2020/21 Year end review for supporters 1
Message from the Principal, Paul Layzell
Having reached the end of the academic year, we reflect on an extraordinary 12 months in which it has been necessary to do familiar activities in very different ways. For the academic year 2020/21 we adapted our teaching and support to enable online learning and have responded, often at very short notice, to new requirements to help manage the impact of the pandemic. Throughout, the health and wellbeing of our community has been a priority and at every turn. Our goal has been to support our students in their studies so that they would not be academically disadvantaged as a consequence of Covid-19, and could successfully complete the academic year. Our students, our staff and our supporters have shown tremendous resilience, and I am proud of what our community has accomplished together in this the most challenging of years. While I believe we need to continue to be cautious, it is important that we plan for that future and, despite some ongoing uncertainty, continue to play our part in ensuring Royal Holloway, University of London, is stronger tomorrow than it is today. Prior to the pandemic we were in the process of developing a 10-year strategy. The pandemic required us to moderate our timeframe to a three-year strategic plan, but it has also accelerated our ambitions for our students and for our research. The three-year strategic plan sets us on a 10-year trajectory, where we will seize the opportunities and requirements of modern times, to address local and global needs in a post-
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pandemic world. We will build on our strengths to align our teaching, research and student experience for the next generation of students. I am confident that the foundations laid by the three-year strategic plan, combined with the support of our entire community, will enable Royal Holloway to continue to deliver on its purpose as a university and thrive. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the support, passion and commitment that you, our alumni and supporters, have shown this year. Your generosity has helped to ensure that Royal Holloway students continued to succeed, in spite of the challenges they have faced. From supporting disadvantaged students through our Get Started Awards and Study Support Grants and funding new scholarships, to providing careers advice and opportunities through our new Royal Holloway Connect mentoring programme and alumni-supported internships, you are actively making a difference. I hope you will enjoy reading more detail on just a few of the varied ways in which you have contributed to our Royal Holloway community and the future of our students, and can take pride in the important part you have played. Professor Paul Layzell DL
Principal
Your impact in numbers 2020/21 £1.05m raised
£96,000
£89,000
£63,000 Citizens project
£63,000 Greatest Needs
Student experience
£173,000 Donor investments
£575,000 Scholarships and awards
Special projects
Thank you!!! A huge thanks to our alumni, parents, staff, individuals, trusts, foundations and companies who continued to support Royal Holloway through the pandemic. Through scholarships, study support grants, placement opportunities and counselling and wellbeing support your generosity has enabled us to support our students during difficult times. Please find a list of supporters online at royalholloway.ac.uk/roll-of-donors.
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Higher education for all
Discover how we’re levelling the playing field and opening opportunities to would-be students from all backgrounds Royal Holloway and Bedford New College was founded on the principles of inclusion by two social pioneers – Elizabeth Jesser Reid and Thomas Holloway. Our founding colleges were among the first places in Britain where women could access higher education, and established both Bedford College and Royal Holloway College as trailblazing institutions. That spirit of inclusion lives on and we are committed to ensuring there is equality of opportunity for underrepresented groups to access university. We do this in varied ways with our Widening Access programme. For students who meet a minimum of two criteria, from backgrounds or with personal circumstances which mean they are generally less likely to go to university, we make a contextual offer of up to two grades lower than the original advertised entry requirements. With no separate entry forms for students to fill out, we aim to help level the playing field and make accessing Royal Holloway a reality for students who may not otherwise have had the opportunity. We recognise that many of these students may need extra financial support during their time at Royal Holloway. Students are automatically considered for a number of financial awards, while some require an application. The Santander Widening Access Scholarship is available in the first year of study to a UK student applying for any undergraduate degree course from a group underrepresented in higher education. Ten scholarships of £2,400 are funded by Santander Universities.
