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HillsReviewA u t u m n N e w s l e t t e r D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 5

University Challenge

The crane at the front of the College

This outstanding new building will provide state-of-the-art accommodation for the mathematics, performing arts and sports depart-ments; which will in turn enable the College to create more space within vacated areas for independent study and student social areas. We hope the building will be ready for use by April 2016.

New Building is Nearing Completion Top quiz teams from UK sixth form schools and colleges competed in the University of Lincoln’s own University Challenge general knowledge competition - with the Hills Road team crowned champions in the grand final. Some 60 teams took part in regional events in a bid to qualify for the final hosted on Lincoln’s main Brayford Pool Campus on Thursday 24th September. Hills Road won the prestigious title after pitting their wits against 11 other finalists at the University’s Performing Arts Centre, claiming the £1,000 first prize. Hills Road emerged as winners ahead of joint runners up Beaumont School, St Albans, and Southend High School for Boys. In third place was Carlton-le-Willows Academy from Gedling, Nottingham. Each member of the Hills Road team secured an individual prize of £50. Francesco Dernie (18), the winning team captain, said they would be donating the main prize of £1,000 to the College’s student welfare initiative and to other student council projects. Francesco was joined by fellow students Ruby Osman (17), Rock Pok Tao Fong (18) and Jack Kerwin (17).

L to R: Jack, Ruby, Francesco and Pok with the winning cheque in front of Lincoln Cathedral

The roof is on!

An artist’s impression of the new building from Purbeck Road

Old Cantabrigian Society Annual Dinner

This year the Old Cantabrigian Society’s (OCS) annual dinner was held on 28th November. There was a great turn out and the OCS was graced with many new faces, all of whom thoroughly enjoyed the evening. By kind permission of the Principal, the Old Canta-brigian Society, whose mem-bers are all past and present students or staff at Hills Road, held their annual dinner in the Assembly Hall of the College. The dinner was at-tended by 98 diners, including 9 current students at the Col-lege, ranging in age from 16 to

92. Many had travelled from far afield to attend what is always a most enjoyable evening, involving wining, dining and reminiscing. The bar, sited in the music recital room, known to most of the older alumni as the gym, opened at 6.00pm with the meal starting at 7.30pm. After an extravagant and delicious meal involv-ing 5 courses, all joined the President, Chris Hale (59-67), in toasting ‘The Queen’ and ‘Absent Friends’. Before toasting ‘The College’, Phil Johnson (70-77) spoke about his time at the

College and later as a medical officer in the army, where he specialised in aviation medi-cine. In addition to his medical training, he had to qualify as a pilot for both fixed wing aircraft and helicopters. One particular memo-ry Phil shared, with which many could empathise, was attempt-ing to count the holes in the ceiling tiles of the hall whilst sitting his exams! (Anybody else admitting to this? Did you manage to get an answer?). Next year’s dinner will be on Saturday 26th November 2016. Put it in your diary!

The College’s current rowing captains enjoying the Old Cantabrigian Society dinner

Big Biology Day

CambridgeBiologists, Ian Harvey (Head of Biology at Hills Road) and Amanda Burton, organised the 4th Big Biology Day on Saturday 17th October at the College. There was a host of engaging, fun and informative hands-on biology on offer. Ac-tivities included the Babraham Institute’s pop-up laboratory exploring how the human body works and how it changes with

age, Medimmune’s experi-ments to find out why some cancers evolve a resistance to medicine, playing the Biochemi-cal Society’s exciting healthy diets card game, meeting the naturalist Luke Brookes, testing the age of your ears and look-ing inside your own eyeballs with the Cambridge Science Centre plus so much more. A total of 20 contributors attended this year’s Big Biology

Day with over 30 activities and there was something for all ages. A favourite quote from a mum was, “My six year old said it was better than Alton Tow-ers!” New this year were the Raptor Foundation with their birds of prey and a panel discussion with experts explor-ing the problems of diseases such as ebola, influenza and TB.

Big Biology day at the College in October

The Hills Road Alumni Net-work, http://alumni.hillsroad.ac.uk, was officially launched in September. Pelicanconnect (a company founded by Hills Road alumna, Sian Morley-Smith) have provided the database and software to enable the network to be managed ‘in-house’. To date, almost 500 members have joined the Network. So far, over 20 news stories have been published on the Network. These include questions and interviews from past and present students, having a collective total of 450 reads, news sto-ries from past teachers such as ‘Catch-ing up with Ted Coney’ (139 reads), and sports achievements including the Hills Road ladies rowing team Blade award, which has received over 450 reads!

