Dr Ruth Jackson Ravenscroft and Dr Stuart Palmer have been selected to be on the teaching team for the University’s new Foundation Year Programme.

Sidney is among the first of the Cambridge Colleges to be participating in the Foundation Year Programme and our community is excited to welcome the students who will be embarking on this new multi-disciplinary course. We’re also excited that two members of our community are involved in teaching the first cohort of students.

Dr Ruth Jackson Ravenscroft is a Sidney Bye-Fellow and Undergraduate Tutor who teaches the University’s Theology, Religion and Philosophy of Religion course. Dr Stuart Palmer previously worked as Sidney’s Schools Liaison Officer whilst also supervising History students in the College, and has continued to support the College’s outreach programme. Stuart is currently a Bye-Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College. Ruth and Stuart are on hand to tell us more about their involvement in this pioneering initiative to widen participation.

What is the Foundation Year Programme and why has it been introduced?

Ruth: The Cambridge Foundation Year has been founded with the key purpose of reaching talented and hardworking students who have been prevented from realising their full academic potential due to educational disadvantage or disruption. The aim is to provide these students with a free, fully funded and academically challenging programme that will help prepare them for degree-level study at Cambridge, or at another top University.

How many students will be on the Programme, and how many of these students will be starting at Sidney?

Stuart: There will be around fifty students in the first cohort. These students will be spread out across ten participating Colleges and Sidney will be welcoming four of them.

Dr Stuart Palmer and Dr Ruth Jackson Ravenscroft in Cloister Court

Dr Stuart Palmer and Dr Ruth Jackson Ravenscroft in Cloister Court

We’d love to hear more about the exciting topics you’ll be teaching your Foundation Year students!

Stuart: It’s a cross-disciplinary Programme that spans the arts, humanities, and social sciences, so the students are going to have the chance to see and think about so much! In terms of what I’m looking forward to teaching, there’s almost too much to pick from, but today I’ve been putting together a seminar on material culture (objects and their use in the past) and what that tells us about late medieval society – that’s going to be great fun. I’ve also been doing lots of research for another paper focusing on the literary work of poets who moved to the UK from the Caribbean after 1948, so it’s a really wide-ranging syllabus. Students will be discussing their ideas in seminars and supervisions and developing a whole array of skills that will serve them well whatever they go on to do next. Cambridge has always a place to share big ideas and talk across disciplinary boundaries, so the students on this programme are just continuing on in this tradition. It’s going to be so much fun.

Ruth: I’m involved in organising four of the modules on the programme. In one of these, we’re asking students to consider how the human body has been represented or evoked in a series of paintings, sculptures, and art objects from a wide variety of different periods and cultural settings. We’ll be asking students to think critically with these art objects, to consider issues of religion, morality and beauty, but also to ask questions concerning the construction of gender, race and cultural norms. I’m also teaching a module where students will learn all about the history of the English language, and a module focused on religious and political identities in South Asia. I can’t wait to work with the students on these themes and see them deepen their critical perspectives while they gain experience of reading and analysing a variety of primary sources.

What do you hope the students will get out of the Programme?

Ruth: I hope the students are inspired to keep cultivating their abilities to think critically, to read widely and deeply, and to be self-reflective about how they approach a particular topic or idea or text. What is at stake in this source? What assumptions are at play here? Are these assumptions justified? I also hope they enjoy working collaboratively with each other on the modules they will take. Finally, I hope they come to appreciate the value of considering different disciplinary approaches to the same questions or problems, and that they take this appreciation through with them to their chosen subject area at degree level! 

Stuart: That’s a toughie, there’s so much! First off, I hope they take lots of ideas away from it, but given the scope of the course and the enthusiasm of everyone involved, I’m sure that that is a given. Next, I hope they find a subject that they really love and want to progress on to study for their undergraduate degree, whether it be something they already knew they loved before they started the Programme or something completely new to them.

Learn more about the Foundation Year Programme on the University website: https://www.foundationyear.cam.ac.uk/


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