Welcome everyone to the final cast of Hillary.
Ted Turner has just ended. And for those of you listening in, you might be back at home or you might still be in and around Oxford.
But wherever you are, I hope you enjoy listening to this edition of the cast and that you have a good vacation.
Today's guest on the cast is Zoe Campbell.
Welcome, Zoe. Hi, everyone. Thank you very much for having me.
Zoe, as you probably know already, is the tensely access and outreach officer and.
Zoe, how long have you been with us at. What's the tomorrow I think will actually be my completion of my second month.
I started on the 11th of January, so still a little bit new and loving it.
Great. Great. Well, we're really pleased to have you in Worcester be on the podcast.
Let's just talk a little bit about what you've done before coming to Worcester.
I know you joined us from the law faculty and before that you were at Brookes,
but tell us when you arrived in the UK and how you ended up landing in Oxford.
So for those that don't know, let me just really proudly and clearly state I'm from Barbados, right?
I love my island in the sea, but my parents spent a lot of time in the U.K. They were part of the Windows generation that came up,
and then they went back to Barbados.
And so they were very, very much encouraging of me and my brother, my two brothers, to further our educations as much as possible.
So we all ended up coming to university in the United Kingdom, and I ended up our sister university up the hill.
Brookes. I did love business there.
And then I stayed on to do the admissions officer work there for too many years for people to be asking specific details.
But let us say, I've been here since the last millennium, right?
I am. And I loved it. I met my husband at university, met him in Oxford, love Oxford, stayed here.
And then I got the opportunity to work with the law faculty for a couple of years and really love that as well to.
And then Worcester said, come on over. And I was like, Lads, please.
Yes, thank you. And I'm very, very happy with that decision.
So that's a quick little. Yeah, right. A great, great. Just going back to your parents there back in Barbados.
Yes, I'm 40. My daddy passed away last year.
But what he was so, so proud of me working for the University of Oxford.
It was a massive little bragging rights to him.
My eldest brother, he's a barrister and he didn't get as much bragging rights, so I knew that probably would come a little bit.
But I am a daddy's girl, Adam Mummy's girl, so I was happy to take that attention.
So, yes, they live back in Barbados. One thing I want to say is the law faculty and the University of Oxford and I get the thing that's
going to be the same here was there was very support for when that was going on with my family.
Right. And so that's something that I think I kind of love and made me feel like Oxford felt a bit more family.
Like it wasn't like, oh, you have to move on. It was just like, what can we do to help you?
And it was really, really nice.
But my mum still lives in Barbados, still speaking to her every other day and I think she wants the number for the academic office.
If I don't call her, she can call someone just to check to make sure that I'm okay and I'm safe.
So, ladies in the academic office, I apologise if my mother starts speaking shortly.
Your mum is always welcome to phone, I'm sure, and you're very welcome and she starts ringing you.
So you've landed well in Worcester from what you were telling me.
What are your initial observations of the college? Everyone's nice.
Why? Why in particular do you find is friendly?
I'm always interested to know.
When I came into Worcester, especially on my first is interviewing the porters are really nice I was jibber jabbering at the around for ages.
They had no idea who this lady was. I don't think for the first 5 minutes they knew I was there for an interview,
but they were nice and they were very friendly and they help, help settle my soul.
And as you can probably tell, my soul is very excitable.
So it was very nice.
And then on the day that I arrived, the ladies in the academic office, they were super, super nice and friendly showing me around.
I then met Emma, the archivist, on my first day in the lunchroom, and she was the one that told me very firmly,
Don't work from home on Wednesdays, best food day in the college.
And I was like, That's the sort of information I need to know. We're going to be friends.
And then she offered to take me on a tour of the college just to find out a little bit more.
And then I bumped into one of the scouts who I've seen every day the entire time I work to the law faculty.
We walked past each other and we just said hi. Hi. No, I did.
We are just on the street. And I walked to the West End. You're here?
Yes, I'm here. Okay. Excellent. It was just. And your experience, rather than the law faculty or other colleges, wasn't the same law faculty.
Very friendly portraits of the friendly. I remember my first day in the law faculty.
I met Dan, who was wearing this gorgeous velour outfit, and he kind of exploded my expectations of what Oxford was going to be.
And I think that's one of the things I enjoy is how everywhere can be possibly stereotype, but you have to beware stereotyping of anyone or anything.
I spent a whole lot of money on a Bradley Oxford blue outfit.
You know, I was thinking. Yes, I looked. You mean for your interview, for my jobs.
And then I walked in and everyone was just like, oh, you look lovely.
