A Christ’s education can be an inspiring and transformational experience, opening up a world of opportunities to our students during their time at College and after they graduate.
Leaving an unrestricted gift to Christ’s allows us the flexibility to respond to the area of greatest need at any given time, whether that be supporting world-changing research, providing more in the way of student welfare, or protecting and enhancing the College’s physical environment.
The Minchin travel prize
Leaving a legacy of any size can have a momentous impact on generations to come.
In 1905, GRN Minchin matriculated at Christ’s, where he saw the beginning of his lifelong fascination with motor sports and the motor industry. During his undergraduate years he travelled thousands of miles on his motorcycle, frequently crossing the channel to watch motor races in France. After graduating, he went on to work in the motor industry, supplying batteries to the up-and-coming Rolls Royce company. As a keen traveller throughout his life, he moved to South Africa for his retirement, where he eventually died in 1977.
He left a generous legacy to Christ’s with the aim of helping students at his own College where, he adds, he “had such a happy time”. This legacy has been used to fund student travel, achieving his aim of helping students while also honouring his love for adventure. Since the 70s, hundreds of students have benefitted from Minchin’s generosity. Just a couple of examples from the previous year include Tom Spencer and Georgie van Dyke, who between them, used the award to travel to five different countries.
Tom, now in his fourth year, is a keen runner who competes in cross-country, athletics, and Fell and Mountain Running. The Minchin award gave him the opportunity to compete in several international races, including two mountain races in the Italian Alps, and the world-renowned Sierre-Zinal trail race in Switzerland, where he placed sixteenth, becoming one of only 102 athletes to ever break the 2:40:00hr mark in the event’s history. He also used the Minchin fund to embark on a second trip, this time to Japan, where he took part in the Achilles Tour. This is a Varsity competition between students from Oxford and Cambridge and five Japanese universities. On his visit to Mount Fuji, Tom took it upon himself to time-trial the route, running 21km from base to summit. Although he was not there for the official race, his ascent from 700m to 3776m took 2:45hr, within a minute of the winning time in the past few years.
Third-year Natural Scientist Georgie used the Minchin travel fund to travel to Australia and complete a geological mapping project for her third-year dissertation. This involved spending 28 days in the Australian bush, going out each day to make observations and take structural measurements of the exposed rock, allowing her to interpret the geological history of the area. After a month of mapping, she had taken enough data to construct a geological map of a 20km2 area. Spending this much time in nature meant that she experienced a wide range of wildlife, including kangaroos, wallabies, monitor lizards, and native birds, insects, and a snake!
Photo credit: Tom Spencer
