) and the Centre moved to its own building, shared with the Health Centre, a logical relationship.

In 1980 the Vice Chancellor, Professor Tony Low, set up a Division of Educational Services, chaired by the Dean of Students (then Hector Kinloch) to assist with budget management and policy decisions. As well as the student services, the Centre for Educational Development and Academic Methods (CEDAM) and the Centre for Continuing Education (CCE) became part of the division. In an increasingly constrained financial environment, where unproductive competition might have resulted, the units of the division worked well together, to the considerable benefit of the students and staff who relied on the services provided.

Margaret found strong affinities with senior management and teaching staff in the university. Apart from the consistent support of Vice Chancellors John Crawford, Tony Low, and Peter Karmel, important encouragement came from Professor Pat Pentony, Bill Packard, and Mollie Bouquet (senior personnel manager). Margaret informed herself of the major international directions in psychotherapy, aided by regular visits to seminars and conferences as she took advantage of opportunities to join Lloyd on visits to eminent research and academic centres in the US and Europe. The client-centred approach used by Carl Rogers was important in her early years, then later transaction analysis, with its emphasis on personal responsibility by clients. These days, working as a consultant and adviser for current staff in the ANU Counselling Service, Margaret is eclectic in her approach, strongly influenced by solutions that are effective – finding strengths and resources within the client.

The ANU Counselling Service was a moveable feast in its early days – variously located over the years in the Student Union Annex (the Pauline Griffin Building these days), the Kingsley Street Cottage, the Copland Building, and finally within the Health and Counselling Service, a purpose built area of the Student Union building near Sullivans Creek bridge.

Staffing of the Counselling Service was not always straightforward, and sometimes caused heartache for Margaret and her colleagues. Counsellors, it seems, may be as wayward as those they aim to help, and in at least two instances, the service was beset by serious ethical breaches, or poor performance. Margaret, naturally, was called on to provide solutions, complicated in those days by security of tenure for university staff generally. Moreover, as a steady erosion of funding occurred in all Australian universities from the 1980s on, student services were sometimes looked on as targets for academic and administrative savings. Nevertheless, running a tight ship, Margaret was able to sustain steady growth in counselling services as client numbers expanded, and social and ethnic diversity multiplied. Leila Bailey and Geoff Mortimer became important members of the counselling staff.

During her career in the ANU, Margaret saw many political and social trends and movements emerge on the ANU and other university campuses. By their nature, these complicated the work of counsellors. In the late 1960s, draft resistance against the Vietnam War and anti-war moratoria reinforced contrary notions of authority and its exercise among students and other independently minded citizens. In the early 1970s ‘university democracy’ became an issue, with demands for a greater student say in the design of university courses and assessment practices. University governance itself became an issue, with demands for greater student representation in councils, boards, faculties, and departments, and sit-ins an important tool of student action, particularly at higher levels of university management. Soon after, the demand for recognition of Aboriginal rights resulted in the establishment of the Aboriginal (Tent) Embassy near Parliament House, and broader issues of social and economic equity for the First People more generally. An Aboriginal (the Jabal) Centre was established on the ANU campus.

In the 1980s, the HIV-AIDS epidemic propelled new approaches to gender equality and medical equity. All of these movements brought forth new medical and psychological issues, and questions of gender and institutional responsibility in universities and the wider community life. All of this spelt more work for counsellors and medical staff, and greater demands and responsibilities for Margaret and her fellow service providers.

In 1982 Margaret was elected one of the two representatives for general staff on the ANU Council, a position she held for four years. Two issues for which she fought during her tenure were:

• the upgrading of Toad Hall to improve its security and social amenity;
• the prevention and treatment of repetitive strain injury (RSI) in the university.

By the 1990s, as Margaret began anticipating retirement, universities were quieter places than they had been, but new challenges began to appear, a consequence of rapidly expanding numbers of students, particularly international students. The opportunistic proliferation of ill-prepared ‘preparation colleges’ aimed at meeting the literacy and study skills needs of newly arrived overseas students was not helpful for Australian universities. Moreover, international students were often disinclined to take advantage of the counselling services offered, though they could be the most needy.

Attempts in 2006 to reintroduce voluntary student fees for ancillary campus services (clubs, societies, child care, for example) illustrated a new user-pays approach on the part of governments. This implied that tertiary education is a privilege rather than a community benefit.

Margaret retired in 1996, but continued to contribute her services to ANU as consultant to the counselling group at ANU. She and Lloyd, also now retired, continue to live in their family home in Campbell, visited regularly by their sons and daughter, and grandchildren. The sons John (plant physiologist) and Nicholas (linguist) are now members of ANU academic staff. Daughter Catherine chose a different direction for her life, and is now an artist living in the Hunter Valley.