Selwyn College Annual Report 2009-2010

Annual reportSelwyn College Cambridge, 2009 – 2010

Master’s reflections

Last year was a year for frightening the horses, and to judge from the many responseswe received it was very effective. Many of you wrote to express a combination of shockand of appreciation that I had been blunt about the situation that faced the College.

one does not want to dothis kind of thing too often,of course, because the effectwould be dulled; but I amglad that I chose to do so.

this year I feel that I can bea little more upbeat despitethe fact that the future oftuition fees is still very

much up in the air; as is the question of whatproportion of these fees, if any, the Collegemight see. Discontent is in the air and bothstudents and school children across the countryhave woken up after decades of slumber to findthemselves in the midst of a very different kindof reality. who knows where this may lead us?like many, I am sure, I am personally conflictedbetween the need to secure the financial futureof the College on the one hand and sympathyfor the next generation on the other.

as you will see from the Bursar’s report, selwyncontinues to make inroads into the yearly deficitand to work hard to strengthen its financialposition. after a hiatus of some six months,January will see the arrival of a new DevelopmentDirector who will, I am sure, inject yet moreprofessionalism into the task of persuading you,with a mixture of guile and true commitment, that the College that looked after you in the past continues to need your support now and into the future.

Help need not necessarily come in the form ofcash, of course. two alumni, for example, fromvery different age groups but working for thesame firm, are in the process of producingdetailed architectural drawings for a redesign ofthe southwest corner of the College, including thekitchens and the ‘new’ sCr. this is a gift in kindand none the less welcome for that. the funds forsuch a project do not yet exist but when plans aredrawn up in advance it makes it that much easier

to look for support later on. It shows everyonethat we continue to look forward rather thanbewailing the present.

the first thing on the agenda, however, remainsthe refurbishment of Cripps. there have in thepast been a number of benefactors from outsidethe immediate community and none moregenerous than the Cripps Foundation, who wellover forty years ago were persuaded by owenChadwick to provide a major boost to selwyn’saccommodation. the buildings are now due forrefurbishment and it is heartening indeed to beable to report that the Foundation has notabandoned us. Indeed quite the opposite. werecently heard the welcome news that they haveagreed to donate a substantial sum of money toensure that we can start this crucial task. to obtainsuch funding for a refurbishment rather than abrand-new building is quite an achievement andshows the degree of confidence the Foundationhas in our present and our future.

those of you who have been back recently mayhave also noticed a new addition to the north wallof old Court, a sundial etched on welsh slate inmagnificent gold lettering, a gift to the College byan alumnus who has been extremely generous ina number of other ways. we were fortunate inthat the north wall runs almost exactly east-west,giving the sundial itself the greatest possibleexposure to the rays of the sun. those of you whohave not yet seen it have a treat in store. Do not,however, come and gaze at it in the hope ofsomething as banal as telling the time; for thatyou should turn around and check with the clockon the tower above the Hall. as befits a CollegeCourt, this sundial is designed for other, moresubtle calculations.

Richard Bowring | Master

selwyn ColleGe annual report 2009 – 2010


Financial report

effective decisions and action over the past year, along with much hard work, have led to a resilient set of results. the conference business has held up well, as has the investment incomefollowing the generous decision of the ann DFoundation to bring forward a £2.5 milliondonation and student numbers remain high, with a resultant positive impact on fees, rents and catering. a pay freeze has also saved aconsiderable sum. the College remains in deficit,but at a reduced level. In terms of the bottom line,we “only” lost £659,405, a 30% improvement onlast year’s loss of £938,144. progress indeed, butstill a large and unsustainable deficit.

