Today, we are delighted to share with you an important 450th Anniversary Campaign message from our Principal, Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt FRS FREng.
View the Principal’s message here, or scroll down for the text version:
“In 2012, Jesus College launched an ambitious campaign to raise £45 million in support of our academic mission. I am speaking to you today from the graduate study room in our Cheng Yu Tung Building, which overlooks the new raised Fourth Quad, a brilliant addition to the College estate, and a shining example of how far we’ve come in our fundraising efforts.
The College’s new fourth quad, part of the Cheng Building which is due to open later this year.
We are now very close to the finish line of this journey, having raised over £44.5 million towards our Campaign goal. We cannot thank you enough for your support. It has been a truly collective effort from our College community, and we keenly anticipate closing this last gap in the remaining months of the Campaign, and celebrating this incredible achievement with you.
The steady progress we have been able to make since my last update is thanks in part to the recent generosity of alumnus Christopher Richey and his family. The Richey family has pledged a new gift of £1 million pounds to establish the Oxford-Richey Family studentship, which will endow a home graduate studentship in any subject.
I am delighted to report that the University has also pledged to match part of this gift to College through its Graduate Endowment Matched Funding Scheme. This support will enable graduate students to study here at Jesus for generations to come. We owe a debt of gratitude to the Richey family, as we do to all alumni and friends of College who have supported us with life-changing gifts towards graduate study at Jesus.
The new Oxford-Richey Family Studentship will graduate scholarship to support home graduate students in any subject.
Legacies also continue to play an important role in supporting our community, as they have done throughout our 450-year history. College has recently received a bequest from the estate of alumnus Nicholas Drake, who came up in 1954 to read PPE. We appreciate this meaningful support from the Drake legacy, and we are grateful to the many members of the Jesus 1571 Society and their families who have made a commitment to remember College in their wills.
Gifts of this nature have helped us to endow teaching fellowships, bursaries, and more recently, to restore the historic Statutory Chair of Celtic. So many of our endowed academic projects would not have been possible without generosity of this kind.
As we prepare to close our Anniversary Campaign at the end July, we look forward to this new chapter for Jesus, with the opening of our new building and its state-of-the-art Digital Hub. It has been a privilege to be Principal of Jesus during the 450th Anniversary, and to see through the design and delivery of this major College development, which, to quote the Founding Charter, will serve our community “for all future times”.
Most importantly, I look forward to welcoming you back to College soon, to see what we have been able to accomplish with your extraordinary support.”
Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt FRS FREng, Principal of Jesus College, Oxford
Monday April 4th 2022