Master's Spring 2020 Message

Please forgive a rather long message from me this time, but I did want to give you all a real flavour of how Pembroke, and our students and Fellows, are coping with these extraordinary times we are living through. 

I’m “locked down” at the moment in the Master’s Lodge, but I do of course get the chance to stroll round the College’s wonderful gardens when I want to, and to take the occasional walk along the river to Grantchester.  I do have to say, though, that I’m getting rather “Zoomed out” by being attached to a computer screen for so much of the time.  

Pembroke, together with the rest of the University, is in the process of making detailed preparations for Michaelmas Term. Recent misleading media reports about the University have been very unhelpful and potentially damaging, giving the inaccurate impression that all teaching next year would be online. It won’t. While mass large-scale lectures will indeed take place online, smaller lectures, supervisions and seminars  - the heart of a Cambridge education  - will still be held face to face, but of course with social distancing. The University is also in the process of drawing up guidance to phase the return of current postgraduate students over the summer.

Students

Unbelievably, we are already in the second half of Easter Term. Both students and academics successfully adapted to remote supervisions and lectures in the run-up to Tripos exams. Departments and faculties each developed their own methods of assessment, and the University has - rightly  - insisted that the academic rigour of Cambridge degrees must be maintained and that every finalist should receive a class mark.

Those students taking exams are doing them online this term. They take place over an extended period, to ensure that students living in different time zones are not disadvantaged, and there will be word limits to ensure that no undue exploitation of this extra time takes place. In the sciences, where lab-based assessments play an important part in deciding a student’s competence, alternative methods of evaluation will be used. For non-finalists, there will be a mix of criteria. In the English Tripos, which I supervise, second years have been asked to produce a dossier of essays for each exam paper they are scheduled to sit.

Postgraduate students have also had to adjust the way they work. While PhD students at the writing-up stage may be thankful for a lack of distractions, it is a particularly frustrating time for those who were hoping to undertake fieldwork, experiments or visit archives during the spring and summer. And there are the worries about how the extra cost of their necessarily extended studies might be afforded.

It has also been a trying time for one-year MPhil students, many of whom have had just five and a half months in Cambridge and now find themselves working remotely towards deadlines in June and September.

However, as one might expect of our students, they are finding their ways to collaborate and socialise. I understand that many are participating in virtual study sessions with their friends, which reminds them of friendly faces to break up the tedium of revision, with of course suitable times for a break and chat over some refreshments. Other virtual media such as Minecraft and Animal Crossing have been adopted. Members of the Boat Club have been keeping fit through online fitness sessions using Instagram.

We are acutely aware that not all our students have access to technology or a quiet space to study. Many are worried about their family’s health and employment prospects, as well as the state of the job market when they themselves graduate. Others find it very hard to concentrate outside a formal educational environment. Pembroke is supporting its students as and when we can to help them through this trying time.

The Fellowship is particularly keen that the sense of collegiality is not lost.  We may not be able to meet or dine together, but with the help of the Junior and Graduate Parlour Committees, we have been working on ways to keep everyone connected to Pembroke.

I have been recording regular video messages to the student body and I recently hosted a virtual Town Hall meeting for students. The Porters have been undertaking fortnightly video tours of the College grounds to give those absent (including staff and Fellows) a sense of the place as the gardens come into bloom. Alumni have also been playing their part by providing careers advice via the Pembroke Online Community and via webinars, including our Life Beyond Pembroke series, organised by the Development Office and the 1347 Committee.

Pembroke Papers is a society that showcases graduate research every Thursday evening. So far talks have looked at rocket propulsion and the how society might change post-COVID-19. These talks have moved onto Zoom, and I urge you to join them and learn more about what some of our immensely talented postgraduates are researching.

Likewise, our Director of Music, Anna Lapwood, has been keeping the choirs on their toes. As well as running choir practices online, she has been editing together individual performances by members of the Choir and the Girls’ Choir for Evensongs broadcast live on the Choir’s Facebook page. Anna has also been working with the 800-strong virtual NHS choir – and can be seen presenting BBC Young Musician of the Year on BBC4 on Sunday evenings.

Unfortunately, other societies have been severely affected by the lockdown. There will be no tennis, cricket or May Bumps. Only a couple of months ago it was wet weather that might have postponed many sporting fixtures. While the women’s football team managed to squeeze in their Cuppers Final win against Queens’ before the lockdown, the men may not be promoted despite being crowned second division champions as it wasn’t possible to complete all the league fixtures. Similarly, the cancellation of the Edinburgh Festival means that there will be no touring productions by the Pembroke Players.

I feel particularly sad for our graduating students, who will miss out on May Week, the May Ball, the parties and dinners, and even on the graduation ceremony itself.  We’re encouraging them to take their degree “in absentia” this summer, but we will make sure that there is a Senate House ceremony for them, and a proper College celebration, when they are able to come back as a group.

The response the Development Office received to its request for messages of support for the eight graduating sixth-year medics was very touching – thank you to everyone who submitted something. We now need your help putting something together for graduation. We would love to receive images of Members in Pembroke colours, or with something Pembroke-related, congratulating our students on their graduation and welcoming them to the alumni community. The deadline for this is 15 June, so there is no rush, but if you would like to submit a photo, please send it to Sally March at communications@pem.cam.ac.uk.

Fellows

This has also been a period of adjustment for our Fellowship. Most of them have also had to work from home, since all facilities except medical research laboratories have been closed by the University.

You may have seen Professor Ken Smith, who is Head of the Department of Medicine, and Professor Mike Hulme, Professor of Human Geography, on the University’s “Cambridge Conversations” talks about tackling COVID-19. If you were unable to watch them live, I recommend watching them there on the ‘Dear World, Yours Cambridge’ YouTube channel.

