The Alumni Fund
The Royal Veterinary College’s Alumni Fund provides you with the chance to create life-changing opportunities for our students, and enable us to use our outstanding teaching, research and facilities to make a major impact on society worldwide.
The RVC Alumni Fund creates new scholarships and bursaries, widens access so that a greater variety of people can enter the veterinary profession, and promotes activities which enhance the student experience. With your help the RVC can push the boundaries of discovery and change lives through learning.
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You can set up a regular gift on the donation form. Regular gifts to the RVC Alumni Fund help us to do so much more, because they give us a dependable income, meaning we can budget and plan ahead. The easiest way to set up your regular gift is by Direct Debit, which is straightforward and provides you with the added peace of mind of the Direct Debit Guarantee.
Please note all funds are administered by the Royal Veterinary College Animal Care Trust, the RVC's registered charity.
What the Alumni Fund supports
The RVC Alumni Fund contributes to four areas:
Enhancing the student experience and wellbeing
The experience that the RVC provides to its students extends far beyond the classroom. Allocating support through the Alumni Fund benefits Students' Union Clubs and Societies and other student led initiatives, as well as projects that create additional recreational resources and develop the campus environment.
The Alumni Fund also supports the well-being of our students; something that the RVC takes very seriously. The RVC works closely with MIND and other organisations to raise awareness about mental wellbeing in the veterinary professions and those who work in support of the profession. Mental health and wellbeing must be a priority as we look to support each other at times when we need it most.
The RVC has published a wellbeing review looking at the various areas that affect our students and those in the profession. Our students and staff are working hard in all sorts of ways to support veterinary students and we would like to be able to support some of these initiatives via the Annual Fund.
The funds we raise help with the running events and supporting new schemes and projects that aim to benefit all students at the Royal Veterinary College and raise awareness of mental health issues.
Hardship, scholarships and bursaries
The Alumni Fund contributes to hardship funds, scholarships and bursaries to help the RVC attract and retain the world’s best and brightest minds, regardless of financial background. It awards scholarships, bursaries and other grants to help ease the financial pressures whilst studying. It also funds widening participation initiatives to help to raise the aspirations of those who would not follow traditional routes in to the RVC.
Teaching and learning
The fund also supports teaching, learning and research projects aimed at ensuring out teaching and learning facilities are always of the highest standards and that our research will always push forward the boundaries of knowledge.
Teaching and research are fundamental to the RVC’s standing as one of the foremost veterinary science institutions in the world.
Principal's Priority
The Alumni Fund also remains flexible to respond to emerging opportunities as they develop. Budgets are always tight and we cannot always foresee how opportunities will arise to make those investments that could make a big difference. Allocating the fund to 'Principal's Priority' enables us to react quickly as we identify new ways to improve our students’ experience.
if you would like to support a specific project or area of work at the RVC, get in touch with us and we'll try to help.
How you have helped
The Royal Veterinary College Alumni Fund supports projects which enhance the experience of current and future Royal Veterinary College students, ensuring that all of our students are given the chance to fulfil their potential and make the most of all of the opportunities that College can offer.
Since its launch in 2005, the generosity of alumni and friends has raised over £200,000, making a remarkable contribution to College life. These funds have:
- contributed to hardship funds so that students do not let financial pressures affect their studies at the RVC
- addressed student wellbeing and helped improve student support for anyone struggling with mental health concerns
- widened access so that a greater variety of people experience university life and enter the veterinary profession
- advanced teaching techniques to provide the best possible learning experience for RVC students
- equipped RVC Students' Union Clubs and Societies
- expanded horizons by providing opportunities for travel to conferences around the world
The College is an international centre of excellence both in teaching and research and it attracts the best students, regardless of their financial backgrounds. The participation of alumni has been essential in achieving this.
Hardship
At the RVC we believe that financial circumstances should never prevent gifted students from receiving a world class education. Alumni Awards and hardship funds are made to students in financial need and we are receiving an increasing number of applications each year.
“I’ve wanted to be a vet for as long as I can remember. After seven years of studying I am now a final year vet student and the Alumni Award has helped me to get here. As a post-graduate student paying my own tuition fees, I faced a difficult dilemma as to how I would fund my studies when my family’s income dramatically reduced last year. Kind donations to the Alumni Fund allowed me to continue at university without having to take a year out to work and meant I could really get stuck in with clinical rotations without worrying too much about finances. I am having the time of my life and loving every minute of it. I was lucky enough to get the chance to speak to some RVC Alumni during the 2016 telephone campaign and it was great to hear about their experiences at the RVC. I hope that in the future I will be able to help the university and future students in the same way.”
Joy Ioannides - RVC Alumni Award recipient
Scholarships
Our post-graduate scholarships enable the recipients to build on their undergraduate platform and take part in cutting-edge research, giving them the experience of creating knowledge as well as acquiring it. We know that having graduated some of our students have strong research interests and can make a major contribution through research work. We have funded and co-funded a number of PhDs, progressing research in a variety of veterinary fields, including animal locomotion, drug resistance, spongioform encephalopathies, pituitary cell function & tumour development and arthritis.
Veterinary Team Leadership and Professionalism Course
This inspirational course gives undergraduate students the chance to develop intrinsic leadership skills and emotional intelligence in order to prepare them to be future leaders in the veterinary profession. Through alumni funded places on this course we are making valuable career building opportunities available to a wider range of students.
The VTLP course run by the RVC, in conjunction with a group of veterinary educators from a number of UK vet schools, aims to address the need for communications skills training. The VTLP course is the first of its kind to focus on non-technical competencies across the entire veterinary team, including vets, veterinary nurses and scientists.
“The VTLP course has honestly been one of the best experiences I've had at university, providing a great networking opportunity that I might otherwise not have gotten. It also encouraged me to challenge the way I previously approached problems and gave me the tools to help myself be more confident in myself and my interpersonal skills. It is great course and would be of benefit to future students like myself.”
Racquel Spence - Veterinary Gateway student who took part in the course
Student Experience
An essential part of student life at the RVC is participation in Students' Union clubs and societies, giving the opportunity to learn new skills, meet new people and try new things. Each year the RVC Alumni Fund grants funds to Student’s Union clubs and societies to help them achieve their aims and objectives. The money is used in a variety of ways from purchasing equipment to providing transport to competitive events - things that would have otherwise been impossible to fund through the groups’ own limited budgets.
“The Alumni Fund has been kind enough to award £50,000 to RVC Students' Union Clubs and Societies. The generosity of the alumni has helped more students participate in activities, enabling them to take important breaks from their intense studies and get the most out of university. This money has been of great benefit and allowed us to do things that would not have been possible without the funding. Thank you.”
Oliver Dunham - past RVC SU President