“Santander Universities is committed to improving access to education and providing life-changing opportunities to students from across the UK,” said Matt Hutnell, Director of Santander Universities UK. “We’re pleased to be able to support students with these scholarships as they embark on their studies at Royal Holloway.” The Gentian Scholarship for Access covers the full tuition fee for one student from the UK, who is applying for a degree in a STEM subject. Established to help disadvantaged students further their education, it is funded by Mr and Mrs Gent who are looking for talented and ambitious applicants who will most benefit from financial support and go on to contribute to society themselves. “One of us came from a family where no-one had been to the equivalent of a grammar school, much less university. Thanks to the scholarship he received, he was able to pursue a rewarding career with international organisations, which has also provided the funding for this award. It can be done!” they said.
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The Barbara Raw English Scholarship for Black UK Students offers a scholarship of £6,000, to help pay for essential expenses like books, travel and food. It is payable over three years, to a new undergraduate student studying for a single or joint honours degree in the Department of English and is available to Black UK students with UK fee status. To help students from under-represented groups in their first year of a degree course get the best possible start at Royal Holloway, we also offer the Get Started grant. This enables students to buy essential equipment and improve their initial experience at university. All recipients of the grant this year stated that the award had given them much-needed additional support at the very start of their course. Students used the funds in a variety of ways, from buying laptops to paying for personal tutors to help bring them up to speed on areas of their education to better prepare them for university study. Some of the recipients also spoke about how the grant helped alleviate some of their financial anxiety.
“The ‘Get Started’ award helped me greatly when beginning my studies at Royal Holloway,” said recipient Wiktoria. “I was able to buy a laptop which became essential with online studying... Being a student can be stressful and this award helped alleviate some of the financial stress that comes with it. I am very grateful for having this opportunity as it really has helped me out massively,” she added. Finally, a £1,000 grant is offered to a student at one of our 10 partner schools, who has a confirmed place at Royal Holloway and meets two criteria. These include, attending a low-performing school, having a disability or having been in care for more than three months.
“These awards directly support young people from Widening Access backgrounds and personal circumstances to get the best possible beginning to their studies at Royal Holloway,” says Jonathan Plummer, Widening Access Manager at Royal Holloway. “We know that financial support of this kind helps to level the playing field across the student population.” For more information or if you would like to support the access scholarships, please contact development@royalholloway.ac.uk or make a donation at royalholloway.ac.uk/donate-now
“Receiving the Santander Widening Access Scholarship has been crucial to my studies, as it allowed me to have financial independence and made worrying about outgoing finances a lot easier. I was able to purchase my own textbooks for my course, allowing me to further understand the topics we were studying and therefore achieve high grades.” Tabitha, recipient of the Get Started Award 5
Investing in a brighter future Here, two of our latest scholarship recipients share their experiences and what their awards have meant to them Shaw, recipient of the Red Rose Future Leadership Scholarship (above) Discovering that I had been awarded the Red Rose Future Leadership Scholarship for the duration of my undergraduate degree in Computer Science was a huge, but very welcome shock! Since I have to maintain at least a 2:1 to keep the scholarship, it helps keeps me focused and engaged. It was also a massive confidence boost: having the scholarship has been a constant reminder that, if I apply myself, there’s nothing I can’t do. Through obtaining the Red Rose Future Leadership Scholarship, I have been able to focus on my future learning, attend workshops and personal development sessions as well as use my finances without stress to partake in further projects and experiments, relevant to my future research. Georgia, recipient of one of three Bedford Society scholarships I was thrilled to discover I had been awarded the Bedford Society Scholarship for the academic year 2020/21. Receiving the scholarship reduced my financial burden and further
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encouraged me to thrive in my current and future studies. To have received acknowledgement of my achievements and support from the Bedford Society in this way has been incredibly motivating for me to succeed at a high level. I am committed to my education and to the field of Psychology, where I plan to pursue a clinical doctorate, with the aim to specialise in forensic mental health. The Bedford Society’s generosity has allowed me to get closer to this goal, where I aim to give back to society by focusing on the rehabilitation of individuals with mental health problems and forensic histories. You can read more about Shaw and Georgia at royalholloway.ac.uk/impact-stories.