In other Fellowship news, I am delighted to report that Vikram Deshpande, Professor of Materials Engineering has been made a Fellow of the Royal Society and awarded the 2020 Rodney Hill Prize in Solid Mechanics. Professor Menna Clatworthy has been made a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. At the opposite end of the career spectrum, our Research Fellow Dr Chika Tonooka has been awarded the Prince Consort & Thirlwall Prize and Seeley Medal, for the best doctoral dissertation by the History Faculty. I would also like to report that last term we welcomed two new Fellows, Dr Arthur Asseraf, a historian of modern France, North Africa, and the Western Mediterranean and Rebecca Kilner, Professor of Evolutionary Biology and Director of the Museum of Zoology.

Staff

We still have around 70 students in College accommodation, and our staff have continued to ensure that the College runs smoothly during the lockdown. The College nurse, Jan Brighting, has provided invaluable support for our students, on-site and off-site, together with the Dean and Professor Gelsthorpe.  Our Senior Tutor Dan Tucker has been a real tower of strength leading and overseeing the student experience during this difficult time. 

Although the Hall, along with all other communal areas, is closed, members of the Catering Team have been producing hot meals for students, Fellows and staff to take away. Each meal is cooked on demand, and strict social distancing is enforced in the Buttery. This is invaluable for both mental and physical well-being of the students, who appreciate seeing a friendly face, as much as the food itself. The College has also been feeding staff of Corpus Christi, whose kitchens are now closed.

The Porters have, as always, also been an important point of contact for students. As I mentioned above, they have taken to the role of video tour guides with aplomb and will also be working with Admissions to produce special tours for the planned Virtual Open Day. The Head Porter, Gordon Murray has also been “helping” gardener Seb Filipek by mowing Old Court, ably assisted by Head Chef and now chief flower waterer, Seb Little.

A skeleton housekeeping team is also still working on site, although they no longer enter student rooms. Both Housekeeping and Maintenance have taken the opportunity to bring forward some of the deep cleaning and renovation work that would typically be done during the Long Vac. Meanwhile, the Library team has been helping students to have access to the best online resources.

Other departments are working from home, and our IT staff deserve praise for helping make the transition as painless as possible in what was such a short amount of time.

We have furloughed over 100 Pembroke members of staff. With limited rental income coming in this term, no international summer schools, weddings, conferences or alumni events, the College’s finances have been seriously affected. Pembroke is committed to paying the 20% of employees’ wages not covered by the Treasury’s furlough scheme. The Bursar has been working hard to mitigate the financial effects of the crisis, but we are going to face difficult savings decisions for some time to come.

Our aim of collegiality also extends to our staff. It is important that furloughed members of staff are made to feel that they are still part of the Pembroke family, The Dean has been hosting weekly Zoom coffee mornings for Housekeeping staff, the Library team have daily coffee and cake Skype calls, while members of the Development Office touch base every Wednesday with a fiercely competitive Zoom pub quiz.

Alumni

Sadly, we know that there are some Pembroke alumni who have died after contracting COVID-19. I want to offer my sincere condolences to Members who have lost a loved one or a friend during the last couple of months and to the families of Pembroke Members who have been affected.

One of the most notable alumni we lost was comedian and actor Tim Brooke-Taylor (1960). Tim played an important part in the early days of the Pembroke Players, as well as in Footlights. He was a close friend of Eric Idle (1962) and fellow Goodie, Bill Oddie (1960). I will miss that subtly anarchic humour for which he was so appreciated. He was a loyal friend to Pembroke, and we flew the College flag at half-mast in his honour. 

It will come as little surprise that the College has been obliged to cancel or postpone all alumni events through the summer and into the autumn. We aim to move the Foundress’ Feasts and the Year Dinners over to the first available “safe” dates in, I sincerely hope, 2021, but given the current uncertainty, I cannot promise when the new dates will be confirmed. We are also monitoring what this might mean for other occasions in Cambridge or elsewhere.

This has meant moving some events online. Earlier this week, we held a virtual SE Asia event, hosted by Barry Clarke (1981), with alumni joining in from Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Myanmar, which was very successful. We will also be holding a remote May Week Benefactors’ Reception on Saturday 13 June. Over 200 people have already signed up to attend what should be intriguing programme of events involving a performance by the choir and a talk by Professor Mike Hulme.

Pembroke House

Finally, I wanted to draw your attention to Pembroke House’s Covid-19 fundraising appeal. Set up in Walworth, London in the nineteenth century by Pembroke students who were shocked by levels of inequality in the area, it continues to provide hugely important outreach and support for the local community in a severely deprived area of South London. In the face of the current pandemic, it is working to support vulnerable members of the local community with free online wellbeing activities, essential neighbourhood resources and an Emergency Food Distribution service.

So far, their online activities have brought together over 150 people, and the Distribution Hub has delivered over 4,200 food bags and hot meals, with 110 volunteer packers and delivery riders cycling 12,000km in the process.

£93,000 has been raised towards the appeal target of £160,000. Any donations Pembroke Members could make in support would be much appreciated.

To find out more about Pembroke House’s work and hear from some of the volunteers, you can sign up to attend their free virtual event: ‘Live from the Emergency Distribution Hub’ at 6:30 pm on Tuesday 2^nd June.  

We are very proud, as a College, to be associated with the energy and service that runs through all of Pembroke House’s work, especially at this time.  

My very best wishes to you all.  Please keep well, and stay safe!

Chris Smith