Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge

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Full name

Lucy Cavendish College

Motto

Named after

Lucy Cavendish

Previous names

Established

1965

Sister College(s)

None

President

Dame Veronica Sutherland

Location

Lady Margaret Road

Undergraduates

106

Postgraduates

116

Homepage

Boatclub

Lucy Cavendish College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge with a focus on the needs of older women students. Only women over the age of 21 are admitted to the college for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees.

1 Origins
2 Other
3 Notable staff and alumnae
4 Further reading

[edit] Origins

Although women had been allowed to undertake limited study at Cambridge, it was only in 1947 that they were admitted as full members of the student body; even then, the two existing women’s colleges were limited in their numbers. In 1950 a group called the "Society of Women Members of the Regent House who are not Fellows of Colleges" (also known as the "Dining Group") was established in order to offer women an environment like that experienced by college fellows, where academic support, feedback and conversation was available as at a college High Table. One of the Dining Group's aims was the establishment of more women's colleges, and after the 1954 foundation of New Hall their focus moved to creating more provision for female graduate students.

The Dining Group applied to the Senate House in 1964 for recognition as the Lucy Cavendish Collegiate Society, with a mandate in its Trust Deed to have responsibility for "the care and discipline of:

research students working for higher degrees or diplomas and
women, not necessarily so engaged, who wish to re-equip themselves for professional careers by advanced study, or by obtaining higher qualifications."

In 1965, the Lucy Cavendish Collegiate Society was given official recognition; this date is considered by the college to be its foundation date.[1] It became an "Approved Society": a new type of body coined specially by the Senate House to distinguish the Society from an "Approved Foundation" of the University as a more experimental, less formal institution. It was not until a change in the University statutes was made in 1971 that Approved Societies could admit undergraduates. Approved Foundation status was granted to the body called Lucy Cavendish College in 1984, and in 1997 the College finally became self-governing under a Royal Charter.[2]