Exeter College receives £131,400 gift
In 2011 Exeter College was set a challenge by 10 alumni on the Exeter Excelling Campaign Committee: become the Oxford college with the highest proportion of alumni supporting it, and each of us will give Exeter £13,400.
It was a tough challenge, but Exonians, it seems, enjoy a challenge, and over 2,000 Old Members gave to the College’s Annual Fund. That translated to 36.7% of undergraduates and graduates choosing to support Exeter – the highest participation rate not only in Oxford but in the UK – and the sum of £131,400 being given to the College, in addition to the gifts given by those alumni who participated in the Annual Fund last year.
Students and Fellows were asked to suggest how the £131,400 gift should be used. It was unanimously agreed that it should be used to benefit all members of the College in line with the three core areas of the Exeter Excelling, 700th Anniversary Fundraising Campaign.
In support of the collegiate environment that makes Exeter so special, a proportion of the gift will be allocated towards the new campus at Walton Street to fund a teaching room. This new campus will ultimately provide accommodation and study space for over 100 students in the centre of Oxford, creating a new “quadrangle” where student peers and Fellows live and work alongside each other.
Undergraduates and graduates alike will benefit from additional funds being allocated to the Careers Office to augment its work in providing careers advice and internship opportunities exclusively to Exeter students. This additional funding will fund additional CV and Interview Skills workshops as well as double the number of bursaries available for students who have secured internships – through the Careers Office or independently.
Fellows and Graduates will benefit from a newly created research fund that will provide grants for graduates to attend conferences and Fellows to take on graduate research assistants. The impact of this opportunity to augment research will have an immediate knock-on effect to the quality of undergraduate teaching provided.
Exeter College is enormously grateful to the generosity of everyone who supported the participation challenge and is proud to partner with its alumni in keeping Exeter number 1.
