Who we are and what we do
°µÍø½ûÇø is one of 31 colleges in the University of Cambridge. This is our mission and values statement:
The mission of °µÍø½ûÇø is to provide an environment for the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest level of excellence.
One of the colleges within the University of Cambridge, Jesus is an independent institution which for over five hundred years has taught and inspired generations of students who have gone on to make significant contributions to society both nationally and internationally. With academic values as its core concern, the College aims to foster a community of freedom of thought and expression in which all its members can flourish.
The College seeks to admit as undergraduate and graduate students those with the best potential to benefit from the education provided by the College and the University. Students are admitted regardless of financial, social, religious or ethnic background and across the range of subjects taught in the University. The College’s aim is to ensure both diversity of the student body and diversity of academic disciplines, with equal representation of the humanities and the sciences.
The College maintains a body of Fellows who are outstanding teachers and researchers in their different fields. It offers support for their research, is home to scholarly meetings and events, and awards Research Fellowships to outstanding young academics in the early stages of their careers.
Cambridge’s world-class education depends in no small measure on the provision of small-group teaching through the College-based supervision system. Jesus is wholly committed to providing such teaching and offers individual academic direction and support for all its undergraduate members.
The College admits a substantial number of graduate students whom it sees as fundamental for its mission in respect of research. It is committed to ensuring close contact, both academic and social, between them and the Fellows and to providing an intellectual setting in which they can find every help and encouragement for their work.
The College is a charitable institution and employs its financial and property resources in the interest of its mission of education, learning and research. It has a duty to maintain and enhance its endowment and benefactions, historic buildings and grounds for the benefit of future generations. Whatever commercial activities it may develop are and will be for the sole benefit of its academic purpose and remain always subsidiary to it. The College is committed to a policy of socially responsible investment.
Committed to retaining its existence as an inherently residential academic community, the College will strive to continue to be able to offer College accommodation to all students, whether undergraduate or graduate.
The College regards the welfare of its members as fundamental and provides pastoral care and support to a high standard. It is dedicated to offering the best possible library and IT resources, as well as first-class social, recreational and sporting facilities. It aspires always to enable every student fully to realise his or her academic and personal potential during their time in the College.
As well as students and Fellows, the College community is made up of non-academic staff who play an essential role in the fulfillment of its mission. Jesus is an equal opportunities employer and its policy and practice require that all staff be afforded equal treatment within employment. As with students and Fellows, no applicant or member of staff will be discriminated against because of his or her sex, sexual orientation, ethnic or national group, or disability. As an integral part of its educational purpose, the College regards as a duty the provision of access to relevant training and skills-development opportunities for staff members. It is the staff who guarantee that the College is able to operate effectively as an institution and the College regards it as essential that they be given every opportunity fully and actively to participate in its life and development.
The College is dedicated to ensuring that it operates in a way that is ecologically and environmentally responsible.
Within the collegiate University, Jesus has a particular position and outstanding strengths that it must make every effort to maintain. Whether it be the excellence of its Fellowship, its proven ability to develop to the full the academic potential of its undergraduates; the high levels of support – academic, practical and financial – it makes available for students in the course of their studies; its exceptional encouragement of music-making through support of the College choirs, choral and organ scholarships, instrumental awards, and an accomplished College orchestra; its internationally renowned sculpture exhibitions and its permanent collection of sculptures displayed throughout its extensive and beautiful gardens, its extensive sports fields within the College grounds (a feature unique to this college) – all of these features and many others make Jesus one of the very finest of Cambridge colleges.
It is known as such and as an exceptionally welcoming and outward-looking college in which Fellows, students, and staff form a strong community in which mutual respect prevails and in which the educational mission of the College and its fundamental values are acknowledged and worked for by all.
