The President's Annual Fireside Chat

Alumna and Honorary Fellow Emily Maitlis (1989) interviewed the President, Dr Mohamed El-Erian, for the President's Fireside Chat to update College alumni & supporters on the latest developments from Queens' in 2023. Filming took place at the former residence of US President John Adams in London.

Some of the topics discussed include:

• External challenges facing the College
• Student mental health
• The future of Queens' Fellowship
• Emily Maitlis' memories of Queens'
• Access and outreach
• Financial support
• Maintaining and upgrading the College's buildings

You can watch the video below or visit our YouTube channel. If you would prefer to read the written interview, you can find it at the bottom of the page.

The President's Annual Fireside Chat

Mohamed El-Erian (MAE): I don't know if you remember your first day when you walked into Queens'?

Emily Maitlis (EM): Yes, I do.

MAE: And?

EM: I think it was just a sense of pinching myself, you know. I remember a postgraduate taking pity on me, I think I'd arrived too early, and he said, "Come with me, I've got to do my washing, I'll take you to the laundry room and I'll tell you everything you need to know."

It wasn't as dodgy as it sounds! It was his way of saying, "This is a normal thing," I think that was why he'd done it. "This is a normal thing, we do our washing, you need detergent, you need your coins, I'm going to do this in front of you. It's not all extraordinary chapels and 600-year-old buildings and antique books. There is a kind of daily life and a rhythm to it that you need to understand and get on with."

There was a payphone right next to the washing machine...

MAE: I remember that!

EM: So it was put your washing on, call your mum, check everything's okay at home, and that then gives you the release, "I'm going to go back to my magical, extraordinary world knowing that I've got my feet on the ground."

MAE: Was it still 2ps and 10ps that you had to put on the phone or had it evolved?

EM: I don't want to give my age away, I should say it was much more expensive, I'm sure we were into pound coins by then!

I want to start by looking at the future of Queens' in this post-pandemic world. Luckily, we're now breathing a sigh of relief, but looking again at the landscape as to what lies in store, how well do you think Queens' has recovered, and what are the things that you've learned along the way?

MAE: So let me first thank you for doing this. Like everybody else, we were shaken by the pandemic. Just as we emerged from the pandemic, we then got the energy crisis, and then we got the cost of living crisis, so we've had three crises, one after the other. We navigated some real difficulties.

Our students, of course, were disrupted. The way we provided education was disrupted. Our finances were disrupted. Our society was disrupted, but somehow we got back on side pretty quickly.

And then we move to initiatives that I think are improving our college. The good news is that we learned a tonne during the pandemic, including what our fragilities were, and we're very focused on not only building on the foundation we have, but also reducing what I call structural weaknesses.

EM: And what does that mean then, in terms of the challenges that lie ahead now? You can tell me if they're academic, if they're financial, if they're social - what do you think Queens' is really facing now?

MAE: So we face five major strategic challenges.

One is to continue to evolve how we deliver education, how we do research, and to make sure that we maintain academic excellence. That's what we're here for.

Second is that we support our students and make sure that we have an inclusive, diverse society that mutually respects each other and helps each other out, and we're very lucky to have that.

Third is infrastructure. We are constrained, seriously constrained.

Then there's financial resilience, which we are trying to improve so that we don't have to scramble when we get a shock from outside.

Then the final thing is governance. We have great ideas but we tend to lag on implementation, so we've been looking at ways to improve our governance so that we can act on these great ideas that we have.

EM: So this must have a knock-on effect, whether you're talking about staff, Fellows or students. What are you seeing in terms of those relationships and how the communities sit?

MAE: So the most encouraging thing is seeing Fellows and students take the initiative. I'll give you two examples if I may.

In the midst of the cost of living crisis, I was asked to be seen by our catering colleague and I was convinced that I was going to hear bad news. I was going to hear, "We need to increase the budget."

