News Articles

Congratulations to Selwyn fellow and director of studies in Physics Dr Deepak Venkateshvaran, who has been awarded a prestigious Royal Society university research fellowship.

These are annual awards for outstanding scientists who have the potential to become leaders in their chosen fields. Generously funded for five years, the fellowship scheme provides an opportunity for an awardee to build an independent research career, and offers the freedom to pursue ambitious research projects of fundamental and applied interest.

The research programme that Dr Venkateshvaran intends to pursue will explore novel electrical routes to controlling the mechanics of organic polymers at the nanoscale. The research direction will bring together his knowledge of musical drums at the macroscale with polymer electronics on the nanoscale, and build functional electromechanical devices for use in bio-sensing, materials characterisation and applied non-linear dynamics.

There’s more about the fellowships here:

https://royalsociety.org/news/2020/08/royal-society-announces-university-research-fellowships-for-2020/

At Selwyn we are very much looking forward to greeting our new freshers this autumn. We are expecting this to be the most socially diverse cohort in the college’s history, with our percentage state school students projected to reach a new high of 79%.

In the light of the changing positions of UK governments on A-Level results, this is the latest statement on admissions from Cambridge University.

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Following the announcement from Ofqual on 17th August (and similar announcements by other examination boards and authorities) we are working as quickly as possible to provide certainty for students who were made an initial offer by the University.

While we require time to work through the process we would like to provide the following reassurances to applicants:

Applicants with a place already confirmed will be admitted

We look forward to welcoming all offer holders who have had their admission confirmed to date. These offers are final and will not change or be withdrawn unless specifically agreed between the college and the student.

Applicants who were made an offer that was not confirmed following release of initial results will be admitted if their centre assessment grades (CAGs) now meet the conditions of their offer

Any applicant who was made an offer by the University will be admitted if their CAGs meet the conditions of their offer and if they still wish to come to Cambridge. This does not apply to offer-holders for mathematics because places are confirmed on the basis of additional Sixth Term Examination Papers (STEP).

Any student who successfully appeals the assessment process and therefore meets the conditions of their offer will be admitted.

Deferral to 2021 will be required for some offer holders

The number of places we can confirm in 2020 will depend upon a number of factors, including our ability to increase places in subjects, our teaching capacity and the amount of accommodation that colleges can provide. Given the capacity issues caused by this unprecedented situation, some offer holders who meet their offers after 17 August will have to defer for a year. We will do as much as we can to minimise this requirement by seeking volunteers for deferral from across the whole cohort, including those who have already had their places confirmed for 2020. Further information on this will be released over the coming days.

Students who have not previously had their place confirmed and who just missed their offer based on CAGs will not be admitted

Regrettably, given the unprecedented situation we cannot now admit any offer holders who have not met the conditions of their offer based on revised results.

If students have met the University’s typical offer for their course but not the offer set by their chosen college, please contact that College for further advice.

If students sit examinations this autumn and gain the results required to meet the terms of their original offer they will be admitted in 2021

We understand that there will be an opportunity to take examinations this autumn, and that students may decide to sit those if their summer grades are lower than expected.  The University of Cambridge will confirm entry in October 2021 if the terms of the original offer are met as a result of taking those examinations. Where possible, students will be admitted to the College where their offer is currently held. Students should notify the College from which they are currently holding an offer by no later than 31 August if they intend to take the autumn examinations.

Timing

We expect to receive CAGs via UCAS. However we do not yet know the timescale for receiving these data and so we ask offer holders to continue to be patient. If in the meantime candidates or their schools wish to advise us informally regarding CAGs they should contact the College that made the offer so that we know to expect a revised result.

Although this is as much information as we can provide at this stage, please rest assured that we are committed to ensuring that everyone knows where they stand as soon as possible.

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You can read an earlier statement by the vice-chancellor, Professor Stephen Toope, here:

https://www.cam.ac.uk/coronavirus/news/statement-on-2020-a-level-results-and-cambridge-university-admissions

If you are holding a conditional offer of a place at Selwyn College and have met all the conditions in your offer and have the grades required, congratulations!  We will contact you via email, and you will soon see your confirmation through UCAS Track. There is no need for you to contact us.

If you have not quite met the offer, please be patient as we will be in touch with you once our decisions are finalised.

If you are not holding an offer from us, we regret we cannot take an application at this time. Please do not contact the college.

Selwyn College, like all the colleges of Cambridge University, does not participate in clearing.  If your examination results are much better than expected and you are not eligible for adjustment and you wish to try for a place at Cambridge, the only option is to apply in the next admissions cycle for entry in October 2021.

There is more information from the University available here: http://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/applying

Good progress is being made on the construction of the Bartlam library and the Quarry Whitehouse auditorium on the site at the corner of Grange Road and West Road. The latest photographs show the brickwork rising on the west-facing side of the building, and the arches are in place on the colonnade which will be part of the interior of Ann’s Court.

The delay caused by the health emergency means that completion is now expected to be in March 2021. The total cost is estimated to be £12.6m, which has been fully funded by alumni and friends.

It has been announced by Lambeth Palace that the Archbishop of Canterbury has awarded Selwyn alumnus Professor Joseph Galgalo his highest award, the Cross of St Augustine, for services to the Anglican Communion.

The citation says that Professor Galgalo has been honoured for being a leading Anglican African theologian, an entrepreneurial vice-chancellor of a Kenyan University and a significant influence in the Anglican communion.

Professor Galgalo has taught African and Systematic Theology at St Paul’s Limuru for eighteen years. As vice-chancellor for the last nine, he has overseen extraordinary growth in this ecumenical university: trebling the number of students and academics; founding three new campuses; and, without overseas grants, establishing thirteen new buildings on the Limuru campus.

