Chemistry Cricket team members after their winning match versus Zoology. Names printed at bottom of article.
Meet second-year PhD student Fergal Hanna – Chemistry Department cricket team captain who is also involved in the Justice4College Supervisors campaign.
Cricket
Fergal, who is researching the polarisation effects on hydrogen bonding in the Hunter group, is also in his second year captaining the departmental cricket team, which plays in the University of Cambridge Inter-Department Cricket League.
The 20-over games are generally played on Wednesday evenings at cricket pitches around Cambridge, and outdoor training is held at St John’s sports ground on Thursdays. Other teams in the league include the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, Cavendish Laboratory, Perse Staff, Genome Campus, Molecular Biology, Zoology and the Cambridge University Press.
Fergal is proud of the team's performance. “We are definitely playing better this year in all aspects of the game, which is nice to see,” he says, citing Part 3 student Ben Adam’s 49 not out versus Cambridge University Press as the outstanding performance so far, and adding: “We’ve also had some good performances that maybe haven’t shown up in the stats.” As this goes to press, the team has won two matches: the first was against Zoology in the league, and the second was a nail biter in a friendly. Fergal reports: "We beat Clare Hall in a thrilling chase, winning with two wickets and nine balls to spare." (see photo below)
Squad members come from a range of departmental research groups including Bronstein, Bernardes, Scherman, Thom, Giorio, Phipps, Reisner, Vendruscolo, Nitschke, Goodman, Vignolini, Vendruscolo, Clarke, and the Atmospheric Sciences groups. Fergal says that along with a few new recruits most of last year’s team members have returned, so--although the main point of the league is to have fun--he is hopeful for a better season than last year’s zero for six record.
Altogether the team has nine matches scheduled (including a friendly against Clare Hall) and will play a tenth if they make the cup final. The season ends in July, but Fergal is keen to schedule some friendlies for August. All department members of any ability level are welcome to join.
Justice4CollegeSupervisors
As Chemistry’s postgrad representative to the University and College Union (UCU), Fergal became interested in the Justice4CollegeSupervisors campaign, which is seeking fair pay for college supervisors, an issue almost unique to Cambridge, Oxford and Durham.
Fergal, who is a member of Gonville and Caius College, relies on paid supervisions to help pay his bills and feels strongly about the issues raised by the campaign which include paid preparation time, paid mandatory training and secure contracts for all supervisors.
Fergal explains: “Currently for one hour of contact time, you get paid an additional 30 minutes prep time and 20 minutes of marking per student, capped at a maximum of four students. Fergal notes that preparation time might include watching lectures and reading lecture notes, liaising with students and venues, and creating supervision notes and questions for the students. Although he admits prep time can vary widely depending on the supervisor’s experience and the course, Fergal says: “Many supervisors spend far more than 30 minutes of preparation time for their supervisions, and if they have more than four students in a supervision, are not paid for their additional marking time.”
To provide evidence to support their campaign, union reps have been asking supervisors to log their preparation and marking times. Fergal says: “For the 46 hours of contact time we have logged for Chemistry supervisions, the prep time is 38.5 hours, which is almost twice what we are being paid for.”
The campaign also argues that supervisors should be paid for their time spent taking mandatory training. In Michaelmas term, the campaign team delivered 600 signed postcards to Graham Virgo, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, which demanded improvements to their working conditions. “As a result, the University has agreed to put out a policy document telling departments they must pay people who attend in-house supervisor training," he says. "We have presented the case to the colleges for them to pay for the training provided via the Cambridge Centre for Training and Learning as that has not been included in the policy document."
The UCU held organised strikes in Michaelmas and Lent terms and Easter vacation on several issues including pay, gender inequality, workload and pensions, which included the issues specific to the Justice4College Supervisors campaign. Most recently the Justice4CollegeSupervisors campaign held a well-attended rally on the 27th of May in front of Great St Mary’s church, to put pressure on a meeting of the Senior Tutors Committee, which is made up of the Senior Tutors of all 31 Cambridge Colleges along with the Secretary of the Bursars’ Committee and the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education.
Fergal says: “We are halfway through our first demand (paid training), but we still need to get the Colleges to agree to negotiate a pay rise, secure contracts and pay for the CCTL training we are obliged to take.”
Lead photo from left: Ed Sanders, Fergal Hanna, Ethan Sorrell, Sultaan Yousaf, Sam Pritchard, Ben Adam, Venkat Kapil, Will Davies, Amit Ghosh and Anoushka Handa.
Not pictured: Udit Surya Saha, Kate Zator, Mohit Dhiman, Alex Root, Ollie Evans, Stevie O'Neill, Kripa Panchagnula, David Gibson, Unnikrishnan Bindu, Lorrie Jacob, Celeste van den Bosch, Nick Hall, Daniel Warnes, Ben Conway-Jones, Harry Blakiston Houston.
Below from left (after successfully chasing Clare Hall): Amit Ghosh, Unnikrishnan Bindu, Kripa Panchagnula, Will Holmes (Engineering), Alex Root, Stevie O'Neill, Fergal Hanna, Joe Smith, Amit Dahiya, Ethan Sorrell (Engineering).
