Selwyn College and Cambridge United Foundation (CUF) have agreed a new partnership between their two organisations to give students the opportunity to participate in Foundation community activities including volunteering and fundraising.

This forms part of the wider Club and Cambridge University agreement announced last year which has seen some colleges work with the Club on outreach for prospective students and also led to the Abbey Stadium hosting the Varsity matches in March. The Foundation and Selwyn are keen to use this as a pilot to see what might be possible with a view to other Colleges potentially becoming involved in the future.

Cambridge United Foundation works with over 10,000 individuals on an annual basis across the city and in all parts of the community. It aims to use the power of sport to tackle inequality, provide sporting opportunity to those who may be excluded from it and to bring the communities it serves closer together.

Roger Mosey, Master of Selwyn, said: “We are very pleased to be partnering with Cambridge United by opening up new opportunities for Selwyn students to volunteer their time on Foundation programmes.”

“Civic engagement is vitally important for Selwyn, and we believe for the wider University and we value the partnership with Cambridge United. We know how much the football club matters to many of our staff and the community and what important work it does more widely so it is great that there is now this chance to actively participate in it.”

Tim Walker, Head of Programmes at CUF added: “We are very grateful to Roger and Selwyn College for their commitment to the Foundation and their enthusiasm to pioneer this initiative. The wider partnership between the football club and Cambridge University has been very positive in a number of different areas and this is a chance now to extend this work. We ultimately want to give more opportunity to students from many more colleges to work with us and this initiative is a great place to start. We are excited about the future and look forward to welcoming Selwyn students onto our programmes in the coming months.”

The work of Cambridge United Foundation takes many forms, from sport-based mentoring programmes in schools (photo) to open-access football for vulnerable groups and monthly Seniors’ Lunches. These programmes are ever evolving, and it is hoped that the support of Selwyn student volunteers through this new partnership will be vital in increasing their impact.

For further information about the work of Cambridge United Foundation, please visit www.cufcfoundation.com or email foundation@cambridgeunited.com

Cambridge United Foundation mentoring in action with local children

Selwyn has been running a busy programme of events through the autumn, at which students, staff, alumni and friends can engage with some of the big issues of the day. In addition to the packed audiences in the Quarry Whitehouse auditorium, who are able to put questions direct to the speakers, our events are streamed live and on-demand on YouTube – where they have attracted hundreds of thousands of viewers.

Among the highlights:

Mark Urban, the journalist and broadcaster, spoke on October 29th about the new world disorder – the crises in the Middle East and Ukraine, and the geopolitical tensions across the globe. You can watch the session here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt-4r8D38Cc&t=6s

We also hosted a panel discussion on the outcome of the American presidential election. Speakers were Dr Lauren Wilcox, political scientist and Selwyn fellow; Professor Brendan Simms, specialist in the history of international relations; and Dr Christopher Wadibia, an academic and Selwyn alumnus who supported Donald Trump on November 5th. Click here to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goGniz28xWA&t=1s
 

The final event for the term was a conversation with Dame Sally Davies, the UK’s special envoy on antimicrobial resistance, who discussed the alarming prospect of a world without antibiotics. It is also online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tJWlx_XMv0

To browse all our events, please go to our YouTube live page: https://www.youtube.com/@selwyn1882/streams

Selwyn has made another major step towards greater sustainability across its site. The college has added around 70 solar photovoltaic panels to the existing installation on the roof of Cripps Court, increasing green power generation capacity by 50% and meeting around one third of the annual electricity usage of the building. 

We have also installed a battery set at ground level to store photovoltaic power generated by day, and then release it at times of peak use – principally early morning and evenings. The projected value of the electricity savings ranges from £12,000 to £16,000 per annum. In sustainability terms, the 45,000 kWh generated from the panels and the battery array equates to saving over 22,000 kg of CO₂ annually, which will make a material contribution to the college’s reduction of its carbon footprint. This follows other initiatives including the installation of ground source heat pumps in the student accommodation at 29 and 31 Grange Road and 1 Selwyn Gardens.

We’re grateful to the Cripps Foundation which has continued its support for the college with a significant contribution to this project. 

The photograph shows the mix of new and old solar panels on the roof of the Cripps Court buildings.

Selwyn welcomed its new graduate and undergraduate students at matriculation ceremonies on October 4^th and October 7^th respectively. Both included the traditional photograph in Old Court, and the postgraduate students were entertained to dinner in Hall later the same day. The undergraduate matriculation dinner follows a few days later.

We welcome all our new members, and wish them the best of luck in their studies at Selwyn and in Cambridge.

The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2025 was published in September, and it confirms that Selwyn had an excellent year academically.