For more information or if you would like to support, please contact development@royalholloway.ac.uk or make a donation at royalholloway.ac.uk/donate-now
A
global
community With a thriving alumni community across the globe, we discover how one alumna has reconnected with the College to give back and support future generations of students Here at Royal Holloway, international students are a vital part of the fabric of our community. With almost a third of our students joining us from outside the UK, we are proud to be one of the UK’s most international universities. A quarter of our on-campus societies and associations have an international focus, contributing to a diverse, creative and hard-working community, which benefits all of our students. We are strengthened by the diversity of our student and staff community and offer 80 scholarships specifically to support students from around the world to choose Royal Holloway, including: the American Foundation for RHBNC International Excellence Scholarship; the Manju Mehotra Scholarship; the Katayoon Behboodi Scholarship; the Dr Pirkko Koppinen Scholarship; and the David Cesarani Kobler Scholarship. The Royal Holloway community extends further still, with alumni in 165 countries around the world. This international network presents an opportunity for current students and alumni alike. Take, for example, STEM education writer and consultant Dr Jane Willoughby, who read Medical Biochemistry at Royal Holloway. Jane graduated in 1982 and relocated to the United States in 1994. Distance has not prevented Jane from reconnecting with the College and supporting future generations of students. Jane is a board member of the American Foundation for Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, and has signed up to mentor recent Royal Holloway graduates through Royal Holloway Connect, our online mentoring platform. “I felt the need to give back. I cannot emphasise enough how much the degree I gained at Royal Holloway gave me the strong foundation I needed for my research,” Jane says. “It’s a very fulfilling role and I’ve got to meet lots of interesting people.” Together with her husband, Ingram Losner, whom she met at Royal Holloway, Jane has established the Willoughby Losner scholarship, available to a new full-time student with Home or International fee status studying for an MA Holocaust Studies degree.
“My husband is Jewish and I converted to Judaism more than 20 years ago,” says Jane. My parents lived through World War Two… and they raised me to be keenly aware
“Education is key to
preventing history from repeating itself.”
of the horrors of the Holocaust, my father in particular, who had seen the horror and devastation with his own eyes. We are aware of family members who perished in the death camps – this scholarship honours their memory, and those of our parents. Education is key to preventing history from repeating itself.” You can read more about Jane’s experiences at Royal Holloway and her inspirations in our online interview at royalholloway.ac.uk/impact-stories. To find out more about how you can get involved in our international community and support current and future students here at Royal Holloway, please contact alumni@royalholloway.ac.uk
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Greatest Needs
changing lives Royal Holloway’s Greatest Needs fund enables the College to provide support where its impact can be most keenly felt. Discover how last year’s donations helped to fund a new Legal Advice Centre, and its far-reaching impact Thanks to the generous donations made to our Greatest Needs fund from our alumni and supporters, Royal Holloway established a new Legal Advice Centre, in January 2020. Offering free legal advice to the local community, the campus-based centre is student-led under the supervision of a practicing solicitor, and has engaged other volunteer solicitors from five partner law firms. Not only does the Legal Advice Centre give back to the local community by offering much-needed support to often extremely vulnerable people, it also provides our students with invaluable work experience. From interviewing clients and researching the law to providing written advice, the centre provides students with experience across family, contract, consumer and housing law, among others. Alongside day-to-day legal advice, the centre also runs further outreach projects, including the Street Law Clinics to empower communities with legal knowledge, and the HMP Coldingley Law Clinic in partnership with Creighton and Partners Solicitors which provides free legal advice remotely to prisoners at HMP Coldingley on family law matters. For the student volunteers, the Legal Advice Clinic has been a hugely enriching addition to their experience at Royal Holloway.
“It provides us with the chance to get hands on experience interviewing clients,” says student volunteer Olivia Smith. “This enables us to learn and more importantly develop the key skills required for a future career in law.”
Funding for the Legal Advice Centre has also enabled the employment of a full-time legal assistant to assist the Centre’s Director, Nicola Antoniou, to undertake more projects, increase student volunteer numbers, and take on new volunteer solicitors and fund their professional indemnity insurance.
