Shelby Davis’ Visit
Shelby Davis’ Visit
Saturday, 6 March 2010
On Tuesday the College received Shelby Davis, with his wife Gale, and about 100 of his friends from the Princeton graduating class on 1958. This was Shelby Davis' third visit to the College, and was a wonderful treat for us all to share his company once again.
For anyone who is not aware, Shelby Davis finances a very generous system of scholarships to US universities that are only available to graduates of United World Colleges (details can be seen at http://www.davisuwcscholars.org/). In the first five years of the program, he has contributed over US$40 million towards these scholarships for the benefit of just over 2000 students, of whom 209 have been Li Po Chun United World College graduates. In addition to that, he supports all the US students who study in overseas UWCs, as well as supporting two of our full (100%) scholarship places each year.
The group began their visit by sharing lunch with us in the canteen. The visitors obviously enjoyed mingling with the students, and indeed they flattered some of our teachers by mistaking their youthful appearance for students! Following lunch, we all adjourned to the Lecture Room for my brief introduction to the College, illustrated with a Keynote presentation and supported by short personal reflections from four Davis scholars - Mark (from Kenya), Austin (USA), Amelia (USA) and Jacqueline (Vietnam).
The visitors then broke into small groups and were given a tour of the campus by many of our students, several of whom were Davis scholarship holders.
Many of the visitors asked for a copy of my Keynote presentation. I have therefore converted the Keynote into a clickable Quicktime format which should work on any type of computer. A copy can be downloaded by right-clicking the image link to the right. If you want to view the file, please download it as it will probably not run within a browser plugin; it is designed to be opened as a file in Quicktime, clicking the mouse to move into each new slide or animation. Please note, however, that the file size is 23MB.
My next blog will be a bit late as I will be leaving this afternoon for eight days, leading a group of students for Project Week in Dandong, north-east China, where the forecast temperature for our arrival on Monday morning is -6°C.
Shelby Davis enjoys his chat with three Davis Scholars - Jacqueline from Vietnam, Austin from the US and Jordyn (also from the US).