Mrs Bell (89) is back from Perth this week to attend an alumni gathering, as part of celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of the school's founding in 1913.
Since she left in 1965, the university student roll has risen more than four-fold to more than 20,000, and the former university central library has been replaced by a larger, modern Information Services Building.
And many other buildings have also sprouted up throughout the campus, including a modern, multistoreyed structure which houses the school, now part of the university's health sciences division. There had been a ''terrific rejuvenation'' of the campus, she said yesterday.
''I haven't really had time to think [about] what I'm feeling. I've been racing around.''
A busy Mrs Bell had been enjoying the ''adventure'' of returning to Dunedin and the campus but had also been having some ''mixed feelings'', including about the absence of some familiar landmarks from her past. Yesterday, she attended a historical talk linked to the launch of In Our Hands, the school's recently published history, and toured the new school.
After completing physiotherapy certificate studies at Otago in 1945, she later trained at St Mary's Hospital, London, to become a qualified physiotherapy teacher.
She then taught at the Otago school, later switching to part time as she brought up her two children, before leaving in 1965 to further pursue teaching at a physiotherapy school in Perth.
She retired, as a senior physiotherapist, about 30 years ago.
Mrs Bell was proud of the ''amazing'' progress achieved both by the Otago school and the profession over the years.
Physiotherapy was now ''much more professional and based on research'', and she was delighted the school's close links with Otago University and university health sciences had been fully reaffirmed.
