Meet our outstanding Poster Boys
O ur special Old Boys Posters featuring high-achieving former College students are growing, with 13 more appearing on walls around the school. From a Supreme Court judge with one of the finest legal minds to an Olympic gold medallist who has helped steer the men’s rowing eight to victory in Tokyo, several more remarkable College Old Boys are now on show.
Shailer Weston
Julius House 1930–1933 College No. 4067 Alister Austen Deans
School House 1942–1945
College No. 5163
Alister Austen Deans OBE
Thomas Shailer Weston OBE, VRD
An eminent New Zealand landscape painter and war artist, Austen Deans was born in Christchurch in 1915, part of the notable Deans family. After Medbury School and Christ’s College, he studied fine arts at the Canterbury College School of Art, and then served in the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force in the Middle East, Greece and Crete during World War II. He drew or painted everything he saw and was appointed NZ assistant war artist. Badly wounded in 1941, he became a Prisoner of War, continuing to sketch and paint life in camps throughout Europe. He also did portraits of other POWs and by early 1945 had a portfolio of nearly 300 works. After the war, he studied art in London, returning to Canterbury to settle in Peel Forest where he and his wife Liz had seven sons. Austen won the Kelliher Art Award in 1962 and 1963, wrote an autobiography, painted in Antarctica, and derived much of his income from commissioned works. He became an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1995. He died in Christchurch on 18 October 2011. A sculpture of Austen was unveiled at Peel Forest in 2018.
Dr Shailer Weston has spent a lifetime giving to others. Christchurch-born Shailer attended Christ’s College from 1942-1945. He subsequently pursued a career in medicine and spent most of it as a radiologist. Following his post-graduate work in the United Kingdom, he returned to his hometown and worked at Princess Margaret Hospital. Shailer was appointed Chairman of the New Zealand branch of the then Royal Australasian College of Radiologists and subsequently President of the College, later becoming a life member. Shailer was also a Naval Reserve Officer when he was appointed Honorary Physician to former Governors-General Sir Arthur Porritt and Sir Denis Blundell. After retiring in 1992, Shailer chaired the Christchurch City Mission for five years, was a Life Member of Anglican Care, a Life Fellow of Selwyn College, a Foundation Canon Almoner of Christ Church Cathedral, a Fellow of the New Zealand Medical Association and, in 2000 made an Honorary Life Member of the Christ’s College Old Boys’ Association. Christ’s College later presented Shailer with a Senior Honours Tie. Shailer served 23 years in the Royal New Zealand Naval Volunteer Reserve and was awarded the VRD and the OBE.
OLD BOYS’ASSOCIATION
OLD BOYS’ASSOCIATION
Yun Fu
Lance Jennings
Michael Ardagh
Rolleston House 2003–2007
College No. 13108
Corfe House 1962–1966
College No. 7309
Julius House 1974–1978
College No. 8852
Yun Fu
Lance Cordner Jennings QSO
Michael Warne Ardagh ONZM
Yun Fu is an architect and scholar. Yun believes architecture provides a particularly vibrant lens for thinking about and improving the ways we live together. He describes it as one of the few generalist professions left in the contemporary world, where the goal is a broad knowledge of many things instead of only specialised expertise in a narrow field. His work and study have taken him to Sydney, Beijing, London, Boston, and Rome, where he held the Rome Prize at the British School at Rome and was the Confucius Scholar at Peking University. Yun’s scholarship focuses on design thinking and the cerebral mechanisms of creativity and problem processing. After leaving Christ’s College, Yun studied architecture at UNSW Sydney before working in Beijing and London. He completed his graduate and doctoral degrees at Harvard University, with the latter focusing on post-disaster reconstructions. In 2018, Yun joined the faculty to develop the Advanced Urban Design curriculum, interrogating how we might think about our cities in the near future.
A man ahead of his time, internationally recognised virologist Clinical Associate Professor Lance Jennings initiated the introduction of the world’s earliest influenza pandemic control strategies into New Zealand. These included free influenza vaccine for at-risk groups, influenza awareness education and a National Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Plan. His career in respiratory virology began with the identification of the Influenza A/Port Chalmers/1/73 (H3N2) virus. Lance was seconded to the World Health Organization (WHO) for consultancies on influenza and measles and as an integral member of the WHO Avian Influenza Outbreak Response and Expert Influenza team in 2004. His early research was ground-breaking, defining the aerosol transmission of rhinovirus common colds. He credited College for providing opportunities to develop his lifelong abilities in leadership, risk assessment and judgement, along with highlighting the need to give back. Lance is a former chairperson of the International Society for Influenza and Other Respiratory Virus Diseases (ISIRV) and the co-founder of the Asia Pacific Alliance for the Control of Influenza (APACI), focusing on relieving the burden and pandemic preparation. He was appointed a Companion of the Queen’s Service Order in 2006 for service to virology globally.
Professor Michael Ardagh is the right man to have in an emergency. Heralded for his work in Emergency Medicine, Michael has spent most of his career working in the high pressure specialty field. After attending Christ’s College from 1974–1978, he trained to become a doctor before gaining further experience working in Tokyo and London. On his return, Michael was drawn to Emergency Medicine and trained at Christchurch Hospital in the Emergency Department, Intensive Care, Orthopaedics and Paediatrics, followed by a year in Melbourne. Michael was the first Kiwi to graduate from New Zealand’s inaugural emergency training programme and was the first full Emergency Professor in New Zealand. He was the National Clinical Director for ED services at the Ministry of Health from 2009 to 2015 and subsequently awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) for services to emergency medicine.
OLD BOYS’ASSOCIATION
OLD BOYS’ASSOCIATION
OLD BOYS’ASSOCIATION
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MOTIVATION
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