Income rose by 5.6% to £6,472,210, helped by a 9% rise in fees and a 12% rise in income from residences, catering and conferences. the corresponding increase in expenditure to£6,496,839 was restricted to 2%. Income fromaccommodation of College members rose by 15% to £1,567,911 as a result of strong roommanagement and higher student numbers. the rise in related expenditure was restricted to5%. this resulted in a 26% decrease in the deficiton the accommodation account to £305,328 from£413,623 the previous year. Income from cateringfor College members rose by 11% to £673,534,whilst the related expenditure remained

essentially unchanged. this led to a 23%reduction in the deficit on the catering account to£217,139. During the year, the College undertookan extensive review of its catering operations inorder to address the deficit. a number of detailedmeasures relating to pricing and waste reductionare being implemented. the gap between thecost of educating our students and the associatedfee income narrowed somewhat from £855,865 to £731,596, or £1,288 per capita, but remainsunsustainably wide.

the College thus continues to lose money in itscore businesses of educating, feeding and housingyoung people. Good progress was made on allfronts, but these deficits are structural and resultprimarily from the cost of maintaining ourhistoric buildings. staff costs also remain high inwhat remains a labour intensive operation.

we are income constrained on three fronts: by government in respect of fees, by welfareconsiderations in relation to rent and foodpricing, and by competition in relation to ourconference business. It is thus difficult to offsetthe inexorable rise in costs by increasingrevenues. Fees for education are now onlyslightly more than one-quarter of our revenues.

In response to continuing deficits and an increasingly hostile external environment, the College hasundertaken a comprehensive review of its activities and outlook. Addressing the deficit requires a long-term strategy and a series of recommendations were agreed by the Governing Body. These includedcost-cutting and careful budgeting in all areas of operation. In addition, work is beginning on a majorcampaign to raise £20 million to strengthen the endowment and secure the future. This will be launchedin the near future, following the appointment of the new Development Director. Cost-cutting alone,though a necessary and ongoing process, will not provide the ultimate solution. It will however buy the time to put the endowment campaign in place and recent efforts have therefore focussed on cashgeneration and conservation.

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010£0

-£200,000

-£400,000

-£600,000

-£800,000

-£1,000,000

-£1,200,000

underlying deficit 2003-10

£0

-£100,000

-£200,000

-£300,000

-£400,000

-£500,000

-£600,000

-£700,000

-£800,000

-£900,000

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Rent de!cit Catering de!cit Education de!cit

operating deficit 2003-10

annual report 2009 – 2010 selwyn ColleGe

the College must therefore look to increase itsendowment and deploy the resultant investmentincome towards offsetting these structural losses.on a more positive note, cost controls and a goodcatering and conference contribution meant thatthe College’s cash flow has rebounded strongly toover £750,000, up from £318,000 last year.

the recovery in cash flow is welcome but shouldnot give rise to complacency. the hard work andeffort spent in recent years have allowed theCollege to navigate several years of recessionand remain with a positive cash flow. on thedownside, however, the College is still notgenerating enough cash from its operatingactivities to make meaningful additions to the endowment from internal resources.Maintaining positive cash flow over the longterm is a critical objective. when cash generationturns negative, the College will have to sellassets or borrow money to fund its day-to-dayoperations. this would certainly be imprudent.

Investmentsthe College’s investment portfolio amounted to£25,133,328 at 30th June 2010. In performanceterms, the portfolio rose by 10.5%. this, with anincome return of 4.7% for the year, produced atotal return of 15.2%. the College’s defensiveinvestment stance has served it well throughoutthe downturn and relatively high levels of

equity weighting at 71% have benefited frommarket recovery at a time when returns on cashare minimal.

Donationsthis year the College received £225,024 inunrestricted donations, which form part ofendowment Income; last year it received£263,552. In addition, the College received£3,551,968 in donations for capital purposes; last year it received £1,041,376. the response of the alumni in supporting the College is indeed very much appreciated.

Outlookthe College continues to punch above itsweight. Compared to the average Cambridgecollege it has 90% of the numbers and barely25% of the endowment.

the College must now address two fundamentalchallenges: on the home front, the refurbishmentof Cripps Court can be put off no longer and wewill begin design work early in 2011. we mustalso react to the far-reaching changes in thefunding of higher education. It is clear that theburden of funding is being transferred from thestate to the individual, and this with unseemlyhaste. at the time of writing, the details areunclear. a likely tripling of fees from the currentlevel will barely be enough to offset the proposed80% cut in the HeFCe teaching grant.

