Exceptional educators can have a profound impact on the lives and careers of their students. They foster a love of learning, open professional doors and impart important life lessons.
For UNE Bachelor of Natural Resources graduate Crispin Butteriss, that educator was distinguished water scientist the late Professor John Pigram, his PhD supervisor and long-time director of UNE’s Centre for Water Policy Research.
A UNE student himself, John taught at UNE for 40 years, until his retirement in 2001. By then he had become a global expert on water resources and tourism, a founding member of the Board of Governors of the World Water Council and President of the International Water Resources Association.
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Photo: The late Professor John Pigram,
former director of UNE’s Centre
for Water Policy Research.
His son Paul Pigram, a professor within the Department of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at La Trobe University, said his father "had an international profile in research, teaching and academic leadership and taught generations of students".
"He had a particular interest in external students because he himself had been one, and he knew the competing life interests. He would spend hours recording lectures on audio tape so they could be copied and mailed out to his students. I think he appreciated how difficult but also how life-changing university study could be.”
Scholarship in his name
Similar sentiments – and John’s own influence – have inspired Crispin and his wife Amy Hubbard to fund four scholarships for UNE students studying a Bachelor of Urban and Regional Planning or a Bachelor of Environmental Science. Creating the scholarships in John’s honour is Crispin’s way of acknowledging an “excellent educator who deserved recognition”.
“He was very supportive and encouraging as a supervisor, and caring in an understated way,” Crispin remembers. “John always had his students’ best interests at heart and gave me some hard advice that has served me well for a long, long time.
“He cultivated a nice environment for learning, encouraged me to build a professional library and supported me to go on international study trips, which were wonderful opportunities. When I took on a much more senior role than I would have thought possible, John reminded me what I had to contribute.”
An industry scholarship supported Crispin’s UNE studies, supplemented by a couple of academic prizes. “Those rewards helped me to feel really good about the work I put into my studies – they were a material way of saying ‘well done’,” said Crispin, who hopes the Professor John Pigram Scholarships launched this year will reduce the barriers to rural students attending UNE.
“We need those rural graduates, who are more likely to return to rural and regional communities, to use their skills to help effectively manage our natural resources and benefit our regional economies.”
Study changes perceptions
Crispin’s own career spanned environmental protection policy, land-use planning and whole-of government coordination before he established his own software company.
“My postgraduate study at UNE (including achieving First Class Honours) completely changed my perception of what I was capable of; it gave me the personal and intellectual confidence to take the bull by the horns,” he said.
The Pigram family is “absolutely delighted” there is now a scholarship in John’s name.
“Dad was a terrific student advocate,” said Paul. “He was a courageous person, very hardworking and had to dig deep to take all the steps he did in his life.
"His own transition to tertiary educator was not an easy one. He was working as a secondary school teacher when he enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts (majoring in Geography and Economics) at UNE and would teach all day at school, ride his bike home for dinner, and then ride back to the school to study late into the evening at his desk in the staffroom.”
After graduating at the age of 30, an invitation to do Honours and a PhD in geography changed the course of John’s career. He would go on to become a researcher of international renown and to publish widely; advise governments, industry groups and corporations around the world; and to supervise 31 PhD students and 21 Masters students, many of whom have become leaders in their own right.
Crispin and Amy hope their new scholarships will help foster similar opportunities.
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