And they're just wearing just so casual and nice. And it's not about what you're wearing.
It's about what you have to give when you got very high energy, which is great.
And, you know, it's a great addition to the college. I will say the teachers think it's good for when they bring the students down
from 3 hours down and they're tired and then I'm there to welcome them with and
I know you guys can't see this but a jazz hands and a little bit my sparkle
fingers when they're getting off the bus is a great way to perk up the energy.
Just a hug. And then what happens?
You know, you're obviously an extrovert and when you go home, do you crash or are you still like this at 11:00 at night?
If you ask my husband, I probably say I'm still like this at 11:00 at night.
Yeah. When? When in your moments of mindfulness, I don't want to see everyone crash in my good zone, but I love walking in white the woods.
And I think that is one of the best, maybe the most as a member of the University of Oxford is just on a Sunday.
We'll go out and we'll go and maybe play tennis in the morning and then we'll go home,
have a nice breakfast, and then set out for like a two or three hour walk of wife and woods.
And once it starts digging, gets a little bit light later on when I get home, I'll go and do a walk on the river in Abingdon for a couple of hours.
This is like high energy all the time. It's like I mean, it's just a nice wall taking that high energy approach.
I know, you know, you've already made yourself, you know, really established in college.
You know, people are very enthusiastic about you and your arrival.
So tell us what you've been up to and tell us about the outreach and access work you're doing.
Okay. So currently I'm absorbing all I can about Worcester, talking to as many people as possible.
I'm still in the process of meeting different departments, different academic.
If you're out there, I'm not having accosted you yet,
please feel free to pop in and see me because everyone is very understanding that their time is precious.
Yeah. So I consider myself a conduit of kind of a open, a crucible of all the stuff that they tell me.
Yeah, I'm kind of refining it into really short little bits that I can reassure students that we want them to know what are the milestones,
the targets that we expect them to.
And a lot of people sometimes assume people know things that you don't know and sometimes you don't know it until it's too late.
Yeah. In terms of academics, it would be great for them to engage with you.
Yeah. So that you've got a better idea of what they're looking for, but also in terms of applicants, clarity with them.
Yes. Is really, really helpful and I think we're doing a lot to try and demystify the whole process, aren't we?
But we could still do more. I think we're doing a lot, but there's no reason why we can't get the message out there more.
And I'm a bit of a loud mouth, so I'm happy to be a bit of a speaker just reassuring people because I think there is,
I warn the students against once again falling for stereotypes.
Yes, the stereotypes about them, about myself, about Oxford as a whole.
They're still about as old as old associated with this is it's clear.
And and the idea is beware the stereotypes and beware the hype.
People assume Oxford and straight away that puts up a block in their minds.
What I want to do is just kind of help get rid of some of that block just to make for them to consider it.
You're doing a lot of work with our partner schools in our regions.
How do you encourage people to think about applying to university and be, you know, to Oxford in particular?
That's a good one. Okay, so I was over. I tend to oversimplify things because I followed the KISS method.
Keep it super simple and when it comes to students in applying, it can be broken down into different reasons why.
And the main reasons are I'm not going to be good enough, and that's either academically not good enough or it's not the sort of place for me.
Yeah. And the sort of sort of place for me for a range. Have different reasons.
And I think the first step is to addressing those two. And then once you kind of address it opened up people's minds to have them realise actually
the grades aren't so horrible and high and it's not as scary as I thought it could be.
Is then helping them make the applications?
Yeah. And when I say help you make the applications is not sitting down and doing this,
but just kind of reassuring them because Oxford has a very hard slog in the sense that if you have a school,
a class size of, let's say, 30 plus students, what is the percentage of those students who'll be looking to apply to Oxford?
And how much time can a teacher actually dedicate to that one or two students who are interested
but have to get their application process handled so early compared to everyone else?
And it's that balance and also their knowledge of what's going to be involved, which I'm going to go slightly off piece,
which is touching on something that I've spoken to Helen, our senior tutor about, and a few other people about.
It's about changing one of our school residential schools to be a teacher,
residential and invite a group of teachers from the area down so they can feel more comfortable in what they're saying about Oxford.
And they have a bit of experience of familiarity with it.
And so when they talk about it, it almost feels as natural as when they're talking about their own university or their own school experience,
and it just becomes a natural part of the conversation. That's a great idea.
Have we done that before? I don't think that we've done it here before.
I think one or two other colleges I've heard of dabbled in it.
And I know the law faculty has played with the idea of bringing teachers,
and I think the school visits are good for inspiring perhaps that school year,
maybe one or two from the fear below and like perhaps family members like, you know, somebody did it.