Despite this fundamental disadvantage, theCollege is highly successful academically andremains a strikingly vibrant community. It nowwishes to protect and develop these qualitiesand is embarking on a new and critical phase of its history, as it seeks to grow its endowmentand secure its financial and academic future.

Nick Downer | Bursar

Student rentand food 32%

Fees 27%

Endowments 26%

Conferences 15%

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

£800,000

£700,000

£600,000

£500,000

£400,000

£300,000

£200,000

£100,000

£02003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 20102003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Cash generation 2003-10

Students Endowment

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

selwyn vs College average 2009


Current Research at Selwyn

In the following articles, two of Selwyn's fellows, Professor John Morrilland Professor Stewart Cant, tell us about their current research interests.

Can it really be 35 years since I arrived atselwyn and almost 25 years since I began mystint as senior tutor? where have the yearsgone! twice I have nearly been lured away, buthappily I decided to deal with such ‘push’factors as there were by changing my jobdescription here and reinventing myself! In themost recent part of my career, I have becomemore and more a research professor, with ten totwelve graduate students at a time (at present Isupervise eight phDs and three Mphil students)and have played a leading part in designing andteaching the research-training elements of theMphil in early Modern History that is now thebiggest such programme in the world.

and I have increasingly been drawn intocommitments outside Cambridge, especially withthe arts and Humanities research Council and inthe British academy, and as an advisor andconsultant in the Higher education world inIreland (north and south). I am now an HonoraryMember of the royal Irish academy. I am anunrepentant champion of collaborative researchand for what might be called infrastructuralprojects. I was the Consultant editor for oxforduniversity press’s Dictionary of National Biography,having overall responsibility for the 6,000 lives (sixmillion words) of those whose 40th birthday fell(or would have fallen!) between 1600 and 1699. Iwas the General editor of the royal Historicalsociety Bibliography of British and Irish Historyand of the British overseas (1990-9) which collated

and contents-indexed 249,000 titles of books,essays and articles published before 1996. thisappeared on CD-roM in 1999 and under theleadership of others contains well over 400,000titles and is now available online. More recently Iwas one of four scholars (two in Dublin and one inaberdeen making up the team) who have editedthe sworn depositions of 8,000 survivors of the

John Morrill is Professor of British and Irish History. He has been a fellow of Selwyn College since 1975 and during this time he has beena Tutor, Director of Studies, Admissions Tutor, Senior Tutor, Vice-Masterand Acting Master. In this article he talks about his current researchprojects relating to Seventeenth-Century Britain.

Oliver Cromwell, painted by Samuel Cooper


series of massacres in Ireland in 1641-2, a uniqueand disturbing source now available (free to all) intranscription and in digitised images of theoriginals at www.1641.tcd.ie. I have chaired theeditorial board that is producing a definitiveedition of the minutes of the westminsterassembly of 1643-52 (to many evangelicals, a bodythat produced documents second in importanceonly to the tablets of stone that Moses broughtdown from sinai), and have been on the advisoryboards of other major projects that are making themost important documents in British and IrishHistory available online. My latest project is tohead up a team of eight (including selwyn’s ownDavid smith) to produce a five volume edition ofevery word oliver Cromwell wrote or is recordedas having uttered. this edition will in due courseappear in oup’s oxford scholarly editions online(on the advisory board of which I serve). all thiseffort has slowed down the production ofmonographs (if not of essays articles: I have justreached one hundred of those!) But I amunapologetic. British history is a world leader increating high quality and highly-searchableresearch tools for all scholars. I am proud to be inthe forefront of this revolution.

