Ripon newsletter: June 2023

Can you believe it’s been a year since we launched this newsletter? Over the past year, it’s been incredible learning more about our Ripon alumni community, your experience of studying with us and sharing stories from Ripon. We’ve also spent the year thinking more about how we can bring our Ripon alumni community together, and we’ve come up with an idea we hope you’ll like.

In the past few months since your last newsletter, we’ve been busy organising our first all-alumni reunion this decade, raising awareness of how to support our students and researching things in our archive. We’ve also been working on the annual alumni magazine, talking to our Class of 2023 and getting ready to share some of our alumni connections to York St John.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…

Well, not really! We know we’re all thinking about warmer days, longer nights and being able to stand outside without a coat on, but it’s never too early to start planning.

This December, would you be interested in attending a festive get-together just for Ripon alumni? We’re still looking at options, and it really does depend on numbers, but this get-together could be:

• A Christmas dinner with all the trimmings (yes, including the dreaded sprouts)
• A lunch or teatime buffet
• Afternoon tea
• Something else entirely depending on what you’d like to do

We’d like to know a rough idea of how many of you are interested in attending, as well as what sort of get-together you’d prefer. We’d even like to know if you have a preference for which week leading up to Christmas you’d prefer! Once we know if we’d be looking at a table for 5, a room for 50 or a venue for 500, we can begin planning properly.

Please complete the below form to tell us if you’d be interested in an event like this. The form will close at the end of July, and from there we’ll contact everyone who said they would be interested with more information.

Please register your interest in a Christmas gathering.

If you know of friends who don’t receive this newsletter who would be interested in attending, please ask them to email us to register for this newsletter and receive the form. If you know of friends who can’t receive this newsletter because it is by email but who would love to attend something like this, they can call us on 01904 876741 to register their interest.

Please only call to register your interest if you are unable to access the form online. This helps us better track your responses and makes sure we can contact as many of you by email as possible with more information.

Alumination

Earlier this year we launched Alumination, a new blog dedicated to shining a light on alumni and how you can support our students. On Alumination you can browse:

• Alumni snapshots submitted over the past year, with more added every few weeks
• Information about our recent webinar participants
• Case studies from recent and current scholarship recipients
• Case studies from alumni who donate to us

But we have noticed something, and it’s something only you can help with. We’ve been asking alumni to submit a snapshot for over a year now, but not many alumni from Ripon College and Ripon campus have done this yet. This means that our Ripon alumni are very underrepresented, and we’d really like that to change.

Our snapshots are a way of sharing a little bit about you and what you’ve been up to since completing your studies with us. You don’t have to write an essay for each question, but your replies are a great way of showing our alumni community and current students what our alumni do.

It should only take you a few minutes to complete, so please consider sending in your snapshot today via our website.

From 1898 to 2023

We can’t wait to host our first reunion this decade on Saturday 22 July at our York campus! If you haven’t already, you can still buy a ticket to attend until 11:59pm on 26 June, and join us as we celebrate our entire alumni community.

You might be wondering what exactly this is. But when we decided to hold a reunion, we knew we’d need to create some fun photo opportunities for our alumni, and we couldn’t leave our Ripon alumni out. The original photo was taken in 1898 and shows the final year students with staff. We couldn’t use the whole photo for space reasons, but hopefully this small section tells its own story!

The full photo also reveals some fascinating details about life at Ripon College in 1898. Four staff members are pictured in academic robes and mortar boards. Three of them are also wearing a sash with a rosette on. This sash and rosette combination signifies something very specific: they had L.L.A degrees from St Andrews University. An academic equivalent to a MA degree offered remotely, this Lady Literate in Arts diploma was a way for women to access university level education in a time when they may not have been able to enrol at university, or later when women could enrol, attend classes in Scotland. The sash mirrored the colours of an academic hood and signified their academic achievement. In Ripon Training College: The First Hundred Years by A. M Wilkinson, we are told that Miss Palin, who worked at the College from 1877 to 1917, obtained an L.L.A degree from St Andrews and Miss Goodacre a degree from London University.

