University

02 Mar 09

£1.75 million has been donated to Wadham College in order to fund a new graduate centre

Geneva-based philanthropists John and Marcy McCall MacBain have donated £1.75 million to Wadham College.

This donation, given through the McCall MacBain Foundation, will enable Wadham to build a new graduate centre on the College site, which will be known as the McCall MacBain Graduate Centre.

The Warden of Wadham College, Sir Neil Chalmers, said: 'The McCall MacBain Graduate Centre is a major new development which will provide Wadham with much-needed, high-quality facilities for its graduate students, who today constitute a significant and important part of the College community. Wadham is deeply grateful to John and Marcy McCall MacBain for their generous gift.'

The Graduate Centre will be an important facility in Wadham’s development. Graduates now comprise more than a quarter of the College’s total student numbers of just under 600. The Centre will provide facilities both for study and for socialising. 

It will be vital in providing a location for the growing cross-discipline liaison and discussion which has become a growing feature of the graduate experience during the Wardenship of Sir Neil Chalmers. 

The Centre will be based on the site of the former Blackwell’s music shop, latterly Holywell’s restaurant, fronting onto Holywell Street. Design and planning are being undertaken as part of a longer term hoped-for restructuring and improvement of the Back Quad – one of the largest Quadrangles in Oxford.

John McCall MacBain, a Canadian Rhodes Scholar alumnus of Wadham, said: 'As a student of law tutor Jeffrey Hackney at Wadham, I personally benefited from Jeffrey’s dedication to teaching law to international graduate students. My wife Marcy and I wanted to gratefully acknowledge Jeffrey’s personal dedication to teaching by increasing the College’s physical facilities for graduate students.'

As part of its 400th year celebrations, Wadham is seeking to raise £50 million towards student support, academic support, and the development of world-class facilities. This gift is a major contribution, not only towards Wadham’s total, but also to the University-wide ‘Oxford Thinking’ Campaign.