SDC Builders awards grant to Lucy Cavendish College towards a new lending library system
The College is delighted to announce the award, providing essential financial and academic support for talented disadvantaged Year 13 students
The College community is thrilled to announce the award, providing essential funds for its new Passivhaus development
Lucy Cavendish is dedicated to providing opportunities for exceptional students who come from marginalised and under-served communities so that they can learn and research at the highest levels. By 2025-2026 it aims to be broadly representative of UK society in the composition of its UK student body. In doing so it is significantly increasing diversity for the whole University and spear-heading widening access at both undergraduate and graduate levels across the institution. The College’s aim is to double its student numbers which is the equivalent of founding a whole new Cambridge college.
The new building will house the increase in numbers of undergraduate students with exceptional potential from under-represented groups and of postgraduates studying and researching major inter-disciplinary issues facing humankind and the planet. The building and its learning spaces have been designed to facilitate integration across our increasingly diverse student body and foster an engaged, inclusive and welcoming community. It will support technology-enabled formal learning, and act as the College hub of global connectivity. It will be the ideal environment for students to make personal friends and professional networks outside their subject area that will last for years to come.
With expert consultancy from the Leonard Cheshire charity, the building will also be co-accessible, attractive to a broad spectrum of different cognitive and learning styles, and future-proofed for the fast-evolving international standards in personal, transformational, assistive technologies.
Read more about Lucy’s Passivhaus development here
The College can already demonstrate progress in achieving its new mission and in October 2021 it will be making a big step towards the aim of its students being broadly representative of UK society as it welcomes its first, all gender, standard age entry.
Lucy Cavendish was also the first college to sign up for the Innovative Cambridge Foundation Year which will provide a new pathway into Cambridge for those who have experienced significant interruption in their secondary schooling, or taken a combination of subjects which do not provide an adequate academic foundation for degree level study at the University.
The College will also seek to increase the number of postgraduate students from low-income groups and will focus on those programmes which are inter-disciplinary by design, and which equip students with the advanced research skills and knowledge to take on leadership roles in organisations aligned to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). Over the last two years, the College has raised donations to co-fund 20 studentships for low-income students with further studentships for applicants with leadership potential from fragile or war-scarred communities or from low-status minority groups in their home country.
The Wolfson Foundation
The Wolfson Foundation is an independent charity with a focus on research and education. Its aim is to support civil society by investing in excellent projects in science, health, heritage, humanities and the arts.
Since it was established in 1955, some £1 billion (£2 billion in real terms) has been awarded to more than 14,000 projects throughout the UK, all on the basis of expert review.
Twitter: @wolfsonfdn