They came once you have that association, it builds up more.
But I think with the teachers because wherever they go, yeah, they can still carry that message out in there, become powerful ambassadors.
Yeah. And the teachers really want to do well by their students, but a lot of them are hesitant because they don't know,
they don't want to give any misinformation to the students and they get a little bit caught up in the hype of Oxford.
And do you think talking to potential applicants that there are any barriers that they are worried about?
I think the first one is the impression that you still need money to come to Oxford, right?
That's one of the first barriers that starts quieting people from talking to students when they get here.
I mean, there are very established stereotypes about Oxford, but Oxford is quite different to when I was a student.
And do you think people understand that there is no barrier in relation to the kind
of support that we provide for everybody from whatever socioeconomic background?
I don't think that message has got out there well enough.
Yeah, I think is definitely seeping out there is definitely crossing that, but it's not out there well enough.
But I think once they engage with a college, a department, an access officer, an outreach officer,
and they have the initial conversations that they realise that's not the issue, that should stop them from up there.
And so that's what you find, so that once we can get people into college, very much so.
Once they've got used to, you know, these amazing surroundings that they then feel more comfortable and more able to apply.
Yes, I think there's nothing better than when they when we're going on a college tour and we just see students around living their best life.
Yeah. Okay. We walk around, we see lots of different students doing lots of different things.
I wanted to say thank you to the ultimate Frisbee crowd.
Okay, you guys rock and you make some of my tours when I'm out there going on and everyone expects everyone to be playing hockey or lacrosse,
and then you guys out there tossing around, you're better than having Quidditch on that field.
Any and everyone is so bright. It's even little things like that.
It is not what you expected it to be.
It's breaking down some of those very established stereotypes which are no longer true.
All the stuff that you kind of like will hear on the news and you think are a little bit, Ooh, that's weird.
I'm like, okay, just relax, relax. If you look at your family, there's something weird on unusual that every family does.
But if you told someone else from outside your family, they would look at you and go, Wow.
And that's a lot of the stuff at Oxford. And I like pointing out once again, the tortoise race.
Yeah, our college parents, it's so Oxford, but it's so nice Oxford and it's just like one of the quirky things.
And it's not to be taken as anything.
It is art to this or to that is just a weird thing that goes on in Oxford because we're all delightful little weirdos in our own way.
Sorry. I'm sorry. If anyone doesn't think so. But remember, that's how I classes find myself.
You know, a little bit nice, a little bit strange.
We've got lots of smart people who come from all sorts of backgrounds, who are interested in all sorts of different things.
And we make up these very interesting things.
What I tell the students, Oxford is just full of people who love their subject.
Other other than that, you can't put them too much into any pigeonhole because they come from too many places, too many backgrounds, so many them.
All they have in common is that they love their subject.
So how do you encourage them to be more confident about applying?
What's your secret? I don't think I really have a secret.
I repeat all the stuff my mum tells me, which is think what's going to make a good student first and foremost.
That's what you're planning to be, is a student for a subject and show people how you have those traits.
Ability be proactive.
And that's one of the biggest things I can recommend to do because there are lots of opportunities there and everybody wants a proactive student.
People want good students to teach and people who are interested in their subject and be able to express that interest.
Important bit and also KISS.
Keep it super simple. The application process is not as complicated and as scary as it might seem or people might want it to seem.
And as long as you don't allow it to overwhelm you and just remember, we just want to know about you and your interest for the subject.
I tend to stay away from the word passion because sometimes people aren't passionate, but they're really interested in things.
And I think sometimes the word passion scares me.
But if you like your subject and have a go, I'm sorry, that didn't really answer the question, but it's about it's encouragement.
Yeah, I wouldn't be here now if my mum didn't encourage me and push me to do stuff.
And you'll get upset when I say this.
Oxford is a great university, but it's just another university and that shouldn't allow the history, the glamour, you know, to stop you from coming.
You should consider as a great opportunity, if you like the tutorial system.
If you're really interested in your subject, then have a go.
Don't limit yourself right now. Lots of people going to do that later on.
Go for the big bite of the apple. And good advice and tell us about your other plans.
I'm very excited about stuff that we're going to be doing for the future with Worcester College.
And some of our outreach and access were quite big up to John Partington out there because we're
hopefully going to be going up to Bradford City of Culture 2025 and we're doing some amazing things.
So if anyone out there in the Oxford community, the Worcester community has connections with Bradford,
whether through your work from living, there are some future planning.
Please get in contact because we're going to be doing some really good and exciting things.