My research interests centre around the greatcrisis in the islands of Britain and Ireland in themid seventeenth century. I have made vainattempts to get away from this period, andindeed have published on every century from thesixteenth to the twentieth – most recently in workon the relations between the kingdoms andpeoples of england, Ireland, scotland and walesin the period from 1502 to 1746 (inspired by agreat new Zealand scholar trained in Cambridgewho has taught for 50 years in the usa, whowrote that the peoples of these islands interactedso as to change the conditions of one another’sexistence); but the 1640s and 1650s have a hugemagnetic pull, and I have been drawn back theretime and again. I have finally written my shortbiography of oliver Cromwell, and have acollection of essays about Cromwell coming out –some of them quite shocking, such as the one thatinterrogates what Cromwell meant when hewrote to the speaker of the House of Commonsafter he has killed 3,500 soldiers and civilians inDrogheda that ‘it is a righteous judgement of Godupon these barbarous wretches who haveimbrued their hands in so much innocent blood’,or the one that looks at how and why he wassacked as lord lieutenant of Ireland in 1652, orquite how he read and used the Bible as a guideto public and private action (which is entitled

‘How oliver Cromwell thought’). I am interestedin a whole series of individuals who were drivento dramatic participation in the civil wars, likethe suffolk yeoman who went round removingall the ‘monuments of idolatry and superstition’from 300 churches in Cambridgeshire and hishome county and who kept a careful record of allthat he did. Most recently, I have become moreinterested in the Catholic community of the latersixteenth and seventeenth centuries. with twovery old friends, I have edited a 700-pageanthology of Catholic spiritual writing inengland from 1480 to the present (entitled Firmly I Believe and Truly and published next yearby oup as a companion to rowan williams’Love’s Redeeming Work), my contribution being150,000 words from the period down to 1700 –starting with a lovely prayer published bywilliam Caxton in 1483, the very first religiouswork printed in the english language, andtracing english Catholic thought via st thomasMore and st John Fisher down through the penaltimes (‘dungeon, fire and sword’ as a greatCatholic hymn has it). I am now planning morework on the experience of persecution and howthe protestant authorities faced a problemfamiliar to us. there were Catholic terrorists, the pope had called on Catholics to assassinateelizabeth I (as a heretic bastard), but mostCatholics stayed loyal to the Queen. How could the authorities get at the terrorists without radicalising the moderates? soundfamiliar? this, and the Cromwell editionwill keep me busy into retirement in a couple of years time!

An image from Tears in Ireland (1642)


energy is a topic that is never far from the publicview. the global demand for energy is increasingrapidly in line with increasing global standards ofliving. there is growing concern about thesecurity of energy supply, and about the local andglobal environmental consequences of traditionalenergy usage. there is lively debate about theexpansion of renewable energy sources andabout the renaissance of nuclear energy. amid allthe furore, it is often forgotten that about 90% ofthe energy used throughout the world forheating, transport and electricity generation isstill produced from the combustion of fossil fuels.

even with fairly modest improvements in theefficiency of present-day combustion systems,there is enormous potential for large-scalesavings in the total quantity of fuel consumed.since the carbon contained in the fuel isconverted directly into carbon dioxide, there isequally enormous potential for large-scalereductions in greenhouse gas emissions.Combustion has been in daily use since beforethe dawn of civilisation, and the basic physicsand chemistry of combustion is now quite wellestablished. so what are the barriers to progress?

In practical devices such as furnaces and engines,the fuel is normally injected into a stream of air. Ifthe fuel is not already in gaseous form, it is soonevaporated in the high temperature of thecombustion chamber. the airflow is almostalways turbulent, and indeed turbulence is oftenintroduced deliberately in order to promotemixing of the fuel with the air. the actualcombustion chemistry takes place mainly in theresulting gaseous fuel-air mixture. the object ofthe exercise is the conversion of chemical energyinto large amounts of heat, which can then beused to warm a house, power an industrialprocess or drive an engine.

