The Kate Edger Educational Charitable Trust is named in recognition of Kate Milligan Edger (1857-1935) the first woman to graduate Bachelor or Arts in the British Empire.

Kate Edger was a daughter of the Rev. Samuel Edger, a Baptist minister who brought his family from England with the Albertland settlers to New Zealand in 1862. A university graduate himself, he supported Kate and her sister Lilian in their efforts to gain higher education. When Kate applied to the senate of the University of New Zealand for permission to sit for a university scholarship she did not state her gender and her application was successful. She was the only female in classes at Auckland College and Grammar School, which was affiliated to the University of New Zealand. (Auckland University College was yet to be established.) She graduated in 1877 with a Bachelor of Arts (specialising in mathematics and Latin) from the University of New Zealand.

 After graduation Kate went to Christchurch to become First Assistant at the Girls’ High School, and while teaching there gained a Master of Arts at Canterbury College in 1882. From 1883 to 1890 she was the founding head mistress of Nelson Girls College working with the first assistant, her sister Lilian. In 1890 she married a Congregational minister and as Mrs Evans later ran a private school in Wellington while raising three sons.

Auckland has a long history of honouring Kate Edger. A memorial oak door was placed in her name, in 1937, in the Women’s Common Room of the Student Union at the Auckland University College. A history of the New Zealand Federation of University Women 1921-1981, commissioned by the Auckland Branch, was published under the title The Footprints of Kate Edger in 1982. The architectural-award  winning Kate Edger Information Commons was opened at The University of Auckland in 2004.