The Newsletter of Homerton College, Cambridge & The Homerton Roll

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RETIRED SENIOR MEMBERS ASSOCIATION When I was elected to the chair of the RSMA, almost three years ago, I set myself a few ‘targets’. Not because it was all the rage at the time, but more to fit in with the college motto ‘Respice Finem’, one I always thought to be particularly appropriate for those involved in lesson planning. This report will address the degree to which some of those have been met, while some are still awaiting achievement. I shall draw a veil over those I have decided to abandon. We have continued to take steps towards becoming more actively involved in the social life of the College. With the majority of members on email, news of college events is now circulated regularly and quickly so that RSMs can join in with college events. We hope to improve on last year’s ‘Bronze medal’ (we came third) success in the Homerton Charity Quiz Night. Another positive development has been to solve the frequently expressed wish of members for an organised RSMA Formal Hall by joining with the college’s Lent Term Alumni evening, thus again welding our activities with those of the college. We now have an RSMA page on the college website. The address is www.homerton. cam.ac.uk and by clicking onto ‘Teaching’ an RSMA section will be seen. As yet its content is limited, but it’s a start! The first grant of our Charter Bursary in Teacher Education was awarded to Chloe Davies BA, who gave an excellent presentation to our AGM on her teaching experience in Nepal, during the period between graduation and the start of her PGCE programme. Membership this year has benefited from the acceptance by Dr. Eileen Alexander of an Honorary Membership, whilst the ‘young blood’ has come from the addition to our numbers of Dr. Anne Sinkinson, Stephen Tomkins, Holly Anderson and Geoffrey Mizen. We offer them all a warm welcome and look forward to their significant contribution to our activities. In addition we offer Stephen our sincere congratulations on being elected to an Emeritus Fellowship. I feel confident that Eileen Alexander will not feel offended by my reference to ‘young blood’. Despite the fact that on 2nd April this year she became our first centenarian, no one who attended our Michaelmas Term seminar and luncheon, at which Dr. Peter Warner gave his excellent presentation on ‘Homerton at War’, will forget her lively and lucid first-hand account of how to put out incendiary bombs. In recognition of Eileen’s birthday and her distinguished career and contribution to the college, the committee agreed to award, for this year only, a prize in her name to the student who has contributed most to sport at Homerton. The ‘Crumblies’ Choir are no more, but this is certainly not due to their unforgettable initial public performance at the memorial celebration for John Hammond last September. It was felt that the name might deter some RSMs from taking part, and after due consideration and wide consultation we have now become the classier ‘Emeritus’. Meetings (not rehearsals) of what I prefer to think of as a therapeutic noise-making body, rather than a choir, have been regular throughout the year and well attended, though low in numbers in the bass section. Led jointly by Barbara Pointon and Jane Cursiter, the sessions are great fun, offering the full range of musicality, from cleaned-up versions of Rugby songs to choral works, which have probably not been performed since the 12th century. The social aspect of our association has always been a difficult area of the work of the committee. In the past it has been the practice to rotate responsibility for organising excursions and lectures among all members of the committee. This term we have decided to focus this aspect of our activity, and have co-opted Pauline Curtis, who as a recent ex-secretary knows the workings of the committee well, and asked her to take on the specific role of coordinating events and visits. Pauline’s co-option was in part the consequence of the sad loss of Tony Robinson, who died in October last year. Tony was relatively recently elected as a member of the committee and brought to that role his characteristic enthusiasm and good sense. We shall all miss him immensely. A fuller tribute to him will be found elsewhere. Attendance will always be an issue in the success of any event and one factor in determining that will be the degree to which advanced notice can be given. With that in mind, the next AGM will follow the new ‘tradition’ of taking place during the Alumni weekend and will be at 2.00pm on Saturday 24th September. Professor John Murrell MBE Chairman, Homerton RSMA Chloe with girls from the school in Nepal, dressed for a dance competition 20 Homertonian