Our Domestic Bursar comes in and says, "I have an idea. I want to help our students out, and I want to reduce the cost of a meal to £3.00. I want every student to have access to a hot meal - breakfast, lunch and dinner - for £3.00."

I said, "How are we going to do that?"

He said, "Without incurring any costs."

I said, "I don't believe you," so he delivered the data that showed that by increasing throughput through the cafeteria, we manage our inventory of food much better. We have much less waste, so in fact we get revenues without extra cost.

I said, "Let's try it." I believe in experimenting. It was a huge success. Not only were we able to do it in a financially responsible manner, but our students loved it and they're bringing their friends.

Another initiative came from one of the Fellows who recognised that we need to provide life skills to some of our students, especially those from difficult socioeconomic backgrounds. So completely on her own, she established a partnership with a well-known firm in London and that firm has volunteered five mentors which we've now coupled with our students. They get one-on-one mentoring in a very safe environment.

EM: What is that then - if people want to know what the life skills are?

MAE: It's simple things like, "How do I prepare a CV?" "How do I dress for an interview?" "What am I supposed to expect in interview?" "How do I think of different sectors?" "What's it like when you had to go for an interview?" Some of our students will stay in academia, but most of them will go out [into work], and we've realised that especially those coming from difficult socio-economic environments don't have their parents and they don't have the context that I had growing up.

If you're a first generation university attendee, you are really at a disadvantage, and we're going out of our way through mentoring, through different life skills, to try and help people and allow them to fulfil their incredible potential. Emily, you cannot believe how brilliant these students are.

EM: I'm hearing a real stress on welfare. That, of course, should be at the heart of any institution, any school, any college, but it's really coming through in what you're talking about now.

You've also worked very hard on scholarships for postgraduate students, talk me through the 22 new ones that you've set up.

MAE: I have to thank our Director of Development, Rowan Kitt, for this. We discovered that really bright students, first generation, do not go on to do Master's and PhDs. I remember when I was working in an investment company which hired mainly postgraduates, we hardly saw any diversity, whether that was socioeconomic or cultural. We kept on being told, "There is no pipeline."

So when we looked into it, we realised there are two binding constraints. The first one is being able to fund themselves. The other one, which I should have known and I didn't, is that there's tremendous pressure on first generation students to immediately monetise their undergraduate degree. That's what their family expects.

So Rowan Kitt came up with the idea, let's design a scholarship that explicitly recognises that issue and has a little bit more. We call them The Alexander Crummell Scholarships after the first African-American who came to Queens', and donors very kindly allowed us to experiment with six of them. So we are learning a tremendous amount and we now have 22 of them.

Our next step is to partner with companies and hopefully foundations, not just individuals. The idea is to enhance access participation. Everybody knows Queens' is a friendly and inclusive college, and we want to be even more so.

EM: You've talked about the financial help, the physical help - we should talk about mental wellbeing as well,
because the stuff that you can't see can be some of the hardest and the most important to deal with.

MAE: It is a real issue and I think if you talk to parents, if you talk to people who look after students, they will tell you that mental health is a big issue.

Again, Queens' is amazing, and this happened way before I came, but a decision was made about 10 years ago to bring welfare and wellbeing services into the College, not expect our students to go somewhere alien that's provided by the university.

EM: To bring it in-house.

MAE: And our Head of Welfare, Tim Harling, just a superb person, led this process, and it has been incredibly impactful. Other colleges looked at us in the beginning and said, "Is that really a good idea?" Now they are following in our footsteps.

On all the things we do, ultimately, it is looking at how we enable these incredibly bright minds to take advantage of a transformational opportunity that will not just change their lives, but change the lives of subsequent generations.

When they leave and I speak to them on their graduation day, I of course congratulate them, and I ask them to thank their parents and their friends that made all this possible. I say, "You stand on the shoulders of many other people, and my hope is, after you've done all the things you want to do in life, you'll think about giving other people the same opportunity you were given. Because you're here because other people cared. "

EM: Let's talk a little bit about Fellowship - I speak as an Honorary Fellow, and you have 60 official Fellows. One of the things that Queens' has really tried to do is increase diversity amongst the Fellowship now. How's that going?

