The Health of the College

Professor Emily Shuckburgh OBE (1994) proposed the health of the College at the Commemoration Feast, 10 March 2022

Master, Fellows, scholars and guests.

It is always a pleasure to return to Trinity, so much of which is reassuringly ever unchanged – as the College motto says, “semper eadem”. But it really is semper eadem in the Elizabethan sense of consistency, rather than stagnation.

Let me highlight three aspects that I believe help define the College’s greatness: consistency of support – both pastoral and financial – consistency in the production of seminal ideas and innovations, and consistency of enlightened leadership.

I came to Trinity to take Part III of the mathematics tripos. At the time the subject was overwhelmingly male dominated, but in 1994 I was one of an unusually large cohort of three female student to arrive at Great Gate. We could have felt quite out of place, but we were warmly welcomed by the then Master, Michael Atiyah, and his wife, and we were strongly supported throughout our studies by the mathematics Fellows and the wider College community.

With also having benefited from financial support in scholarships, I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge my deep gratitude to the College. Today I am the director of Cambridge Zero, a still relatively new initiative which aims to support a climate-resilient, zero carbon future, drawing on the full capacity of the Collegiate University. Cambridge Zero has been generously supported by the Isaac Newton Trust and by Trinity alumni.

As the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports have emphasised, the impacts of climate change are now being felt in every region across the world, with extreme heatwaves, floods and wildfires destroying lives and livelihoods. The science is clear – any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future. In a worryingly uncertain world, as we slowly emerge from the COVID pandemic and witness the horrific events unfolding in Ukraine, climate change is a predictable and entirely preventable global crisis. The next ten years are critical for climate action. A better future is possible, but it requires a radical rethink of the economy & society.

With, famously, more Nobel Prizes than most countries, the College’s contribution to the advancement of knowledge is undeniable. Ground-breaking climate-related research being conducted today by Trinity Fellows includes the development of energy storage technologies that will be essential as we move to an increasingly electrified world, novel approaches that could reflect sunlight to provide a local cooling to counter the warming of critical geographies such as the Arctic, and key aspects of environmental economics and policy.

Trinity has long led the way in ensuring research is translated into solutions that can be deployed at scale in the real world. The College founded the first Science Park in the UK more than 50 years ago to provide an infrastructure to support that. Now there is a real imperative to foster such a support structure for green innovation to accelerate the transition to a net zero economy.

Last year the College altered its investment policy so the endowment now has a mandate to improve its environmental footprint and achieve net zero before 2050, in addition to delivering long-run return. As part of this strategy, the College has divested from fossil fuel investments in public equities. This move was long campaigned for and strongly supported by students in Trinity’s Responsible Investment Society.

The College’s Climate Change Working Group, of which I am a member, is actively exploring all avenues by which the College can reduce its direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions. These are exciting times – there are so many ways in which the College can expand its influence beyond its immediate footprint by using its land holdings and other assets as exemplars of decarbonisation. Moreover, many Trinity alumni are leading climate action activities or supporting sustainable development initiatives across the world.

The majority of today’s students were born after the turn of the millennium and many will live into the 22nd century. Following in the footsteps of the many global leaders who have studied at Trinity, they will be the ones who help global society navigate through the coming decades.

And I am sure that they will do so with the same resolve and determination as their eminent predecessors. Semper eadem.