OBITUARIES OF FORMER COLLEAGUES Portrait by Anastasia Sotiropoulos Professor Tjeerd Van Andel (1923–2010) Homerton has unquestionably lost a most distinguished associate with the death in September of the Principal’s husband. The College has its formal ‘members’ by virtue of their matriculation, past or present employment, or election into Fellowship; but the College also has others who are just solidly associated with the heart of its life. We commemorate the man who was spouse and companion to Dr Pretty over some 23 years and who enjoyed, as he remarked, “the honour of being in Kate’s shadow”. Professor van Andel made a lifelong contribution to a breadth of natural sciences, being indisputably both a physical and intellectual adventurer and a scholar of distinction. Tjeerd, or in his anglicised form just ‘Jerry’, was a warm, witty Dutch American whose quiet genial presence among us was one that many students, former staff and Fellows will recall with appreciation. Reared in colonial Dutch Indonesia, Tjeerd van Andel grew up with a passion for travel, human prehistory and the natural world. As an archaeology undergraduate student in Nazi-occupied Holland he was part of the Resistance movement, unbeknown to his German-born mother. A second degree in geology and a doctorate in sedimentology took him to work with Shell in Venezuela, studying for the first time how marine oil-forming sediments are built up. Then with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography he initiated the push for sub-oceanic exploration and soon had launched a major investment from the USA in the study of Quaternary events – so becoming an authority on past sea-level changes. His career peaked in 1977 when, on board the 22 foot submersible Alvin, two miles down in the deeps, he was amongst the first to witness the now famous geothermal springs of the Galapagos Rift. He came to Cambridge in 1987, where he first met Dr Pretty, and became in 1988 Cambridge’s first honorary professor. A protagonist of interdisciplinary and collaborative research, he ended his career by bringing together the climatic and geological studies of a major past ice-age with his own research into Neanderthal archaeology. As a great teacher he gave a polymathic range of science lectures in several universities over some 50 years. Passionate also about the arts, in particular painting, he donated the cost of the Principal’s College portrait, on her arrival at Homerton, and enthusiastically supported life classes in the Homerton Art Department. Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society, in tribute, remarked that Tjeerd van Andel “will certainly live in the annals of Science” to which we can append “and Homerton College also”. Stephen Tomkins Emeritus Fellow & Elaine Wilson Fellow Tim Everton (1951–2011) Deputy Principal of Homerton College, 1992–2001 Tim Everton joined Homerton in October 1992 as Deputy Principal, having previously been Head of PGCE at the University of Leicester. Born in the West Midlands in 1951, Tim went to Queen Mary’s Grammar School, Walsall, and then read Mathematics at Keble College, Oxford. He became a secondary Mathematics teacher in Walsall and Shrewsbury before taking a Masters at Keele and starting in teacher education in Ulster, from where he moved to Leicester. This career trajectory was ideal for Homerton. Tim’s early experience of college life at Oxford, his period as a secondary teacher and his knowledge of initial teacher training and research gave him enormous strengths with which to tackle Homerton’s development. He was a perfect complement to me and I owe him a great deal, as does the College. He began work even before he and Val moved to Cambridge to set up a household comprising three daughters, three little black cats and two dogs. Early in June 1992 Homerton had been advised to make an entry for the Research Assessment Exercise. Tim had done an RAE before at Leicester and he volunteered to oversee Homerton’s entry, tirelessly travelling from Leicester to encourage, exhort and oversee the offerings from a staff who had never encountered such an exercise. The College, the staff and Tim emerged triumphant at the end of the year with money to spend on research. It was the beginning of a ten-year period in which Tim, together with John Gray and Jean Rudduck, put Homerton on the research map. At the same time he somehow managed to maintain his own writing. Tim’s extensive knowledge of teacher education was an asset to all staff. Under his leadership they found a balance between teaching and research which helped Homerton to emerge as “a leading national provider of teacher education with outstanding Ofsted grades”. Tim understood how best to handle Ofsted as the inspectorate became more draconian and less interested in dialogue about best practice. This he did with his customary patience and calm, achieving outstanding results from hard-pressed colleagues and students. Tim’s mathematical background was essential for Homerton’s development. Faced with an innumerate Principal whose Homerton College 21
Page 1 and 2: Homertonian The Newsletter of Homer
Page 3 and 4: principal’s letter Kate PrettY Th
Page 5 and 6: while working in a school at Soham;
Page 7 and 8: HOMERTON: The Evolution of a Cambri
Page 9 and 10: student news HOMERTON OLD BOYS REUN
Page 11 and 12: Left and opposite page Phoebe Haine
Page 13 and 14: HOMERTON COLLEGE BOAT CLUB 2010 to
Page 15 and 16: HOMERTON COLLEGE MUSIC SOCIETY The
Page 17 and 18: HIV/AIDS EDUCATION, GHANA Thanks to
Page 19: MCR The MCR has had an exciting yea
Page 23 and 24: Joyce was a gifted student and a sc
Page 25 and 26: Our database of College members is
Page 27 and 28: Yorkshire and Derbyshire Branch Ove

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