Welcome to the MCR committee! There are events and opportunities on around college during this week, we hope to see you around! This week’s events are :
This week’s Fitztivities
7.30pm Monday Music Concert [Chapel]. Chamber music from Fitz’s fine student musicians, including Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto with soloist Maurits Houck.
6pm Tuesday Working with your supervisor [William Thatcher room (Wilson Court)]. The supervisor-student relationship can be a difficult one, with ample ground for tension, miscommunication, and chaos. On the other hand, it can also be a source of support and great synergy. In this panel discussion, we will consider the good and the bad of this relationship and identify some ways in which students can work better with their supervisors.
12pm Wednesday Mindfulness session with the wellbeing coordinator
3.30pm Wednesday Welfare Tea & Cake [MCR]. Our wonderful welfare officers Samantha and Zack have arranged delicious tea and snacks for the MCR members!
7.30 pm Thursday Piano Circus [Auditorium]. Cambridge Music Festival brings Piano Circus, one of the foremost interpreters of the music of Steve Reich, to Fitz to explore his formative works of the 1970s: Four Organs, Phase Patterns, Clapping Music, Six Pianos. Tickets cambridgemusicfestival.co.uk Piano Circus: Steve Reich
All other opportunities
Cyclists and pedestrians’ safety: Highway Code changes
I wanted to reach out with this informative guide, Share the Road: Cyclist & Pedestrian Safety Awareness for Drivers: https://www.comparethemarket.com/car-insurance/content/cyclist-pedestrian-safety-awareness-for-drivers/.
It covers everything drivers today need to be aware of:
- New changes to the Highway Code
- How to be considerate around cyclists, pedestrians, and horse riders
- What to do if there’s an accident
Here are just some of the insights the guide offers:
- The Highway Code changes follow the Mayor of London’s pledge to eliminate all deaths and serious injuries that occur as a result of road traffic by 2041.
- The new rules state that you can cross a double white line (usually prohibited) in order to overtake a cyclist if they are going under 10 miles per hour, provided it’s safe to do so.
- It’s important to pay particular attention to these rules about overtaking, as overtaking led to a shocking 141 fatalities on British roads in 2020.
These new changes really need to be understood by drivers.
How can we fix the crisis in social care?
The Cambridge University Society for Health Policy and Management
Social care is broken. Badly. And it threatens to break the NHS. However, no one agrees about how to fix it. Join us on zoom, at 19:00 on Monday 13th March, as we attempt to solve this crucial problem with an all-star panel including the founder of one of the UK’s largest social care companies (and former Cambridge medical student), the UK’s most senior care worker, and director of policy at the UK’s largest healthcare think tank. Sign up below to receive the meeting link:
https://forms.gle/gohCA1dWY9wwvpMG7
Please contact cambridgehealthpolicy@gmail.com with any questions.
Join i-Teams for the Easter Term – APPLY BY MARCH 20th
“Participating in i-Teams has been one of the best things I did while being in Cambridge.”
By joining an i-Team, you will work for a term with postgraduates from across the University and a dedicated industry mentor. You will receive training from industry experts and investigate the commercial potential and user requirements of a real Cambridge invention, gaining hands-on skills and experience.
Apply via our website www.iteamsonline.org no later than MONDAY MARCH 20th, including a CV and a covering letter explaining which projects you want to do and why. Applications are welcomed from post-docs and postgraduates from any discipline. No previous commercial background required.
Easter Term projects:
1. Investigating the market for an easy-to-use digital exhibitions platform, with Dr. Christopher Burgess, Head of Exhibitions and Public Programmes, Cambridge University Library
2. Exploring the market for a rapid point-of-care miniaturised diagnostic test, with Shuler Xu, Medicine & Nipun Sawhey, Physics
3. Identifying the industry need for an automated nanofabrication system, with Teja Potocnik & Dr. Jack Alexander-Webber, Engineering & Nanomation
The programme includes regular group sessions, team meetings and individual work. i-Teams present their final recommendations to a business and academic audience at the end of the term. The course will run at the IfM on Tuesday evenings from April 18th with a final presentation session on June 15th.
Engage for Change
Engage for Change is a free 12-week programme where you’ll be supported in developing your own project to improve the environmental practices of any part of the University. On the programme, you will receive a weekly 1.5 hours of training in areas like project management, stakeholder engagement, and impact measurement, alongside 1:1 support in designing and executing your project. You’ll also get insider information from the University’s Sustainability Team and Cambridge Zero, on how to push for sustainable change within the University’s institutions. The programme will run from w/c 24 April to w/c 10 July. This cohort is open to Master’s and PhD students only.
Past projects include: designing a climate literacy course for Architecture students; setting up a battery recycling scheme in Girton College; measuring energy consumption at Selwyn College; and improving plant-based hot meal options in a College. This is a unique chance to get hands-on experience in environmental leadership, whether you want work experience in the sustainability sector or just want to make a real difference on a pressing environmental issue.
Check our more examples on our website, find more details in our application pack, and apply right here by Monday 10 April. Any questions? Email Jenny at jenny.perratt@cambridgehub.org
SolidariTee
SolidariTee, a charity working to create long-term change in the ways refugees worldwide are treated, are hosting our annual conference 2023 on Saturday 25th March. The event will be held in London, from 11am-5:30pm, and is themed ‘Accountability in Action’.
The conference aims to bring a real-world focus to the concept of ‘accountability to affected populations’ as relates to upholding the rights of refugees and others forced to flee their homes, with panels covering mental health, research & learning, and activism & advocacy respectively.
Our focus is being able to use knowledge gained by and with people who have lived experience of forcible displacement to better uphold and advocate for the rights and freedoms of refugees, asylum seekers, and others forced to flee their homes.
Tickets are available on a ‘donate what you can’ basis, and are also available free of charge for those unable to donate at this time.
Speakers include:
- Dr Tugba Basaran, Deputy Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement at the University of Cambridge
- Imogen Wall, Humanitarian and Disaster Response Expert
- Amos Sconfeld, Our Second Home Founder
- Refugee-Led Research Hub guest speakers, University of Oxford
- Nasrin Parvaz, author, artist and advocate through Survivors Speak OUT Network, linked to Freedom From Torture
To read more and reserve a ticket, simply follow the link below, or reach out to outreach@solidaritee.org.uk with any questions.
More info: https://www.solidaritee.org.uk/conference-2023
International Women’s Day
Booking is now open for next week’s annual International Women’s Day Formal on March 8th! Booking can be done through the portal on myfitz.
This year we are continuing our support for Cambridge Rape Crisis Centre- an amazing organisation aiming to make our community safer for women and non-binary people. We have launched a fundraiser which can be found linked here and any donations would be greatly appreciated: https://www.justgiving.com/page/fitzcollege-1677177592705?utm_source=copyLink&utm_medium=one_page&utm_content=page/fitzcollege-1677177592705&utm_campaign=pfp-share&utm_term=358da4af59fa4aecafb82486597ec766
Education Resources
Get to know the “Education Resources” tab on the Fitz MCR webpage!
This is a one-stop page which consolidates quick-access links to various academic databases and software that might be useful across different types of courses – not just those on which Cambridge already has institutional licenses for, but also others where one can request directly for a free educational/academic license! Have any ideas or suggestions on what databases or software to include here? Simply drop an email to mcr.academic@fitz.cam.ac.uk – this page is non-exhaustive and will have rolling updates!
Fitz MCR Charity
This year the MCR are supporting a local charity – Jimmy’s Cambridge – who support the homeless community in Cambridge. Please consider making a donation through our Just Giving page. https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/MCR-Treasurer