The Next Nine Years

The best universities seek to serve society. They are not ‘ivory towers’, hidebound with history and cut off from the real world, but adaptable and keen to respond practically to the changing needs and challenges of the times, such as climate change, diversity and equality of opportunity.

For many industries and professions, gender parity is still a distant dream – but already 16 of Cambridge’s 31 colleges have chosen women as Heads of House and Caius is one of them. Dr Pippa Rogerson (1986) was installed as the College’s 43rd Master on Monday 1 October 2018.

In the first year of her ten-year term, Pippa has been joined by a new Senior Bursar, Robert Gardiner (2018) and a new Senior Tutor, Dr Andrew Spencer (2019). Both come from Murray Edwards College, where they were, respectively, Senior Bursar and Admissions Tutor. Pippa says they are the three College officers who are ‘always on duty.’

The Senior Tutor is vital in ‘trying to attract the best students, support them through their time at Caius, help them to thrive and be the best they can, and go on to be those critical, inquiring, curious people who can use evidence to make up their own minds about the big issues.’

At the May Week Party, Pippa announced her initiative to invite Caian teachers to help the College to recruit applicants from a wider range of backgrounds: ‘I want them to channel more people in Cambridge’s direction, to have a two-way conversation with them about what might be holding people back from applying, or what they need to know from us, about how to help their best students to apply.’

She accepts that changes can take time.

‘We’ll take all of next year, really, to bed in, then we probably won’t see the fruition for at least three years, seeing one cohort of students through, so probably five years. With 110 Fellows, 850 students, almost 200 staff and 671 years of history, we can only nudge the tanker in the right direction!’

She is grateful to her predecessor, Professor Sir Alan Fersht (1963) and retired Senior Bursar, Dr David Secher (1973). ‘I inherited the College in very good shape, both financially and in terms of the rolling maintenance of the buildings, which are two things we really have to keep an eye on. And we are working in a rapidly changing regulatory environment from the government – which will mean that our options are perhaps less flexible than one might imagine. The Augar review may mean we get lower fees, and we already don’t get full cost for the education we provide for home undergraduate students.’

Pippa is not the first Master to underline the importance of the College’s Endowment to benefactors at the May Week Party. Caius can only maintain the excellent, personalised education it offers by using income from the Endowment to make up an annual shortfall of about £5,000 per student. If the Government adopts Augar’s recommended fee reductions without separately compensating universities, that gap may increase to £6,500 pa.

Looking ahead, one of the major projects of the next academic year will be the £7.6 million renovation of the College kitchens. Catering will be provided in temporary facilities at Harvey Court while work takes place, with re-opening scheduled for Michaelmas 2020. Pippa believes ‘it’s really important that we have a better working environment and a more hygienic, environmentally sustainable kitchen.’

She has been surprised by the amount of celebratory eating and drinking that Masters are expected to complete. As well as college feasts for historic landmarks, matriculation, graduation, etc., there are numerous university events and Masters are frequently invited to the 30 other colleges.

Her personal response has been to adopt a ‘flexitarian’ diet. She is vegan in College, which has the triple benefit of being environmentally friendly, reducing calories, and ensuring high standards for the growing number of vegetarian or vegan students. Her rule on alcohol is not to drink when she has to speak – ‘And there seem to be an awful lot of speeches to give!’

Masters of Caius are not elected by students, but by the whole Fellowship, after a searching question and answer session. Recent Masters have enjoyed an exceptionally close rapport with students, clearly enjoying their company. With five daughters in their teens and twenties, Pippa really does understand how students think – and she shares many of their priorities. ‘Environmental sustainability is an agenda item for every College committee. We encourage the Chef to buy locally… And I’m pretty sorry about my own personal carbon footprint, with flying and so on, and I’m trying to think of ways to minimise that.’

One cherished moment from her first year in office came at a London event for the University’s Dear World... Yours, Cambridge campaign. She was hugely impressed by David Attenborough: ‘He was just so inspiring! He spoke for ten minutes, about climate change and how it's affected the earth and how the sort of work that's done at Cambridge, in Economics or Genetics and so on, could help redress some of that.’

As a supervisor, Pippa was always supportive of extra-curricular activities. She has continued to embrace that broader vision:

‘It’s all about providing a supportive environment in which people can be the best version of themselves: so that they can thrive and not just do their best academic work (although that is a given). You have a responsibility, if you’re clever enough to get a place here, to use that intellect as well as you can.

‘But along with that, there are so many other things that Cambridge, and Caius in particular, can help grow and nurture that are so useful, so important, so valuable when you leave here. If you look at people like Nicky Shindler, who got an OBE this year, or Dame Carolyn Fairbairn or Sir Simon Russell Beale… There are diversity activists and there are grand lawyers and there are actors and music people – there’s such a range of things you can do.’

Even organising a May Ball can develop valuable skills, in teamwork and leadership, and in organising catering, budgets, licensing, insurance, publicity, and so on, helping to equip students for later life. ‘Having Caius as a place which allows you, encourages you, to get on and do stuff, is something we want to continue. And these other things they do, whether it’s sport or music or friendship or volunteering, all support mental well-being. You have a broader sense of yourself.’

Unusually, Pippa retains a half-time post with the Law Faculty and continues lecturing, examining and supervising, which she loves. ‘Supervisions are discussions between students and academics almost as equals. That’s what’s so special about it. We all say we get almost as much supervision as the students do! These bright, young things challenging your ideas is enormously exciting. It’s really creative.’

‘Being a lawyer’, she says, ‘is so much a part of who I am. I’d really miss it. And it’s good to have a perspective that’s not bound by the six Courts of Caius.’

Pippa’s energy and enthusiasm for her new role is infectious: those around her tend to raise their game, to keep up with the pace she sets. At the heart of it all is her passionate determination to help everyone, both students and staff, to be ‘the best possible version of themselves’.