The College is sad to announce the death on 23 March 2011 of Mr Tim Everton, Emeritus Fellow, and Deputy Principal of Homerton College from 1992 – 2001.
Tim Everton joined Homerton in October 1992 as Deputy Principal, having previously been Head of PGCE at the University of Leicester. Born in the West Midlands in 1951, Tim went to Queen Mary’s Grammar School, Walsall, and then read Mathematics at Keble College, Oxford. He became a secondary Mathematics teacher in Walsall and Shrewsbury before taking a Masters at Keele and starting in teacher education in Ulster, from where he moved to Leicester. This career trajectory was ideal for Homerton. Tim’s early experience of college life at Oxford, his period as a secondary teacher and his knowledge of initial teacher training and research gave him enormous strengths with which to tackle Homerton’s development. He was a perfect complement to me and I owe him a great deal, as does the College.
He began work even before he and Val moved to Cambridge to set up a household comprising three daughters, three little black cats and two dogs. Early in June 1992 Homerton had been advised to make an entry for the Research Assessment Exercise. Tim had done an RAE before at Leicester and he volunteered to oversee Homerton’s entry, tirelessly travelling from Leicester to encourage, exhort and oversee the offerings from a staff who had never encountered such an exercise. The College, the staff and Tim emerged triumphant at the end of the year with money to spend on research. It was the beginning of a ten-year period in which Tim, together with John Gray and Jean Rudduck, put Homerton on the research map. At the same time he somehow managed to maintain his own writing.
Tim’s extensive knowledge of teacher education was an asset to all staff. Under his leadership they found a balance between teaching and research which helped Homerton to emerge as “a leading national provider of teacher education with outstanding Ofsted grades”. Tim understood how best to handle Ofsted as the inspectorate became more draconian and less interested in dialogue about best practice. This he did with his customary patience and calm, achieving outstanding results from hard-pressed colleagues and students.
Tim’s mathematical background was essential for Homerton’s development. Faced with an innumerate Principal whose strategic direction was intuitive, Tim provided the carefully calculated basis on which strategic success depended. When in 2001 he became Dean in the University’s new Faculty of Education his grasp of finance and planning were essential parts of that Faculty’s success and his talents were respected and appreciated by the University’s senior management.
Tim remained a Fellow of Homerton, moving to become our first Emeritus Fellow when he took early retirement from the University. Despite the lure of becoming a publican in York – a long-held ambition – he remained closely in touch with Homerton and was at our Charter Garden Party in June 2010. His death is untimely. No-one deserved a long, unhurried retirement more than Tim, for his energy and commitment were unbounded. Homerton owes its present status to his efforts and we shall remember him with huge affection.
K P Pretty
31 March 2011
Homerton College has officially become the University of Cambridge's newest self governing full College.
On Friday 12th March Sir David Harrison, the Chairman of the Homerton Board of Trustees, formally handed the Royal Charter to the Principal and Fellows of the College.
Homerton has its origins in Homerton in east London, dating back to the late 17th century. It moved to Cambridge as a mixed teacher-training college in 1894, taking over the buildings of a failing Cavendish College. After three-quarters of a century in Cambridge it became an Approved Society of the University in 1976, its students being matriculated to take the BEd degree in the Education Tripos.
From 2001, it has been diversifying from teacher-training and now has 600 undergraduate members studying all the Cambridge Triposes, except medicine and veterinary medicine, and 500 postgraduates, the majority of whom take the PGCE, maintaining the College's former role as the foremost teacher-training college in England.
Homerton is the most southerly of the Cambridge colleges and one of the largest.
The Principal, Dr Kate Pretty, who has combined her role as Head of House with being Chairman of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and, more recently, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for International Strategy in the University, said: "We are delighted to have finally reached this stage of recognition by the University and the Privy Council, which marks the College's coming-of-age after 115 years in Cambridge. We are proud of our long tradition in Education and look forward to taking a full-part in Collegiate Cambridge".
Dr Kate Pretty, Principal, receives the Royal Charter from the Chair of Trustees, Sir David Harrison
Homerton College is delighted to announce that it intends to award a number of Charter Graduate Scholarships to members of the College embarking on a new course of graduate degree study from October 2010. Each Scholarship will be worth £1,500 per annum for one year (MPhil courses) or three years (PhD courses). Awards will be made on academic merit.
The College congratulates the following students who received Cambridge Blues awards in the Academic Year 2009-2010:
