By Rick Vacek | May 5, 2025
There’s a special reason why Dr. Donal Skinner rejoices when Hobson Wildenthal Honors College students are accepted into the University of Cambridge graduate program.
He speaks from experience.
As a young man, the Honors College dean followed his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps from South Africa to the 816-year-old institution an hour and a half north of London.
First, he earned his PhD. Then he qualified for a graduate research fellowship. He still marvels at how much those seven years changed his life.
“Completely,” he said. “It just totally opened up my world, and I took every single opportunity that I could. In many ways, I would argue that I am here today because of that experience.
“The mission I have of more students having international experiences, it really comes from that because I think it fundamentally changes how you see yourself and how you see your place in the world. It’s literally an everyday thing with something new happening to you, some interaction that you otherwise wouldn’t have had. It changes you to the core.”
Skinner will make sure Ethan Conner, Avery Bainbridge and Bronwen Olson are appropriately core-warned before they begin classes at Cambridge in October.
They already know a lot about the course structure, the 31 colleges, the ancient buildings and a river jaunt called punting (pronounced PAHN-ting).
But do they know about staying off the grass? Do they know what “getting portered” means?
That’s part of the experience, too.
Conner and Bainbridge have never been to Great Britain. Olson lived with her family in Manchester, England, for five years.
“I really appreciate that my parents were able to do that for me because it really broadened my horizons in a way that most people don’t get,” she said. “We lived down the road from a castle, and we would go to historical sites on weekends. I really didn’t appreciate it at the time, but everything is minimum 500 years old.”
All three National Merit Scholars and soon-to-be University of Texas at Dallas graduates plan to spend the summer preparing for an academic experience that will be just as foreign.
Lectures are not interactive, there isn’t any homework and exams aren’t administered until the end of classes in June, when a 20- to 30-page essay also will be due. Students have to keep up on their own, and each college supplies a tutor if they need help.
“That’s going to be an adjustment,” said Bainbridge, a mathematics major at UT Dallas. “Here, it’s more of a conversation. In England, not so much. The professor gives you the material. You write the material down. And then if there are issues with it, you can read it on your own later. You don’t get as much closeness with the professor, especially through lectures.”
Conner, who double-majored in math and physics at UT Dallas, plans to make both disciplines his focus at Cambridge, as well.
“It’s a very intense program,” he said. “They like to bill it as the hardest thing you can do. But it’s going to be enriching. That’s what I’ve heard from faculty who went through it – it broadens your understanding of math and physics.”
Frame of reference: Olson, who worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory last summer and will continue her physics studies at Cambridge, said it took her a year or two to become comfortable with the British educational system when she lived there. The master degree program at Cambridge is only nine months.
Fortunately, UT Dallas has prepared them well. A Cambridge degree opens doors, and Skinner hopes sending a trio of Honors College students there is just the start of a pipeline.
“They’re not going to accept a second-rate student,” he said. “One of the things I advocate to parents and students here is that you are surrounded by some exceptional students, and that elevates the level of intellectual engagement. So Cambridge, in a sense, is like us in the quality of your interactions.
“I think it’s fantastic for UT Dallas to be producing students of that level, and I hope more students go. Part of that is getting the word out. Some students would never think of themselves as high enough quality, but they are – they really are.”
They just need the grades and then a willingness to adjust to life at Cambridge. It’s like nothing they’ve ever experienced.
A story in Varsity, Cambridge’s independent newspaper, likens the revered, exquisitely attired porters to fairy godmothers and cites numerous examples of their almost magical presence. Their main function is to control entry to the college, which means handling security, maintenance, the mail and whatever students need.
The porters strictly enforce a very Cambridge-ian rule: Walking on the manicured lawns is limited to senior members, fellows (such as Skinner when he was there) and their guests. Other students must stay off except for designated events in which they are allowed to sit on the grass.
“Getting portered” also can include anything from enforcing quiet time during exams to ending parties on time, but the formalities don’t stop there. There are the meals.
Students wear academic gowns for dining, and the fellows and distinguished guests sit at the head table, a la “Harry Potter,” and are served a different course from the rest of the students. The head table also can order from a world-class wine collection.
Alison Spadaro, a UT Dallas graduate who is spending the 2025-26 academic year at Cambridge, said the best way to get around Cambridge, very much a college town, is by bicycle. But there’s another form of transportation that is a centuries-old tradition.
That would be punting, the term for propelling a flat-bottomed boat (called a punt) down the river with a pole. Conner already has read up on it and learned one critical piece of advice: If the pole gets stuck in the mud, let go of it or you might wind up right next to it in the river.
The coursework the students will face could be just as challenging. If they don’t handle themselves properly, they could be thrown overboard.
But this is where the Honors College and the National Merit Scholars Program come in. The students are accustomed to being around the best and the brightest.
“I think what makes UTD different is that it’s not just the scholarship,” Bainbridge said. “You come in with a very strong community. They don’t just give you the money and throw you in the pool with everybody else. You get to be part of the Honors College and the culture of the National Merit Scholars.”
And it’s not as if they have no experience with adjusting to a new environment. All three came to UT Dallas from faraway cities that begin with a B – Bakersfield, California (Conner), Boise, Idaho (Bainbridge) and Boston (Olson).
They also have been on study-abroad trips sponsored by the University.
“It’s very eye-opening to me to see how life is lived in other places that aren’t America,” Conner said. “It made me very keen to go abroad again.”
But Cambridge will be a whole new experience. Skinner advises them to embrace all of it – the students from all over the world, the local culture, punting and the annual rugby and rowing competitions between Cambridge and Oxford.
Oh, and one other thing:
Stay off the grass.