MAE: So there are two aspects of diversity.

One is to make sure that we have a range of Fellows that represent the population and represent our students. That's really important because they are role models. I spoke to the first 36 women who came to Queens' in 1980, because it was the 40th anniversary, and their major complaint at the time is not only were they a minority, but they had very few role models. There was one female Fellow. And you know, that was a real issue. So we're trying. I must say we're not where we want to be, but we are making progress. We just got another targeted Fellowship that will help us to make some progress.

The other diversity we're looking for is interdisciplinary. Increasingly people are thinking across disciplines.
So not only are we deepening our subject expertise, but we also broadening it and trying to become more and more interdisciplinary. Now our Fellows love it. They do it informally, every time they go to lunch, they never know who they're going to sit next to, because it depends on the order you come in. Many of them end up having discussions that lead to research, that lead to really interesting exploration. But now we're also doing it more and more for our students and they are enjoying it.

EM: In terms of attracting world-class scholars to come in to be part of the Fellowship, how are you reaching the people that you need to be reaching?

MAE: So recently we had the thrill and honour of one of the top people in Behavioural Science, Cass Sunstein, being willing to spend time at Queens' every year. When he's asked, "Why would you do that, you're not paid, why would you come and spend several days holding three, four lectures a day?" his answer is, "I just love the environment, I love the interactions with others."

So we've been lucky. I think the one disadvantage is that we now really have to think very hard about what we want the size and shape of our Fellowship to look like, it's a discussion that we need to have because we're lucky enough to have a lot of people coming forward wanting to come to Queens', and we need to have a vision.

It's not an issue that we've had to discuss for the last few years, but now I think it's staring us in the face.

EM: There is something glorious but frankly intimidating about those first paces that you take through the gates of Queens', particularly I think for people coming from non-traditional backgrounds to university education, to a Cambridge education. I'm sure you appreciate the need to demystify it a bit. We love the magic of Cambridge and of Queens', but we also need to feel it's somewhere you can fit in, that it is your daily place of work.

MAE: Yes, I remember my first day there, and I extrapolated from my day, which was [full of] excitement, but I then realised also how intimidating it can be.

We had a session with one of our students and I asked her, "Tell me the good, the bad and the ugly of being at Queens'."

She was on a bursary, and she said, "The good is the people, they're incredibly supportive. I was worried about an imposter syndrome, but I never felt it."

I said, "The bad?"

"Really hard work. I'm keeping up, but this is really hard work."

I said, "What about the ugly?"

She said, "You really want to know?"

I said, "I absolutely want to know."

And she said, "I never thought I would be intimidated by the buildings. When I walked in, I looked around and thought, 'They have been standing for centuries. Do I belong here?'"

And I had never thought of that angle. So yes, I mean, it can be intimidating, but after a while it becomes home. Where were your first year in terms of rooms?

EM: I was in Friars, and I loved Friars because I had that magical walk across the Mathematical Bridge every night from whatever we were doing. Most of the parties were going on the other side, and there was a sense always of that escape through the cloisters and through Old Court.

At the end of my first year I was in the Bats May Week production in the Old Court as Isabella in Measure for Measure, and I don't think I ever quite got over it! It was the peak of my acting career, it went downhill very quickly after that, but it was an extraordinary thing.

MAE: So that was my most magical evening. It was Midsummer Night's Dream in the Cloister Court, which was incredible. I still go to that Bats performance - I think that production in June is just magical.

EM: It's extraordinary, yeah.

MAE: Absolutely magical.

EM: And so I suppose, going back to imposter syndrome, when we say you have to pinch yourself, that's kind of what you mean, right, "I don't believe that I should be here, I don't believe that I quite belong," or, "I don't believe this is real."

What do you say to people who do bring that imposter syndrome to you and say, "I can't, I haven't quite earned my place here yet."