“We are extremely grateful to everyone who donated to the Greatest Needs fund. Those donations have helped us to continue to keep the doors open of our student-led Legal Advice Centre,” says Nicola Antoniou, Director of the Legal Advice Centre. “The students have developed key skills that will prepare them for their legal careers and it has provided them with an opportunity to deal with real people with real problems. With continued support from generous donors we hope to be able to continue to provide this invaluable service, and so the financial assistance will make a real difference.” You can read more about the Legal Advice Clinic at royalholloway.ac.uk/impact-stories. For more information or if you would like to support the Greatest Needs fund, please contact development@royalholloway.ac.uk or royalholloway.ac.uk/donate-now
Neelu (LLB Law, 2020), Ellen (LLB Law with Crominology, 2020) and Rachita (LLB Law, 2020) delivered an interactive street law workshop to the parents of young people with autism in partnership with Sycamore Trust UK
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Supporting our students
The global pandemic has placed unprecedented pressure on both students’ mental health and finances. Discover how, with generous donations from our alumni community, we have been able to support our students Over the past year, our students have faced challenges unlike any other time. The loss of the expected university experience and face-to-face contact, together with financial strain created by the pandemic and lockdown restrictions led to an increased demand for support from students whose mental health has been adversely impacted. At the beginning of the pandemic, we moved quickly to deliver counselling and advice services online. In the spring term alone, we offered more than 4,000 one-to-one sessions via our academic advisers, chaplains, counsellors, disability advisers, financial advisers, international advisers, mental health practitioners, specialist mentors and wellbeing advisers. Many students had also lost access to much-needed funds due to the loss of part-time work. One such student had nowhere to live and was sleeping on various friends’ sofas. We provided financial support for a deposit on a room, helping the student feel secure and much better equipped to continue with their studies. Money generously donated by alumni and supporters has helped to create a wellbeing and financial lifeline, which
enabled the students to continue their studies feeling supported. The Study Support Grant for students who are facing financial difficulties can be used for field trips, travel for study, employment or volunteering opportunities related to a student’s studies. It can also provide support for rent and utility bills or when a student is facing short-term financial hardship which could interrupt or even end their studies.
“Every single donation we receive has a positive impact on the lives of our students and can benefit other, less fortunate people, in the wider community,” says Helen Groendaal, Head of Student Advisory & Wellbeing and Student Conduct Officer at Royal Holloway. “Your generosity will make a real difference to real people.” For more information or if you would like to support the Greatest Needs fund, please contact development@royalholloway.ac.uk or royalholloway.ac.uk/donate-now
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Supporting
success
With support from Santander Universities and alumnus Chris Marriott, Royal Holloway has been able to prepare our students and recent graduates for employment – even in the most challenging of circumstances Leaving university and entering the world of work is a daunting prospect at the best of times. For those students who graduated in 2021, it may have felt like an impossible task. So, we have been delighted that our longstanding partnership with Santander Universities, and ongoing support from our alumni community, have enabled us to help our students gain essential work experience at a time when they need it more than ever. The Santander Universities Employability Scheme, offered fully-funded internships to 10 undergraduate finalists and recent graduates to complete a work project for up to 108 hours during the spring and summer of 2021. This year placements were made shorter, meaning more opportunities were offered than ever before. “We’ve got so
much evidence to show that the students that have been able to participate in this scheme have gone on to either continue to work in that sector or get jobs elsewhere, which is just phenomenal,” says Gianina Harvey-Brewin, Head of Careers at Royal Holloway (pictured). 2021 also saw the launch of the Santander Open Minds Placement Scheme to support students either with mental health conditions or with communication difficulties. 15 fully-funded work experience placements were created, 12 of which were generated and supervised by Royal Holloway alumni.
“We really wanted the opportunities to come from our community who had been in the students’ shoes,” says Gianina. “The students really appreciated that Royal Holloway alumni were making way for the next generation and supporting them in the workplace.” Students who had secured an internship and required expenses could also apply for a £500 grant through our Placements Hardship Fund. “It was important that we removed barriers so that students could succeed regardless of their financial situation,” says Gianina. To help students to take up valuable work experience placements throughout their time at university, next year our popular Micro-placements scheme will be opened solely to first-year undergraduate students. With financial backing from donors and thanks to the ongoing support of alumnus Chris Marriott and his wife Lindsey, between 50 and 60 two to fourweek paid work experience placements will be made available.
