Phyllis Guthardt

The Reverend Dr. Phyllis Myra Guthardt DBE served for four years as the chancellor (ceremonial and civic head) of the University of Canterbury until her tenure ended on 31 December 2002. When Phyllis Guthardt was ordained as a Methodist minister in 1959, she became the first woman of any denomination to be ordained in New Zealand. She was later to be the first woman elected to the presidency of New Zealand's Methodist Church in 1985. "In the early 1950s the Methodist Church decided it had nothing in principle against the ordination of women. In 1954 I moved from Christchurch, where I was working as a young teacher and studying part time at Canterbury University, to Auckland so I could enter Trinity College ... I completed my bachelor's...