Based on other photos, it’s likely that Miss Palin is the staff member in a mortar board stood on the left, next to the other staff member who reunion attendees can pose as in our photo boards. We say likely because we can’t be 100% sure, but based on the fact Miss Palin is in every class photo until 1917, it seems probable she is the right person.

So what’s special about their academic clothing? Principal Garrod, the only man in the photo, was also a university graduate and he doesn’t wear academic clothing. Likewise, in later class photos, Miss Palin and other academic staff don’t wear formal academic wear either. But in the late 1890s, it was still unusual for women to have a degree. Perhaps they wore their academic robes because they were rightly proud of their recent achievements. Perhaps they wore them to signify the academic rigour of the teaching at the College. Unfortunately, we just don’t know. But we do know from one photo alone that staff were justly proud of their academic achievements, and that Ripon College promoted lifelong learning, even in the late 1890s.

You can find out more about the L.L.A degree on the University of St Andrew’s website.

Welcoming family to campus

In 2021, we wrote about Ripon College alumna Nora, who completed her course with us in 1942. We were delighted to award her an honorary bachelor of education degree, and at the time she was our oldest past student to receive the degree at 101 years old.

Our alumni community spans the globe and often includes people who didn’t directly study with us. A few months ago, we welcomed Margaret to campus all the way from Australia as she retraced her mother Nora’s footsteps around Yorkshire. Nora sadly passed away in 2021, but during Margaret’s visit with us, we were able to learn more about her life after leaving Ripon College.

In a diary Nora wrote after retiring, she fondly recalled her time at Ripon College and spent the rest of her career teaching. After completing a one year exchange in Australia, she decided to complete another year there, met her husband and the rest was history! During her career she worked in numerous schools and worked as a principal later in her career. Her dedication to education was passed down with many of her family members, including Margaret, going on to become teachers.

You can read more of about Nora and her recollections of College life on our blog.

News from Ripon

There’s always lots to say about what’s going on in Ripon, but here are three things we thought you might find interesting:

• Local auctioneers, Elstob & Elstob recently saw unprecedented interest in a painting after research revealed more about the sitter and painter. Listed with a £2000 estimate, it eventually sold for £24,000! Find out more about this story on The Yorkshire Post website.
• Cattle have been introduced to Brimham Rocks, a site many Ripon alumni will be familiar with! Introduced as part of wider moorland management, find out more about this decision on The National Trust website.
• Looking for things to do during your next visit to Ripon? The Visit Ripon website includes a helpful calendar of local events, including comedy nights, family friendly events and more. Browse what’s on this summer in Ripon on their website.

News from YSJ

Life never stops on campus, and that means there’s always something to talk about! If you’ve been reading your monthly alumni newsletter, you’ll know there’s been plenty of things happening on campus recently. But here ae three very recent stories about our university community we think you’ll enjoy!

Every year our final year students from the School of the Arts get chance to display their work for the world (or at least their friends and family) to come and see. It’s always a pleasure to wander round campus and discover an art installation or be confronted with a sculpture you didn’t expect to see! This year one final year student is doing more than just displaying her work. Born in 1945, final year, Fine Art BA student, Judith, is showing that it’s never too late to come to university! Read more about her journey to studying with us on our website.

In other news, our newest building on campus has won more awards for its breath-taking design and a student initiative has been nominated for a prestigious National Diversity Award.

Heritage tour

At the start of June, we recorded our audio heritage tour of campus with a range of alumni taking part. The heritage tour is of York campus, but does include several references to Ripon College and Ripon campus.

We can’t wait to share it with you once it’s complete!

Sunshine on campus

The weather has been very up and down in York, with sunny days and a cool breeze or just overcast skies when we expected a heatwave!

So here’s a photo from a warmer time to tide us all over until summer really starts.