We are in 5th place of all the Cambridge colleges for our exam results in 2024. Some of the detail shows that we were top of the entire collegiate university for good honours - categorised as firsts and 2:1s - and we also had the best performance for avoiding thirds and fails. We were 9th overall for our number of firsts. Sixteen students won University of Cambridge prizes, and six were awarded starred firsts.

We warmly congratulate all our students on this terrific performance; and thanks go too to our academics for teaching and supporting them.

At the start of September, Selwyn welcomed students to its first bridging course. Between Sunday 1st and Saturday 7th September, 15 of our incoming freshers due to matriculate in October were resident in college for a programme of events designed to aid them in making the transition to life at university and at Cambridge in particular. They were offered some additional online mentoring and supervision across the following weeks after the residential as they prepare to begin their studies.

The 15 students were invited to participate in the bridging course on the basis of contextual data provided to us in the admissions process. We selected the students we believed most deserved additional opportunities because they come from schools and colleges and/or areas that do not traditionally send many people to Cambridge, or because their education has been otherwise disrupted. Beyond that, the bridging course participants have been given an offer of a place through the same rigorous process as all other students at Selwyn, and we believe that all of them have the capacity to thrive at Cambridge.

The initiative has been generously funded by the Isaac Newton Trust’s Widening Participation and Induction Fund, which has agreed to support the first two years of the programme. The course is also indebted to a wide range of Selwyn staff members, four student ambassadors from our current student body, and subject specialists from across 11 different subject areas. Between them, these people allowed us to put together a packed programme offering general and subject-specific academic skills training, an introduction to a range of different forms of support offered by the college, and an orientation within Selwyn and Cambridge.

Dr Tom Smith (pictured), our admissions tutor and History fellow who is directing the course, says: “We believe we’ve put together a programme that will be both stimulating and fun as we look to give people the very best of starts on their journey at Selwyn and Cambridge. We’ll also be looking for every opportunity to learn from the process as we think about refining the course further still for future years. I’m grateful both to the Isaac Newton Trust and to the tremendous support of a number of colleagues and current students in making the course happen.”

Now that the key decisions have been made, here’s what we know about the new undergraduates who will be joining us this autumn.

There will be 118 freshers: 95 home students, and 23 from overseas. They have high achievements already, with those who did A-Levels attaining an average 3.0 A* (arts and social sciences 2.5 A*, sciences 3.7 A*). The students who did the International Baccalaureate averaged 42.8. 

Our admissions team report: “Because of the record number of applicants in autumn 2023, there were strong fields in most triposes so the proportion that made their offers was higher than usual.” Congratulations to them all, including the 18 students who will be coming to Selwyn via the winter or summer pools. (And around 60 of our original applicants were made an offer at another college via the same system.) 

Our state school proportion will be 80%, which is consistent with recent years. We have also met all the regulator’s targets for widening participation among UK-based students. POLAR4 measures the intake from areas with historically low levels of participation in higher education, and Selwyn’s proportion from the two lowest quintiles is 21.2% against a target of 16.6%. On the IMD (index of multiple deprivation) we have recorded a figure of 23.2% against a target of 21.2%. 

We know it’s a long process for applicants - and there’s a lot of hard work for our academics and support teams too - but now we are hugely looking forward to meeting our freshers. We wish them all the best of luck as they start planning for their arrival in Grange Road.

We welcomed back members of the 1989 and 1999 year groups for a reunion on July 13^th. There were visits for alumni to the new library and auditorium, and a catch-up session with the master, before dinner in Hall – which included a speech by 1989 representative Francis Simons.

Photo credit: Mel Cousins

This is part of a packed programme of events across the year for alumni. We have already welcomed members back for their 40^th and 50^th anniversary reunions, and then in September we will have four gatherings:

• On September 5^th, a reunion lunch for 1964 and 1969 year groups – marking the 60^th and 55^th anniversaries of their arrival at Selwyn
• On September 12^th, a lunch for those who matriculated in 1959 or earlier
• On September 14^th, dinner for the 1994 and 2004 year groups
• On September 28^th, Cambridge alumni day for all – and a 10^th anniversary reunion for the 2014 year group

Photo credit: Thisath Ranawaka

For more details, and to book, please click here: https://www.sel.cam.ac.uk/events

Photo credit: Mel Cousins

A Selwyn student has received one of the vice-chancellor’s awards for social impact. The awards, organised by Cambridge Hub and sponsored by the vice-chancellor’s Office, recognise and celebrate achievement in contributing to society. 

Clara Ma, a Gates Cambridge scholar at Selwyn, has received the  Sustainability Award for her contributions to food sustainability programmes at the University of Cambridge. 

Clara is a PhD student at the Cambridge centre for environment, energy and natural resource governance. She assists departments, colleges, and organisations across the university in transitioning to more sustainable food procurement. 

The vice-chancellor Professor Debbie Prentice (in the red jacket) is seen with Clara and other award winners from across Cambridge.