FROM THE PRINCIPAL Professor Geoffrey Ward
6 ANNUAL REVIEW COLLEGE NEWS
This time a year ago my column for the Annual Review took its lead from Samuel Beckett’s meditation on the human condition Waiting for Godot, a two-act play in which one early reviewer complained that nothing happened – twice. As I walked around a campus dominated by ongoing new builds and emerging extensions – the Dining Hall, the North Wing Auditorium, practice spaces and guest rooms – it seemed as if we were waiting for something to take final shape and declare itself. Well, something happened, for sure, but it was neither what we expected nor what we wanted.
A
long with the rest of collegiate Cambridge and the wider world beyond, Homerton has faced the impact of the pandemic. Our students have been particularly affected. The face-to-face supervisions which are the cornerstone of Cambridge teaching have had to be replaced by remote learning. And while their College accommodation is of a gratifyingly high standard (Homerton came first in a Daily Telegraph survey of student accommodation across Oxford and Cambridge last year), students’ rooms were intended to be a nest from which to fly to lectures and practicals before returning at day’s end, not a 24/7 pod with strict limitations on movement outside and on contact with peers within. When an outbreak occurred at the beginning of Michaelmas term, there is no doubt that we were tested. But we learned from that. Moreover, our students have shown consideration, resilience and ingenuity in finding ways to work through these difficult circumstances. And some of the changes created in emergency conditions, such as
the new reliance on computer-based learning, will undoubtedly have a permanent effect on the ways in which the University organises post-pandemic teaching in order for students to both absorb new knowledge at speed, and produce their best work. Meanwhile the reputation of the College has done nothing but rise. The number of direct applications for undergraduate places at Homerton is up by over 25% this year, as it was the year before (this in a context where applications to Cambridge University as a whole have risen by nearer 10%). Even in a context where jobs are getting harder to find, the emails I receive from recent graduates now working in the Foreign Office, for NGOs or in many other prominent positions give ample testimony that Homerton is a both a destination of choice for the talented school-leaver and a launch-pad for the leaders of tomorrow. I am very proud of the Fellowship for
Homerton rowers practise in socially distanced form on Cavendish Lawns
