Your Gift Makes a Difference

The funds have also played a vital role in supporting students affected by the pandemic. Your support helped three postgraduate students who were concerned about their financial situation, if their PhD were to take longer than planned. We have also been able to assist students who had unexpected travel or who had to quarantine elsewhere before coming into residence, as well as being able to help students who are self-isolating. This has made a huge difference, alleviating financial worries at a time when anxiety is high.

“The grant was incredibly important in helping me with my time at Cambridge – I am so grateful.”
Ella, 2017, undergrad student

Donations enabled us to offer 15 studentships to new postgraduates starting in October 2019. Without this funding, it would not have been possible for these students to come to Trinity Hall. We were also able to offer bursaries to an additional twenty-six undergraduates. These bursaries help with everyday living costs so that students can focus on their studies. We were also able to help disabled students by covering costs of travel and specific software that were required for medical reasons. Donations also helped us award over £32,500 across 35 grants to those who needed financial help for their academic research or travel to conferences before the start of lockdown.

“I would like to thank all the donors who have helped me in my Cambridge journey.”
Jialin, 2019, postgrad student

Admissions and Outreach

Donations have enabled us to hire a Director of Admissions, Dr Marcus Tomalin, who joined us at the beginning of the last academic year. Marcus fulfils a crucial role in College by managing the undergraduate and postgraduate admissions processes, and also leading initiatives to encourage applications from under-represented demographic groups. Amongst other initiatives, the Admissions and Tutorial team have carried out the HE+ Somerset programme, which brings a number of highly able Year 12 students from 11 state schools in Somerset to receive information about applying to university, participate in subject tester sessions and undertake a super-curricular project (the academic posters shown in the picture). They also conducted the annual BaNES (Bath and North East Somerset) Residential in September 2019, with Year 12 students from 9 different schools within Bath and North East Somerset. Following an overnight visit to Cambridge in September 2019, Isobel Sanders (Schools Liaison Officer & Admissions Assistant) and Dr Marcus Tomalin (Director of Admissions) travelled to Bath for the BaNES Conference in March this year, whilst it was still permitted. As part of the residential and conferences programme, the students heard taster lectures, talks about applying to Cambridge and Oxford and got a chance to meet current students at Trinity Hall. Due to the current circumstances, the event happened virtually in 2020, but we hope it will be in person again in 2021. The team have since hosted a series of virtual outreach events reaching even larger audiences.

Sports Facilities

Your support has also improved the facilities we have available for our sports teams: The Trinity Hall Boat Club have received and used generous donations – one to replace all of the club rowing ergometer machines and another to purchase a new set of oars for both the Men’s & Women’s First Boats. They have also been able to buy four world-class RP3 machines from Rowperfect, which are regarded as the absolute gold-standard in rowing machines and take training at THBC to the next level, as they start Michaelmas term with a record-breaking number of rowers. Also, the Sports Pavilion at Wychfield now has a beautiful and useful clock added to its facade.

LinkHall

The Trinity Hall community have kept connected during lockdown through LinkHall, the online platform with over 1,700 students, alumni, staff and Fellows registered to it. 52% of them are willing to offer help in different ways and we are look forward to seeing this support network grow as the number of users increase. LinkHall is made possible through a kind donation received from Graham Ross Russell. Have you joined it yet? Access www.linkhall.org.

Archive and Library

The Archive & Library team were able to purchase further law textbooks with donations received. They have also been able to complete much-needed conservation work on our treasured books last year. Donations also enabled us to digitise six medieval manuscripts which are now on the Cambridge Digital Library and therefore accessible to a wider audience for research.