“Royal Holloway’s employment schemes offer our students invaluable opportunities to prepare them for the challenges of the workplace. Through the schemes our goal is to help our students to gain the confidence, resilience and workplace skills that will help them to thrive in life beyond campus, To achieve this, we do need help from our alumni community; perhaps as an online mentor or by letting us know of placement opportunities where they work. If you are an alumnus/a and would like to find out more about how to help current students, we’d love to talk with you.” You can read more about supporting success at royalholloway.ac.uk/impact-stories. If you would like to get involved with supporting the Royal Holloway Employability schemes, please contact alumni@royalholloway.ac.uk
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Gianina, Head of Careers
A lasting legacy
Leaving a gift in your will to Royal Holloway contributes to pioneering research and supports the brightest minds, providing opportunities for the next generation and beyond Throughout Royal Holloway’s history, legacies and bequests have played a vital role in the College’s success. Every gift, no matter the size, makes a lasting impact on the very fabric of the College and on the lives of our students. Philanthropy lies at the heart of Royal Holloway, and it was through the generosity of our Victorian forbears that the College was established. That sense of public spirit continues with our alumni community who are helping to sustain the College for future generations.
In memory of Professor Walker and in recognition of his outstanding contribution to telecommunications and mathematics, the Professor Mike Walker OBE Scholarship has been established. Available for a full or part-time postgraduate student studying a specific course within the School of Engineering, Physical and Mathematical Sciences, it is awarded as a tuition fee reduction up to the value of £12,000.
This year, the College was fortunate to benefit from a generous legacy left by the late Professor Mike Walker OBE (pictured), which has funded a new postgraduate scholarship in his spirit and memory. Past President of the Institute of Mathematics and its Application (IMA), and Vodafone Professor of Telecommunications at Royal Holloway, alumnus Professor Mike Walker OBE graduated from Royal Holloway College in 1973 with a BSc (Hons) in pure mathematics. From 1996 onwards, he held the Vodafone Chair in Telecommunications at Royal Holloway, and in 2014 he helped to set up and became a director of the Institute of Cyber Security Innovation at Royal Holloway. He also established the Smart Card Centre, a worldwide centre of excellence for training and research in the field of smart cards, applications and related technologies in 2002 together with Royal Holloway, Vodafone and Giesecke & Devrient. Professor Walker was made an OBE for services to telecommunications in 2009, and in 2016 was made an Honorary Fellow of Royal Holloway. Professor Walker was recognised as one of the UK’s leading experts in information and telecommunications security, and passed away on 27 September 2018 after a long illness.
“Royal Holloway was not only our father’s alma mater but also where he met his wife, and our mother, to whom he was married for more than 30 years until her passing in 2009. Royal Holloway was therefore always close to his heart and he retained strong links to the College throughout his career in both academia and industry,” said Alan and Martin, Professor Walker’s sons. “Having grown up in a family of modest means, our father was a strong proponent in the power of education to facilitate social mobility. Hence, he would have hoped that this scholarship can ease some of the financial burden that might otherwise deter talented young people—from anywhere across the globe—from accessing world-leading postgraduate courses on Telecommunications and Information Security at Royal Holloway.”
For more information, or if you would like to leave a legacy, please contact development@royalholloway.ac.uk
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Keep in touch If you would like to make a donation, please email development@royalholloway.ac.uk If you are an alumnus/a and would like to be involved, please email alumni@royalholloway.ac.uk To enquire about forthcoming events, please email events@royalholloway.ac.uk Tel: 01784 414478 Holloway, University of London Royal Royal Holloway Alumni
@RHBNCAlumni @rhalumni
Royal Holloway and Bedford New College is an exempt charity (XN69536) Content contributor Jessica Jonzen BA English, 2004
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