Hills Road Alumni

Screen shot from the Hills Road Alumni Network website

The Hills Road Alumni Net-work is a place where members can share their own stories and experiences of the College, interact and connect with fellow friends and reconnect with past colleagues and classmates. Members are also encouraged to comment on news stories and share their own opinions and ideas. This not only provides new opportunities for members but it is also a way to recreate the community spirit people experi-enced at the College.

Social media (Twitter and Facebook) are also used to engage with members (and non-members)! These are frequently updated and over the Christmas period, content has been uploaded daily to get more people involved on a regular basis. Ongoing work, which is car-ried out by two Hills Road Alumnae Caitlin Shortall and Jasmine Hughes, includes engaging with past alumni and encouraging them to offer advice about their own personal careers to the current students. This information provides useful content for future generations to enjoy, allowing them to reminisce about past experiences and fond memories of their time at College. In the creation of our Network we have also built on the existing Hills Road legacy, making it even greater and stronger than before.

Caitlin and Jasmine

The Producers

This year’s Christmas Enrichment Show The Producers proved to be a real hit with au-diences, who found it absolute-ly hilarious. Nigel Bennett took the baton for the first time, complete with great choreog-raphy from Helen and Emily Garner, an ingenious mobile set that lit up provided by Ian Cut-ting and Brendan Synge, superb costumes from Linda Hadaway and directed by Richard Fred-man and Lydia Aers. A real team effort.

L to R: Jack Kelly, Professor Conrad Lichtenstien (research project sponsor), John McCann, Jill Cox (CEO of CAVA), Danny Delgado Rosas, Emily Ross (RSChem/Gatsby scheme coordinator at CAVA).

Celebrating Success in Access to Science

Foundation. Participating stu-dents must demonstrate that they can carry out a research project to a high specification, responding to the direction of a local scientific organisation. Course leader, Dr John McCann said, “Danny and Jack were diligent students and successfully completed the Bioscience course at Hills Road, achieving distinctions across all of their course units.” “The Access to Higher Education course is validated by the Cambridge Access Validat-ing Agency and was a great opportunity for the students to

explore the wonderful world of Bioscience.”“Danny completed a very impressive research project in collaboration with the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) in Cambridge. I am delighted with his achievement and am sure that he has a great future ahead of him.” “Jack’s research project was based on antibiotic resistance in bacteria and it was sponsored partly by Professor Lichtenstein of the local re-search Bioscience organisation, Nemesis.” Danny said, “I am

very grateful to the RSC and the Gatsby Foundation for the opportunity to gain RSciTech status, and to Hills Road and Da-vid Evershed, my point of con-tact at NIAB for this project, for their guidance and support.” Danny and Jack will attend a special presentation ceremony at the Royal Society of Chemistry, Burlington House, London in October, where they will be presented with their awards. They will be accompa-nied by a College representa-tive.

Joanna Lewis

Joanna Lewis receiving her award

Year 12 student, Joanna Lewis, was recently named as one of three winners of the Cambridge International Examinations Top in China award for her outstanding Cambridge IGCSE English result. Joanna has an interesting story. Born in China, Joanna and her sister were adopted as babies by Ruth and David Lewis. Though based in the UK, the Lewis family was keen to give their daughters the opportunity to learn about their own culture, and their mother tongue. “We have lived a total of six years in China,” says David. “For the first four years Joanna and her sister were home-schooled in China before returning to the UK for three years of secondary education in Kent. In the summer of 2013 we returned to China so that the girls could have another two years in a country and culture they both love.” Joanna studied for her Cambridge IGCSEs online with an or-ganisation called Northstar. Learning tasks are set and marked over the internet, without any classroom in-teraction. Living in Kunming in south-west China, Nanfang International School in Guangzhou was the only school where Joanna could sit her exams, other than a school in Beijing. As Guangzhou was only two hours’ flight away, and Beijing about four hours, the family chose Guangzhou. This entailed five trips for Joanna to complete her nine IGCSEs and her A Level in Chinese – possibly a record for miles commuted to sit exams!

