The annual Telephone Campaign is underway, with current students calling alumni and friends to update them on recent developments at Selwyn. We’re also grateful for support for the big challenges facing the college: backing students with bursaries and grants; ensuring we have the best teaching; and providing world-class facilities. There’s more about the plans for a new library and auditorium here: https://www.selwynalumni.com/main-website-pages/library-and-auditorium.


The callers are seen around the Christmas tree in the Master’s Lodge with Roger Mosey. The campaign continues until December 19th, and you can also contact us anytime via development@sel.cam.ac.uk.

The season for Carols began early this year. The first service in Selwyn’s chapel took place on November 29^th; and the Sunday Carol service was actually at the start of Advent.




As has become a tradition, the college choir will now head to London for a service for alumni, families and friends at St James’s Church in Piccadilly. It will be on Thursday December 6^th at 7pm and all are welcome. This year we’re planning a "massed choir anthem" giving you a wonderful opportunity to sing with the choir. Please note that if you’re interested in joining in, you need to be able to arrive early, at 6.20pm, to take part in a 15 minute rehearsal.

Full details of the event can be found at https://www.selwynalumni.com/carol-service.

Planning is well underway for the start of building work on Selwyn’s new library and auditorium – which will be constructed during 2019 and 2020. The project will create a library fit for the digital age, with a mix of communal and individual spaces for students to work; and the auditorium will be a flexible space with tiered seating for lectures and performances. The site is on the corner of Grange Road and West Road, completing the acclaimed Ann’s Court development.

The total cost of the building is expected to be £12.6m, and more than £10m has been raised already. The college is now launching a set of opportunities for alumni and friends to support the project by buying a brick, a chair or a paving stone – with the aim of raising the £2m needed to meet our financial goal.

You can see the plans and make an online donation here:

https://www.selwynalumni.com/main-website-pages/library-and-auditorium

Or for more information, please contact our development team via development@sel.cam.ac.uk or call the Development Office on 01223 767846.

Selwyn will be remembering those who died in conflict with services in the chapel on Sunday November 11^th. There will be a two minutes silence in Old Court at 11am; and later at 6pm the choir will sing Parry’s Songs of Farewell to mark the centenary of the end of the First World War.
  

The college has named a room in honour of Kathleen Lyttelton (1856-1907): campaigner for women’s rights and social justice; journalist; and wife of our first Master.

The room, formerly known as the Tower Room, was opened on Sunday October 14^th by members of the Lyttelton family. Pictured are her three surviving grandchildren – Ned, Lavinia and Kate – with a photograph of Kathleen from the National Portrait Gallery.



Kathleen arrived in Cambridge with her husband Arthur in 1882 when he took up the Mastership of the newly-founded college. She was an early suffragist, and meetings advancing the cause were held at Selwyn from its earliest days. Kathleen went on to have a national role in the campaign for women’s votes; and she became a writer and editor, and gave Virginia Woolf one of her first commissions.

You can read more about Mary Kathleen Lyttelton’s remarkable life in her entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-50712

Our photograph shows Selwyn Fellows and friends gathered with the Lyttelton family at the opening event.

The college is now home to a new generation of graduate students and undergraduates, following matriculation ceremonies on Friday 29 September and Monday 1 October. We’ve been joined this year by a total of more than 200 new students.

Undergraduates were addressed in Hall on Monday morning by the Senior Tutor Dr Mike Sewell and the Praelector Dr Stewart Sage.



They then went into Old Court for the traditional freshers photo where they were joined by the Master Roger Mosey, the Chaplain Hugh Shilson-Thomas and deputy head porter Bob Watson.



We wish our new students happiness and success during their time at Selwyn.

The college admitted its latest Fellow Benefactor at a reunion dinner on Saturday September
22^nd.




Fellow Benefactor status is Selwyn’s highest recognition for philanthropy, marking a gift of
at least £1m. We were delighted to welcome Robin Jeffs to this cohort following his donation to the
college’s new library and auditorium project. Mr Jeffs, who is an alumnus now living in
California, has asked for his contribution to be named in memory of our distinguished former Fellow
Donald Welbourn.

Mr Jeffs becomes the fourth Fellow Benefactor since the creation of the role in 2016. Other holders
of the title are Jim Dickinson, Robert Martin and Katya Speciale. We are extremely grateful to them
for their support for future generations at Selwyn.  

The college is looking forward to welcoming its new undergraduates at the end of September. This year they will total 119: 57 men and 62 women.
Of the UK students, 74% are from state schools. This is up from 71% in 2017, and compares with an official Cambridge University target of 63.4%.
There are 28 international students. The countries represented are Canada, China, Cyprus, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Romania, Singapore, Switzerland and Thailand.
Our photo shows some of the freshers from 2017. Their successors will formally become members of Selwyn on Monday October 1st.

 

Another new Fellow who will arrive at Selwyn this autumn is Dr Deepak Venkateshvaran - our director of studies in Physics, and a European Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cavendish Laboratory. He comes to Selwyn from Fitzwilliam College on the completion of a three year teaching bye-fellowship funded by the Isaac Newton Trust.

Deepak’s research interests focus on understanding the fundamental properties of organic semiconducting polymers for their use in novel electronic devices. In 2014, his work on organic polymer devices for waste heat to useful energy conversion was published in the journal Nature [D. Venkateshvaran et al., Nature 515, 384-388 (2014)] and laid the foundation for multiple ongoing research projects on organic thermoelectrics at the Cavendish Laboratory.

Between 2014 and 2018, he worked on organic polymer-based computing and information processing devices, and demonstrated the experimental conditions under which electron spins are efficiently transported to long distances of over a micrometre. Deepak earned his PhD in Physics at the University of Cambridge. Prior to this, he worked as a member of technical staff at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Munich. Outside research and teaching, Deepak plays the Tabla in music ensembles that explore the confluence between Indian rhythm and western classical music.

 

We’ll be welcoming six new Fellows to Selwyn this autumn.

One of them will be Dr Katarzyna Macieszczak. She completed her PhD at the University of Nottingham, after taking her undergraduate degree at the University of Warsaw. She will become the Henslow Research Fellow.

Dr Macieszczak studies the area of ’quantum metrology’ which is concerned with making very precise and sensitive measurements by exploiting quantum mechanical effects. She is principally a theoretical physicist, but her research bears directly on the development of practical instruments and especially quantum computing. While in Cambridge she will be part of the Theory of Condensed Matter group at the Cavendish.