Principal’s welcome

PRINCIPAL’S WELCOME BARONESS ROYALL of BLAISDON

No story can be told about this year without acknowledging the ravages of coronavirus. And yet the great virtue of belonging to a community like ours, with such stalwart friends, is that the story we tell is also one of hope.

That is the true power of giving which this year has brought into stark focus. Against a backdrop of grim projections and oppressive uncertainty, the support of our donors has brought hope to our community, unlocked possibilities for our students and vouchsafed the touchstones of learning, research and fellowship for which Somerville was created.

Our ability to find hope in the hardest situations was evident even before Covid-19. At the start of Hillary Term, we launched a Crowdfunder for our new Somerville Sanctuary Scholarship. Inspired by the prospect of creating fully-funded scholarships for refugees, stateless young people and those escaping dangerously unstable political climates, 44 donors raised over £12,000 for this campaign.

The appeal was paused in March due to Covid-19, but the support of several alumni and friends enabled us to close the funding gap and fund five years of living costs. In a dark time, the amazing generosity of our leading donors Shahnaz Batmanghelidj (1975, PPE), Libby Ancrum (1978, PPE) and her husband David Skinner, Virginia Ross (1966, International Studies) and Peter BennettJones provided a shining example of the Somerville community’s belief in diversity and inclusivity.

Thanks to this support, our first Sanctuary Scholarship student, Marwa Biala (2020, Radiation Biology) was able to join us this year. You can read Marwa’s story on p16, as well as Virginia Ross’ account of why she supported our Sanctuary Scholarship on p18.

Hope blossomed again at Somerville in the Spring, when our brilliant new Head Gardener, Sophie Walwin, ran the first of her Gardens Live events. The response to Sophie’s gloriously knowledgeable tour of the gardens was so positive that a new Tree Fund was inaugurated the same day, with the beautiful new mulberry pictured below being just one fruit of generous donations from Niels Kröner and Elaine Lever.

Such gifts should always have a place alongside our talk of income and expenditure, funds and dividends. That’s because they are a promise to the future – in this case, embodying the determination of our community to think sustainably and plan (or plant?) for those generations we may never know.

Further grounds for hope can be found in the new partnership between the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development and

multinational agribusiness UPL. Signed during our visit to India in December, this five-year relationship will enable the OICSD to fund the research and academic representation that will shape the debate about food security, sustainability and the delivery of a low-carbon future in the Global South.

I have talked about hope – but what of the possibilities being unlocked which I mentioned at the start of this piece? The fact is that, as the severity of Covid’s impact became clear, it looked as if the life-changing possibilities of an Oxford education might be erased for a whole generation: equal access to resources; the opportunity to pursue one’s intellectual curiosity; even the basics of mental and physical health seemed for a while in jeopardy.

But then, as so often happens, we talked to our friends and we found a way. For example, we all know that mental and physical health are vital in this new locked-down world. So the Sport and Wellbeing Fund established this year through the generous gift of Judith Buttigieg could not have been more perfectly timed.

The Sport and Wellbeing Fund was initially conceived as a means of giving students and staff access to a plethora of new sports, specialist kit and support in improving their wellbeing. In its first year, the programme benefitted 16 students and 11 members of staff. However, in our new periodically confined world, uptake for the programme has sky-rocketed, with members of the Somerville community trying everything from powerlifting to Pilates, or simply buying equipment for the allotment. Unlocking academic possibilities means giving scholars the freedom to pursue their academic interests. Thanks to the continued support of benefactors such as Lord Glendonbrook, the Margaret Thatcher Scholarship Trust continues to play a dynamic role in that process here at Somerville, with three new scholarships awarded this year to some of our most impressive students. One of these, Luca Webb, is profiled on p12 alongside four previous MTST Scholars in a retrospective look at the five years in which these scholarships have been awarded.

Another way in which your support is unlocking the possibilities of learning is through the appointment this year of Dr Fay Probert to our inaugural Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship (full story on p10). In this post, Fay will continue the interdisciplinary research for which Hodgkin was so renowned, as well as advocating for greater equality of opportunity in the sciences.

The question of access will always be a vital one to this College, but never more so than in the wake of inequality that Covid unleashed. This year, following the gruesome spectacle of the A Level results, we responded by confirming more places than ever before, including 2 Target Oxbridge students, 12 students from the UNIQ access programme and over 61% of UK students from state schools.

Of course, our aim with Access is always to do more. Our Access and Outreach programme remains a key priority of the college, and your support for its activities has never been more valuable.

Another seismic change we have seen in the world of access is the move to virtual open days and, in 2020-21, virtual interviews. While still in their infancy, these online platforms are hugely promising because they are more readily accessible and thus more egalitarian. Somerville was one of the few colleges to offer interactive Virtual Open Days in 2019-20. Across the three days, we welcomed over 1,750 viewers, who asked in excess of 900 questions of our tutors and students. As such, fundraising for expanded AV provision is one of our key strategic goals for coping with the ‘new normal’.

The path to progress in times like these is not easy – but when Somervillians look to the future, we can do so with hope. Our recent Covid Hardship Fund is an embodiment of such hope. Although it did not occur within the 2019-20 fundraising period, your support for this campaign to provide for the ongoing academic and emotional needs of our students raised over £142,000 in just four weeks.

With such ingenuity, such potential and such phenomenal support by our side, our College can surely deliver on the earliest promise of this university:

in a dark time, to bring illumination.

REMAKING TRADITIONS

This year, matriculation in the Sheldonian Theatre was swapped for a video address from the Vice-Chancellor for the first time in Oxford’s history. To make sure our students did not miss out on that wonderful moment of wearing their sub fusc together for the first time, we put on our own Covid-safe college matriculation celebration with the Principal and staff greeting each household bubble in the Somerville gardens for a photo and some fizz (alcoholic or non-alcoholic). Welcome to Somerville!

Photos by John Cairns