I'm quite excited about that. For the future, we will be having our March residential at the end of this month.
We'll be welcoming three schools and I'm very excited about that because I'll be my first residential in Worcester,
so I will be staying in accommodation. So tell us about that.
So how does the residential work? Okay, so our link regions is the Yorkshire and the Humber that we have a lot of schools that travel a long way down.
And what we would like to what we'd like to do is to offer a two day residential where we don't have to squish
everything and it's almost a kind of replicate a day in the life of a Worcester College student where they will come,
will welcome them. They'll have a college lunch, we will have a taster lecture.
They'll get tours of different colleges, Oxford, a followed by the next evening activities in the JCR.
Their support is great to our student ambassadors and then the following day another taster lecture at a few.
But if anyone is interested, I'm still looking so you can't see.
I'm making all my little hand gestures, but I'm still looking for any assistant for taste or lectures, so please reach out to me.
So that would be what any of our fellows who'd like to see any fellow, a graduate student, okay,
who has legs and that they would be interested in sharing their normally about year ten age groups.
And we're looking for something to challenge them a bit. Please, please reach out.
So that's going to be really, really nice. And that's the one that next year I would like to swap over to a teachers rather than just you.
And then that's when I would love to have a few academics sit on panels so the teachers
can ask some questions and they can just help familiarise themselves with the students.
And then they have the confidence that they're not hearing this information second or third hand, but directly from the people who will be making.
Sense ten is really good. And what other plans have you got to say to the benefactors team, development team,
you're going to soon see me badgering you a little bit because I would like to work with our student ambassadors.
They do such amazing work for us.
Let me one give another big up to Adria Neville, the dinner club room access officer.
She was one of the people that made landing into my role here super easy and super nice.
But I think that we need to show our appreciation to the ambassadors who work there, because one of the colleges that don't pay are ambassadors.
And we don't want to be just William making it rain for every reason.
But I do think there are certain occasions that we could find ways to reward them,
but also different ways to reward them by receiving some sort of recognition which they can add to their portfolios and just be a little bit smarter.
And that certainly came up in my drop in sessions that particularly if it's outside term time,
some students would really value getting some sort of financial recognition or some
other form of recognition because otherwise they're giving up paid work very much so.
It's usually access students who will come in and do a lot of this access based work to give back.
And that's nice, but it benefits us all and therefore we should all be contributing in some way, shape or form.
And so we need to make it fair for people who do contribute.
So we are looking at that. Oh, yes. I got to say, you considering across the college, everyone has been very positive about that.
Yeah. They've never there's not been like, oh, no, no, no, we're not going to do that.
Everyone has been positive about it. I just think it's someone has to take the time and to come on, let's do it.
And I'm happy to shout, Come on, let's go.
Right. And anything else you'd like to to do that you haven't touched on?
There's so much I would like to do. You could spend because validate.
What I'm looking forward to really doing is once is trying to gather a roadshow perhaps set
up for the Michaelmas term because with Yorkshire and the Humber being our link region,
it costs the students a lot to come down and unless they have a school bus or something like that, that then incurs a lot of additional costs.
And these are the schools that we're really trying to target, don't have a lot of those additional funds.
And so I think if we can go up there and we can bring Worcester to them,
that is a really great kind of starting point to engage in lots of little things happening,
but I'm trying to control myself, not get too carried away so I can complete things really, really well.
And so time is marching on.
So any other final messages for anybody listening in about what you're doing, how they can help, and how we make this a very inclusive college?
Right. As I said, still absorbing everything, trying to find out as much about was trying to find out what the college wants from me,
what the college wants for us to work on and focus on.
And just to get as much information puzzle so I can solidify some plans that give us what we want.
And I do think that Worcester has some really lovely, unique selling points that are really kind of we could really big up a lot more.
And the feel of the college it's the community here feels nice.
And also can I just say really, really quickly to my catering staff, I love you very, very much.
Okay. Loving it. The garlic roast potatoes are some of the most amazing things I've ever had in my life.
Oh, we do have amazing food, amazing colleagues, and they've worked so hard, you know, amazing, amazing staff.
Well, thank you for saying that. So we thank you very much for all your insights and everything that you're doing for Worcester.
We really do appreciate it. And thank you to everyone listening to this week's cast.
We're going to be in hibernation for a few weeks during the VAC.
But as I said at the very beginning of this podcast, I hope you have a good vacation,
take some rest and I look forward to interviewing more people on next term's podcast.
So have a very good Easter.
If you are celebrating Ramadan, I hope you celebrate your leftovers in style and I look forward to seeing you all next term.