Asking people about the Arana College warden, who has worked on the Dunedin campus for 20 years, sparks everything from tributes to banter.
“He’s one of the wisest and kindest people I know ... now I’m starting to get emotional.”
“He’s a support system for a giant moustache.”
“I was really impressed with how he ran his college (Arana). It was like a large family really. Everyone was equal, there was never any sort of judgement or belittling.”
Mr Gilbertson, who has retired from the university and is moving to Central Otago to live on a cherry orchard with his wife, Tina, said the university had allowed him to be himself.
With a background in the military and social work, after his arrival on campus in 2002 Mr Gilbertson quickly became a go-to person for complex issues with young people.
When he got the job as Arana’s warden he ‘‘gave myself over to college and university life’’.
‘‘The best job I’ve ever had was being a college warden,” he said.
“Young people coming to university and finding themselves, that’s where the joy lives, and the challenge.”
He became Otago’s first senior warden for all the residential colleges in 2017.
Taking responsibility for hundreds of other people’s teenagers can involve working huge hours and never-ending multitasking, but Mr Gilbertson said while it was tiring at times, he had had no trouble sustaining it.
When Mr Gilbertson started, Arana was several older buildings with 243 residents.
Now it has more than 400 residents and a waiting list.
Coming from a family with a service ethic and as Welsh immigrants from a poor background, he said his family, who arrived in New Zealand in 1957, tried to do as well as they could in a new country and then give back through service.
The university was a real community, he found.
“It may as well be a little village in England. Helping people get through is the nearest thing to being the village vicar that I could do,” he says.
The university had given him unique opportunities as well.
One was being its voice, literally, on radio ads.
He had met some ‘‘fantastic’’ academics, professional staff, and being involved in the multimillion-dollar building project at Arana that led to opening three new buildings in 2006, were highlights.
During his years at Otago he was also on the collegiate way international advisory board, chaired the university’s board of studies for science communication, been an executive member of the ethical behaviour group, and on the vice-chancellor’s code of conduct committee, on the advisory and philanthropic Stuart Residence Halls Council, the limitation of enrolment committee and the team that wrote the university’s sexual misconduct policy.
After successfully fighting off prostate cancer in 2015 he learnt earlier this year he had colorectal cancer that had spread to his lung, sending him on a “huge and difficult journey” of radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and surgery, with the distinct possibility he would die anyway.
From January until late September he said he did not know whether he would live or die, but now “I’m cancer-free and have a new lease on life. I mean to make the most of it”.
His parting advice to students is: ‘‘Be kind, work hard, try to make a difference, have a good time, don’t take yourself too seriously and if you have any low-level symptoms that could indicate a health problem, go to your doctor.’’
- This story has been adapted from an original article published on the University of Otago’s Bulletin Board.