After teaching children of nomadic parents at Bubisa primary school in Northern Kenya and studying theology at Kabare and Limuru, he gained his PhD in Systematic Theology from Selwyn College in 2001, contributing a chapter to the Festschrift for his supervisor Professor David Ford – a Selwyn fellow – in 2013.

He wrote African Christianity: the Stranger Within (2008); edited Theological Education in Africa (2004); and co-edited Theology, Society and Disability (2010); and contributed to Witnessing Together: Global Anglican Perspectives on Evangelism and Witness (2019). 

In 2015 he gave the inaugural seminar papers of the Mission Theology in the Anglican Communion project at both Durham University and Lambeth Palace. In February 2020, he gave the prestigious biennial Henry Martyn Lectures at Cambridge University entitled ‘The uniqueness and universality of Jesus Christ: inculturation Christologies in Africa’. At the time, he joined us for dinner in the college; and we are pleased now to congratulate him on this award.

Credit: photo courtesy of Dr Graham Kings.

The new edition of ‘Selwyn’ magazine includes a series called ‘Postcards from the Lockdown’, in which college fellows, staff and students write about their experiences during the health emergency. The postcards are appearing now on our Facebook page. One of them is from a Selwyn fellow who was truly on the frontline during the crisis: Dr Charlotte Summers, who is a university lecturer in intensive care medicine. She has written this account of her recent work.

“Intensive care specialists are like the canaries in a coalmine. They’re often the first to spot something that’s new and worrying; and it was around Christmas time last year that I remember first hearing about doctors in Wuhan, China seeing some unusual symptoms that concerned them in their patients who needed mechanical ventilation. By January I was sure that there was something very nasty heading our way.

This is the very challenge I’ve been trained for. My specialism within intensive care is in respiratory illnesses; and I had previously been part of the preparations for one of the previous waves of a coronavirus - MERS. It’s no exaggeration to say that my career has been exactly about preparing for a pandemic. I couldn’t be sure how bad it would be - but I suspected it was likely to be the biggest challenge in our lifetimes so far.

I was chosen to lead the bronze ICU crisis team at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, which meant I was involved in the managerial and organisational challenges alongside the medical ones. We completely reconfigured the entire hospital: our starting position was 32 intensive care beds, and in mid-March there were projections that we would run out of space by the end of the month. In fact, we rapidly increased the number of beds to 84, and thankfully they have never all been full. But at times I was waking up in the night wondering “will it be enough?” It’s not just about equipment; it’s also about the vital human resources, such as having enough suitably trained nurses. We needed to rapidly train nurses about the needs of the Intensive Care Unit. 

It is incredibly complex to look after COVID-19 patients in ICU. That’s obviously because of the seriousness of their conditions - but also because we are working in full PPE. It is hot and exhausting, spending hours donned up in full gear; and throughout we have been hearing reports from around the country of medical staff themselves ending up in intensive care. But we have been fortunate in Cambridge that we always had adequate PPE, and that is partly because of wonderful collaboration with the University, which helped source supplies.   

There is no avoiding the sad fact that many of our patients die. A typical mortality rate in intensive care is around 20%, but with Covid-19 it has been more than 40% in the UK. We are dealing with something on a massive scale. Several of our patients who recovered from the virus were keen to talk to the television crews who visited the hospital, to praise the care they’d been given and some of the innovative treatments we’d been using.

I have never at any stage regretted the career path that brought me here: not for a single minute. In some of those sleepless nights during the crisis, I have worried about whether the emergency plan would deliver in the way we hoped. But I have never doubted that I’m doing what I always intended to do, and I hope that my teams and I have made a real difference to some very poorly people.

The reaction of the public has been tremendous, too. I’d been so busy that I’d missed the start of the idea of clapping for the NHS on a Thursday night, and it was only the second time it happened that I really noticed it. I’d arrived home about five minutes before eight o’clock, and I went outside with my family. I was completely overwhelmed by the applause and the banging of pots and pans that could be heard throughout my Cambridgeshire village. This is not like me at all, but I ended up in floods of tears. It really did make a difference to know that people were behind us, and that - in these terrible times - the community was coming together.”
 

June 26th would have been graduation day at Selwyn. All this year’s ceremonies in Cambridge have been postponed because of the health emergency, but the college flew its flag anyway as a tribute to our graduands and their achievements. Porters Kevin Sargent and Ian O’Connor were photographed in Old Court before their climb to the Tower to hoist the flag.

A slideshow includes pictures of many of this year’s graduands:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3leeFLkPi4

Another key part of the week’s events is the leavers’ service in chapel; and we can at least offer this online. It’s intended for people of all faiths and none, as one of the ways in which the community joins together for the celebrations ahead. This year, for the first time, there are prayers from the Jewish and Islamic traditions as well as the Christian ones. You can watch the service in full here:

https://youtu.be/yZnB9cr86rQ

It’s hoped that a graduation ceremony in person will be able to take place during 2021. In the meantime, we congratulate our graduands and send them every good wish from the college.

June 24th would have been the start of graduation ceremonies across Cambridge; and that night at Selwyn we’d have been holding our graduands’ dinner. How we wish that were possible – and we look forward to the day when it will happen. We are hoping this will be in the next academic year.

Another key part of the events is the Leavers’ service in chapel; and we're delighted that we can at least offer this online. It’s intended for people of all faiths and none, as one of the ways in which the community joins together for the celebrations ahead. This year, for the first time, there are prayers from the Jewish and Islamic traditions as well as the Christian ones.

Everyone is welcome to watch too, as part of our tribute to the students who have contributed so much to the college in the last three or four years. Some of their photos appear at the end of the video.

https://youtu.be/yZnB9cr86rQ