MAE: I say that the people who assessed you, the people who interviewed you, have been doing this for a very long time. They are a very good judge of fit, okay. You're here because you truly belong here, and you will soon find out that these people know what they're talking about.

I also actually say the same thing to people who don't make it. I say, you know, "Queens' isn't for everybody," so it's a very competitive place but also fit is really important. I must say, people who interview are actually very good at getting a feel for whether the students will flourish at Queens' or not.

EM: But I guess you also have to invest in outreach, right? You have to make sure that you're reaching people who might have the imposter syndrome before they even get to your door.

MAE: And we've discovered that if you're not on the ground, it's very difficult to do, so we have lots of ambassadors. We go out, we talk to schools, we encourage people, but we discovered that there's nothing better than being on the ground in certain places and partnering up with local institutions and others like IntoUniversity, so if you think of what holds back someone from a very difficult socio-economic background from aspiring to Cambridge and to Oxford, there are three things, two of which we can address.

One is not knowing what it's about, not believing they can fit in, not thinking they can ever be good enough. We start interacting with schools in Year 9, and we try to demystify Queens' and Cambridge. We try to encourage people to aspire. That's necessary but not sufficient.

The second thing is that you've got to demystify the whole thing, the whole experience, for the teachers. The teachers have to be confident that they can support the ambitions of their students. So one of the things that we've done is bring teachers from schools that don't typically send people to Oxbridge, and have them observe interviews, and we demystify the whole interview process for them. And that again is necessary.

The third one that we haven't done yet because it's very hard, is parents. Believe it or not, certain parents feel that somehow if their kid leaves home and travels away to university -

EM: You'll never get them back.

MAE: They'll never get them back. But being on the ground, Emily, we are continuously learning. Continuously learning.

EM: You spoke about the £3 hot meal - given that we are still in a very heavily inflationary environment, with no obvious immediate end in sight, what else are you doing for students who just actually can't afford it and can't get around the cost of living?

MAE: So we've done a few things. One is that we decided not to pass on the full inflation that we felt. That was a decision that the Governing Body made - again, there's a notion of burden sharing that's really important. The other thing that we've done is, of course, we've increased our bursaries - so our donors have been incredibly generous in making sure that the cost of living doesn't derail students that really deserve to be here and who are going to have a huge positive impact on society.

And then the third thing we've done for what we call the 'squeezed middle'. So what's interesting is there are bursaries for the lower income people, and higher income people tend to be able to rely on wealth and savings - it is the people in the middle that get squeezed.

So we've introduced more hardship funds. We've also taken decisions that go beyond supporting their academic endeavours. For example, if you want to travel, if you want to participate in sports, if you want to participate in different societies, our donors have been incredibly generous and have allowed us to provide that sort of support so every student at Queens' will have the same opportunity to buy a hockey stick, to buy kit for rugby, whatever.

And then finally we've stepped out what we call the Subject Funds, so Directors of Studies can themselves enhance that [support]. So we've done it in a way that we hope is what I call incentive compatible, that this is all meant for you, to help you, to enable you to take full advantage of the opportunities you have at Queens', and so far, it seems to work.

Again, you know, I sit in meetings and I'll have someone propose something, and I think to myself, "Well that's brilliant, why didn't I think of that?" A few years ago one of our colleagues, the Dean of College, said we need a Financial Tutor, we need a Fellow who is responsible for thinking of how we allocate these funds and making sure that we bring everything together and have a coherent approach.

We have a Financial Tutor right now. Andrew Gee was an engineer so he brings an engineering mindset to it, which is great. It has made a huge difference, and the students really appreciate it.

EM: You talked about the challenges of infrastructure and you've also talked about the beauty of Old Court - and we know that Queens' is a gem of a college just to walk around, to feel, but you must have concerns about the amount of history that those cloisters contain, and how you preserve those buildings for the future.

MAE: So I feel it every day. I live in the President's Lodge which is one of the biggest privileges, and you experience history just walking to the kitchen. My wife Anna has always said, "We are here as conservators, that's our role."

