12 Convocation Newsletter Spring/Summer 2021
Five minutes with… Jesse Cantrill, donor and member of the former Convocation, talks about his links with the University and the support he provides as an alumnus. Give us some background about yourself and what you did prior to studying with the University of London. I studied Classics at the University of Pennsylvania and, after five years of military service in the 1960s, I returned to Philadelphia to do a Master of Business Administration degree at Penn’s Wharton School. I have been a management consultant for over 40 years specialising in the design of employee compensation programs. Some of my work was in Europe and the Middle East, so I often stopped in London during my travels; one day I visited Senate House and picked up an application. You studied an MSc in Organisational Behaviour via the University’s distance learning programme with academic direction from Birkbeck College. How was your study experience? I found the program quite demanding, different from the Wharton School in many ways but at the same or higher level. I visited the course director, Professor David Guest, several times and made a point to sit the exams in London. I once told Professor Guest about my Wharton experience and he told me that he had known Eric Trist, a renowned organisational consultant, who had been my major advisor at Wharton. So I quickly felt connected to the University of London. What impact has your University of London degree had on you, both professionally and personally? In the States, the Wharton MBA is the more important credential in my work. But the London degree in Organisational Behaviour has given me a better understanding of the impact of pay on individual employees and has been a wonderful help in my work with international development organisations. You were a member of the University of London Convocation from 2000 until its closure in 2003. What did being part of Convocation mean to you? I understood that Convocation was the alumni society of the University so I didn’t hesitate to join. And I happened to be in London in 2003 when the infamous meeting was held to tell members that Convocation was being disbanded. I failed at that meeting to stand up and say that I thought we were losing a great opportunity to stay in touch with alumni and to encourage them to give back to the school. So thank you to the University’s Development Office for a second chance to comment on this matter. I must say now that I am confused about Convocation. I understood then that the organisation was closed, but now I am learning about a Convocation Project to get in touch with former members and I am being interviewed for a Convocation Newsletter. And when I look up London Convocation on the internet, I find that there is a Convocation Trust that has awarded more that one million pounds since 2012. So I don’t understand what is the current role of Convocation and how it relates to the University’s Development Office, which was recently established to maintain a relationship with alumni and to promote alumni giving.
View of Birkbeck, University of London and Senate House.