The Producers

Two Hills Road Adult Education students, Danny Delgado Rosas and Jack Kelly, who studied for a part-time Ac-cess to Bioscience course at the College, celebrated this summer after receiving the news that they are in the top twenty-six students in the country to be awarded Registered Science Technician (RSciTech) status. The registration programme is run jointly by the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Gatsby

Sports News

PRODUCTION NOTESArticles and photographs for this edition of HillsReview were produced by Vivien Brownlee, Emma Copley, Ian Cutting, Ian Harvey, Ann Hemming, Jasmine Hughes, Vineeth Joseph, John McCann,

Hills Road students May Perrin 17, Bea Loveridge 18, Kate Willis 19, Ellen Wallwork 16, Harriet Finlayson 16, Bella Fleming 16, Rosie Robinson 17 have been awarded the coveted ‘Bumps Blades’. They won this pres-tigious award for their perfor-mance competing in the Cam-bridge Town Bumps, an annual series of boat races held on the River Cam this year from 21st to 24th July. The Hills Road girls’ crew won blades by bumping up at every opportunity, securing a place for the Cantabs 6 crew in the second division. Holly Hill, Cambridge

University and Great Britain rower who won the bronze medal in the women’s four crew at the World Under-23 Row-ing Championships in August, presented the blade to the girls at The Hills Road Sports and Tennis Centre where it will be displayed. Ann Hemming, Head of Sport at Hills Road said: “This is a tremendous achievement with the crew successfully bumping up five places across the week. Equally impressive is the large number of Hills Road rowers involved in the bumps at all levels, a reflection of the hard work, support and enthusiasm

of the Cantabs coaches.” “Hills Road crews not only achieved success in the bumps but have proved worthy opposition against some of the top public schools in the coun-try at the Schools Head on the River Thames.” The crew are: Stroke – M L Perrin (Hills Road), 7 – B H Loveridge (Hills Road), 6 – K S Willis (Hills Road), 5 – H A F Finlayson (Hills Road), 4 – E B Wallwork (Hills Road), 3 – A H Dickinson (Cantabs), 2 – N Weik-Clark (Cantabs)/B E Fleming (Hills Road), Bow – R M Robin-son (Hills Road), Cox - I E Forbes (Cantabs), Coach - Oli E Frazer

L to R: Holly Hill, Kate Willis, Harriet Finlayson, May Perrin, Ellen Wallwork, Bella Fleming, Bea Loveridge, Rosie Robinson, Rachel Crockford (Coach), Gill Cooper, Linda Sinclair, Mike Hunter & Phil Gunning

Cross Country squad domi-nate Cambridge Schools

Charlotte-Tara Murphy

Congratulations to the Hills Road cross-country team, with all qualifying for the County round with top ten finishes. Men: Ashley Brown 2nd, Jake Davies 4th. Women: Charlotte-Tara Mur-phy 1st, Belinda Dow 2nd and Evie Morris Gray was 3rd.

Adult Education Art tutor, Emma Copley, appeared in this year’s Sky Art’s Landscape Artist of the Year TV programme. Emma applied for the com-petition by sending in images of her work with an application form and they called her a week later to let her know that she had been selected from a few thousand applicants!

Emma teaching an art class

Emma Copley

Emma was born in Dublin, Ireland and lived on the east coast of the United States where she gradu-ated from Rhode Island School of Design in 2001 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting.

A landscape painting by Emma Copley

She said, “I knew I would become a professional artist when I was in high school. It sparked my imagination and I felt a drive to pursue painting that is still with me now.” Emma teaches the Adult Edu-cation ‘Painting for beginners course’ on Wednesday evenings as well as ‘Painting, the next step’ on Saturdays at Hills Road. Spring term courses start the week beginning 18th January. Find out more at www.HillsRoadAdultEdu-cation.co.uk and enrol for a course online.

Emma with one of her landscape paintings

Volleyball success

Women’s volleyball squad Men’s volleyball squad

The Hills Road Vol-leyball teams enjoyed unprec-edented success during last month’s Volleyball Regional tournament with the Men’s team becoming Champions and the Women’s team coming in a very close second! The men became the first Hills Road Volleyball team to be crowned Regional Champions and qualify for the National Championships. Men’s squad- Vineeth Joseph, Patrick Collins, Carrick Living-stone, Jonah Munday, Lorcan George, Lewis Hook, John

Taylor, Josh Wilson. The Women’s team put on a very strong showing which saw them missing out on being crowned champions and being awarded a place at the AoC National Championships in Newcastle next April by a points difference of 3 points!Women’s squad - Jemma Laver, Tasarla Chester, Annie MacDon-ald, Hannah Knowles, Ela M, Hannah De Almeida Newton, Margaux Na-takuatong, Sophia Rodriguez, Kew Li.