Our role is to leave the Lodge in a better shape than we found it. And that's the responsibility of every President who lives in the Lodge. So, you know, we are very proud of what we have - it's a bit of a headache - and then you have to live with things that are 'charming'...

EM: Go on, you must tell me what the headache is.

MAE: So the temperature will vary by about 10 degrees depending on which room you're in, because the windows are not uniformly efficient. My daughter - well I have two daughters - they came over the first Christmas, they were in rooms adjacent to each other. They stayed for 10 days and they never both had heating at the same time because the Lodge wasn't able to heat both rooms. Maintenance was wonderful, they would come and they would fix one, but the next thing we knew it knocked the other one out.

So we introduced them to something that certainly my generation was familiar with, which is a heater that you stick into the wall, and they looked at it like, "What is this?" They came from the US, you know, "What is this?!" I thought in the old days it used to be just naked bars -

EM: That's right, that's what it was! So I'd think you have a supply of hot water bottles for any guests?

MAE: Correct, we do, we have that.

EM: But in terms of what you need to do to upkeep now?

MAE: So we have three distinct infrastructure challenges.

One is maintaining the beautiful buildings that we have, and that's really expensive. We are about to close Erasmus to decarbonise it, so we also want to be able to maintain our buildings in a fashion that is sustainable and that is reflective of how strongly we feel about the environment. Decarbonising our site is not an easy thing to do, but we will do it. So one is simply maintenance.

The other one is expansion. We've been very lucky, we've come across a property on Grange Road which will give us an additional 42 rooms for our students which is going to be extremely helpful, and then the third element that people don't think about is reorganisation.

And again our Domestic Bursar, Andy Bainbridge, has come up with really bright ideas that can improve the flow of and the experience of college. When you come in through the Porters' Lodge, the first thing that hits you is a massive bike shed, and that is prime real estate. We have room for a bike shed elsewhere. That can be converted into various facilities for students.

We desperately need more study space. If you go to Owlstone Croft, there's no café, there's no social aspect on that [site], so our third element is reorganisation. So between maintenance, expansion and reorganisation, we hope to provide future generations of students and Fellows and staff with even better experiences.

EM: Mohamed El-Erian, many thanks.

MAE: And thank you again for doing this.

EM: My pleasure.

MAE: And come back and visit and see all that in action!

EM: I will, I will. Thank you.

MAE: Thank you.

Closing notes

MAE: You know, people love either being in Friars or Fisher in their first year, because they go to Cripps for the parties.

EM: Yeah exactly, and then you can run away!

MAE: And then you go back.

EM: So I chose Friars because we had our own gas fire, and that was really important when you had a sink and a gas fire. I was like, "That's worth everything." I didn't feel I needed to be any closer.

MAE: Was it coin based, did you have to put coins in there?

EM: Such a good question. I don't think it was.

My worst room, I have to say, was in W. We played the system so badly, and I don't know if you still do the system where you say you'll share with somebody and the pairs come down? A friend and I didn't want to share at all and we worked out that there were enough people who wanted to share ahead of us so that we'd be the first people on the top of the non-sharing list, and instead we got the very bottom of the sharing list.

We were stuck in W between - have they still got the goods entrance - yes, right, so there was a lorry between you and the loo every night, and we just used to look at each other going, "How have we ended up here?"

I love the stories about the Lodge, because we always used to laugh at the idea that the Lodge had the worst views in Queens' because it's so beautiful, but you look out over Erasmus!

MAE: Did you set foot in the Lodge while you were there?

EM: Yes, yeah, I did, a few times.

MAE: My year, we never set foot in the Lodge.

EM: I went back, oh gosh, I suppose for the Honorary Fellowship - and Chris Pountain was still there, is Chris with you still? I remember they had a lovely drinks party in the sort of grounds of the Lodge as well, it's beautiful, but in the winter it's probably not so great.