The next Reunion will be on 21-22 September 2012
Homerton’s Charter Campaign aims to increase the College’s ability to support all its members but particularly students – undergraduates and postgraduates – and the research and teaching which are the hallmarks of a Cambridge College.
Homerton College Charter Campaign 2012
Homerton College Charter Campaign Brochure
In 2010 we received the Royal Charter and thus put in place the last building block of our new structure as a Cambridge College. We have been building on strong foundations and will maintain our world-wide reputation for excellence in education. Homerton’s greatest strength has always been its students and staff. We aspire to allow all our students to reach their full potential while at Cambridge and to have them taught by staff who by combining teaching and research are the best in their field. These are our aims for the Charter Campaign.
All Cambridge Colleges deliver a distinctive education, distinguished not only by small group teaching in supervisions, but by the opportunities for students to take part in the enormous range of activities which Cambridge offers, including international exchange programmes, travel abroad, volunteering, sport, drama and music. Our aim is to allow students to build on their school-leaving achievements and to emerge from Homerton as highly-educated young adults willing to play their part in society and to take responsibility for themselves and others, using their Cambridge experiences to the full. Many of them need financial assistance to take up such opportunities and higher fees will increase that need – the College can help but we need to do more.
Lots of people giving small amounts annually or monthly, ideally through Gift Aid, can provide a substantial Annual Fund which we can use for all students. For example £10 a month with Gift Aid provides £150 in a year. That would allow an undergraduate to stay in Cambridge for a week as a volunteer helping local deprived children on a holiday scheme or allow a postgraduate to travel to a conference to give a paper. Four such donations could send a student to Africa to work with Camfed on the education of girls in rural areas or would fund a student to work with ‘Engineers without Borders’, rebuilding villages and roads in India or the Caribbean. These small amounts added together make a significant difference to what we can do.
We urge you to consider Annual Giving: an area where everyone can help.
Research is a key activity at Cambridge and underpins all our teaching. We are proud of the number of students who go on to take research degrees and are able to offer Charter Bursaries to some of them. The advent of high undergraduate fees for UK students poses a threat to graduate recruitment from an already debt-laden cohort. We would like to be able to offer more graduate bursaries, particularly to UK students, giving them a flying start to a professional or academic career. For those who have completed a doctorate our Junior Research Fellowships offer an opportunity to get a foot on the academic ladder even while jobs are scarce. Our annual target is to support six stipendiary Junior Research Fellows and three more whose stipends are funded elsewhere. They, with the graduate students, form a vibrant and brilliant addition to the College’s research culture.
A full graduate bursary costs about £20,000 but smaller amounts between £5,000 and £15,000 will also help to augment College bursaries.
There are new opportunities for Homerton in Cambridge. We aim to build on our reputation for teaching Education as a social science, as well as a professional skill, by intensifying the teaching of the social sciences at Homerton in such areas as law, economics, politics, psychology, sociology and social anthropology and increasing the number of teaching fellows and associates in these areas as well as others. Supervision teaching and directing studies in all subjects is largely funded through the College fee and at the heart of the fellowship are a number of core teaching fellows whose salaries are paid directly by the College. These are permanent posts with a salary of just above £30K a year, which with the normal on-costs of pensions and national insurance cost about £50K a year. To endow such a post in perpetuity costs about £1million.
Moreover, in today’s difficult job market we would like to be able to help young academics by offering short term posts to get them moving up the academic ladder and offering appropriate teaching experience and research support to help them get jobs. £100,000 would help to cover the costs of three such posts benefiting both the College and the young academics alike.
Donations of £100,000 and larger gifts to the College’s Endowment would underpin these essential appointments and ensure that Homerton’s students are well taught by teachers of the highest calibre.
Ways of giving to the Charter Campaign
Leaving a Legacy to Homerton College
For further information about Homerton's Charter Campaign please contact us in the Development and Roll Office, either by email at campaign@homerton.cam.ac.uk or on 01223 747270.