the sequence of events from injection throughevaporation, mixing and chemical reaction isnormally very rapid and can be made to take

place in a remarkably small space. this givescombustion systems their very high powerdensity, and makes combustion enginesessentially uncontested for transport applications.this is particularly true for aircraft propulsion,where no serious alternative to the gas turbineengine is even proposed. It is also true to a lesserextent for automotive propulsion, where thetraditional reciprocating piston engine has provedtremendously robust and adaptable. these areareas where wind farms and nuclear reactors areof little value.

so the challenge is to improve the engineering ofcombustion systems. the difficulty lies mainly inthe fluid dynamics and especially in how tomanage the turbulence. the flow must carry thefuel to the right place, produce the right amountof mixing, and allow the flame to stabilise – allwithin the required constraints of size andweight, and preferably without melting themetal or over-stressing the structure. the realproblem arises from the inconvenient truth thatturbulence itself is not well understood, and itsinteraction with mixing and chemistry is evenless so. nevertheless the engineer cannot simplygive up and choose an easier problem to solve.and this is where our work comes in.

experimental testing in combustion is doneeither at industrial scale with minimalinstrumentation due to the hostile conditions, orat laboratory scale with state-of-the-art laser-based diagnostic equipment. Both approachesare invaluable but very expensive. Instead, wehave chosen to return to the basic governingequations of turbulent reacting flow and to solvethem numerically using the vast and increasingpower of modern computers. our principalapproach, called Direct numerical simulation,requires very high accuracy in both space andtime in order to achieve full resolution of all ofthe relevant physical and chemical phenomena.this is highly demanding in terms of computerresources, and we are major users of the largest

Stewart Cant is Professor of Computational Engineering. He became a fellow of Selwyn College in 1995 when he was appointed as aUniversity Lecturer in Engineering, and he has been a Director of Studies in Engineering ever since. He was a Tutor for six years and iscurrently a member of College Council. His research group has its maininterests in the area of computational fluid dynamics and combustion.


national supercomputers as well as theuniversity’s own supercomputing facilities. oneof our computer programs – called senga - isused as a national benchmark for computationalperformance, and our group has held the worldrecord for the largest-ever numerical simulationof a turbulent flame.

there is also a place for less detailed simulationsin which some of the smaller-scale phenomenaare not fully resolved and so must be representedusing mathematical models. this approach ismuch less demanding in computational terms,and has become standard practice in industrywhere the emphasis is on fast turnaround in orderto support the industrial design process. there ishowever a requirement for accurate modelling ofthe unresolved physics and chemistry. Here, weare able to assist by using data from our fully-resolved simulations to develop and calibrate newmodels for the effects of small-scale mixing andreaction or fuel droplet break-up and evaporation.at present, one of the most important applicationareas is gas turbine combustion for both aircraftpropulsion and land-based power generation.another important area is the safe production,processing and storage of fuels, in which we haveworked closely with the petrochemical industryto build simulation tools for improved process

plant design in order to mitigate the consequencesof accidental explosions.

Currently, the research group in the Department of engineering consists of five phD studentstogether with a postdoctoral research assistant,all working on various aspects of combustionsimulation and modelling. we work closely withmembers of the Computational Fluid Dynamicslaboratory on numerical methods, the CambridgeCombustion research Centre on applications topractical combustion systems and the acousticslaboratory on acoustically-coupled instabilities of flames. Funding for group members comesfrom a variety of sources, including rolls-royceand Mitsubishi as well as the us air Force andthe Malaysian Government, and we have a long-running international collaboration withsandia national laboratories in the usa.

a great deal of research remains to be done, butthere are excellent prospects for future progress.available computer power is continuing toincrease, albeit a little more slowly than in therecent past, and more of the complexity ofcombustion is being understood. above all, there is no shortage of motivation to help findpractical engineering solutions to some of theworld’s most pressing problems.

Direct numerical simulation of a flame kernel burningthrough a turbulent gaseous fuel-air mixture.something very similar happens about 4000 times perminute in a typical petrol-fuelled car engine. note thesurface wrinkling which essentially determines howfast the flame can burn. with acknowledgements to Dr Kw Jenkins, CueD 1996-2004.

