Written by Bronwen Butler, Geography (International programme) BA.

To kick off philanthropy month on February 1^st UCL held its annual Scholarships and Bursaries Reception. The event has gone from strength to strength each year; from a tiny affair which Provost Michael Arthur jokingly said “could have been held in a broom cupboard” to a vibrant event to which over 500 people are invited to celebrate UCL, the generosity of its donors and the importance of philanthropy.

Image: (left – right): Professor Geraint Rees, Provost Michael Arthur, Naimeh Masumy, Janie Gammans, Maureen Amar, Richard Jenkins

President and Provost Professor Michael Arthur opened the event with a warm welcome to all the donors, staff and recipients in attendance. He discussed the importance of the UCL philanthropic Campaign and the university’s achievement as one of the top universities at fundraising in the UK this year. He briefly looked to UCL’s future developments before introducing the first student speaker Naimeh Masumy.

Naimeh Masumy is a full time LLM Law Student at UCL, originally from Iran. She is an ambitious young woman who has clearly battled against the odds to be here. Naimeh is a student with a bright future in the energy law sector but she is one of many people who simply could not think about life at UCL without a scholarship:

 “I have to say I would not be here without the Ardalan Family Scholarship. In my whole life, I have come to realize that education is the most transcendent gift one can be given, and the Ardalan Scholarship gave me that gift, it allowed me to have a foot in the door of the future, a future I was once unable to envision”.

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Professor Peter Brocklehurst at SEVEN
(Courtesy of Ben Sharman)

As part of a series of events to celebrate International Women’s Day at UCL, the UCL Institute for Women’s Health put on a special production of SEVEN – a documentary play based on the lives of seven inspirational women from seven countries around the world.

Presented as a reading, seven of the most senior men at UCL lent their voices to the female activists: Professor Michael Arthur (UCL President & Provost), Professor Sir John Tooke (Vice Provost, Health and Head of UCL School of Life & Medical Sciences), Professor David Lomas (Vice Provost-elect, Health and Dean of Medical Sciences), Professor Anthony Smith (Vice Provost, Education & Student Affairs), Professor Alejandro Madrigal (Pro Vice Provost for the America’s), Professor Peter Brocklehurst (Director, UCL Institute for Women’s Health) and Professor Anthony Costello (Pro Vice Provost for Africa & the Middle East and Director of the UCL Institute for Global Health).

The play, which was directed by Tove Eriksson and organised by Asma Ashraf and Professor Judith Stephenson (UCL Institute for Women’s Health), depicts how these women overcame extreme adversity to become leaders for women’s rights, both within their own society and globally.

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Written by Luke Davis, Communications Manager (Education)

On a balmy Monday evening (9 June), all 22 winners of UCL’s two teaching award schemes headed to the UCL Institute of Child Health on Guilford Street to receive their well-earned teaching prizes.

The ceremony, which drew an audience of more than 200, gave colleagues, family and friends a welcome opportunity to hear more about the winners’ work and why they had impressed the judges.

UCLU Education & Campaigns Officer Keir Gallagher took to the stage to introduce the Student Choice winners, while UCL Vice-Provost (Education) Anthony Smith was on hand to review the achievements of the Provost’s Teaching Award winners.

The summaries painted a vivid picture of the scope and scale of work underway across the university, with several themes beginning to emerge.

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The event panel

I’m pretty new to UCL (two weeks in to be exact) so when I saw an event was being run on UCL 2034 – the new strategy to move the university forward over the next 20 years – I jumped at the opportunity to go.

I wanted to find out what questions the UCL community has about the strategy, which issues they think should be addressed and any thoughts that they have about how best to do so. Intrigued by what I might hear, I attended ‘Any UCL Questions?’ on June 5 and you’ll be pleased to discover that it didn’t disappoint.

Jonathan Dimbleby, chair of the event and UCL alumnus, reflected on his time studying here in the late ‘60s, back when there were only 4,500 students (can you imagine?!). He said that there have certainly been many changes, aside from increasing student numbers, since then, including more diversity and engagement with different communities, but added that there is still some way to go. This neatly opened the topic for discussion – what is UCL’s long-term interest? Where should we as a university go, and importantly not go, next?

Each of the panel, comprising Professor Michael Arthur (UCL President & Provost), Professor Dame Hazel Genn (Dean of UCL Laws), Professor Mark Miodownik (UCL Mechanical Engineering) and Vimbai Dzimwasha (UCL student), spent a tightly regulated two minutes describing what UCL means to them and those aspects of the strategy that they’ve identified as important.

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