Industrial-scale simulation of an explosion developingfrom two ignition points in a single module of apetrochemical processing plant following an accidentalrelease of natural gas. the actual module was 20 metreslong, 12 metres wide and 8 metres high, and wasrepeatedly blown up on a test range in Cumbria. withacknowledgements to Dr D Baraldi (se 1997) and CueD.

Development and alumni relations

Gifts Received 1 July 2009 – 30 June 2010a total of £3,776,992 was received during thefinancial year.

Value added givingFor many donors, there are a variety of ways tomake a donation which enhance the basic valueof a gift. Here are some which you may wish toconsider to make your money go further.

The Government matched funding scheme fordonations to English universitiesCollegiate Cambridge has welcomed the uKGovernment’s matched funding scheme, theprincipal aim of which is to encourage new donorsto make philanthropic gifts to english universities.oxford and Cambridge have agreed with theGovernment that they will use the scheme toencourage greater participation by alumni andother supporters. the Government has set a cap of £2.75 million on the funds for Cambridge inaggregate over the three years 2008/09 to 2010/11.In order to achieve this goal the colleges and theuniversity will have to demonstrate that they havereceived in cash at least £8.25 million (includingGift aid) from ‘new’ donors over the three yearperiod be they individuals, companies, trusts orfoundations in the uK or overseas (for thepurposes of this scheme, a new donor is

somebody who has not made a gift to a college or the university since 2005).

It has been agreed that the funding will bedivided between the colleges collectively and theuniversity in the same ratio as the qualifyingdonations. For example, if the colleges collectivelyraise two-thirds of the qualifying donations thecolleges collectively will receive two-thirds of thematched funding.

Payroll givingthis is a means of making a donation directlyfrom your salary before income tax is calculatedand deducted. If you are a basic rate taxpayer amonthly gift of £5.00 to selwyn would cost youonly £3.90. the uK Government wishes toencourage payroll giving and will top up yourdonation by 10%. this would mean that yourdonation would be worth £5.50 to the College.

please contact your own payroll office to enquirewhether they participate in payroll giving.

Matched givingthere are a large number of companies offering‘Matched Giving’ schemes to their employees,which mean that when you give to a registeredcharity they may match in full, in part or even at more than 100% at no additional cost to thegiver. please check with your Human resourcesDepartment to see if your company participatesin a matched giving programme. among themany companies which offer this option are theBank of england, J p Morgan, Marks & spencer,Baa, Ford Motor Company, Bp, Vodafone, Bt,Deloitte, KpMG, ernst & young and shell.

Amazon.co.ukMany of our members and friends are regularshoppers on the internet, and by accessing theamazon.co.uk website through the icon link onthe College’s own website (sel.cam.ac.uk/alumni),5% of the value of any purchase made isautomatically given to the College. since itslaunch, this scheme has now begun to provide amodest, regular monthly income to the College atno cost whatever to you.

The College’s development and alumni relations programmes are designed to strengthen the College’srelationship with members and friends through a range of communications and events, and to providefinancial support for the educational aims of the College through fundraising activities. As in previousyears, members have been generous in both their attendance at events and through their donations.


College fabric andgrounds 78%

teaching and studentsupport 11%

General purposes 6%

student extra-curricularpursuits 3%

other 2%

78%11%

6%3%

2%

Members 80%

legacies 15%

trusts & foundations 4%

Friends 1%80%15%

1%

4%

Selwyn College Cambridge

Development & Alumni Relations Officeselwyn College Cambridge | tel: +44 (0)1223 767844email: [email protected] | www.sel.cam.ac.uk

Registered Charity (Inland Revenue number 1137517)

Design: www.cantellday.co.uk photography: tom Catchesides (www.catchesides.co.uk), Howard Beaumont, stephen Bond (www.stephenbond.com) and oliver steer

Documents

Selwyn College Annual Report 2009-2010