Girton's Senior Bursar

A legacy for the ages

Before she came to work at Girton College 13 years ago, Debbie Lowther had already established herself professionally with positions in accountancy, management consultancy and venture capital. Taking on the role of Bursar at age 33, she appreciated the chance to tackle a hands-on job within a smaller organisation and to gain management experience.

Those were her pragmatic reasons. Perhaps more poetically, she also warmed to the idea of taking a place in the College’s history.

“I feel a very direct link with my predecessors as Bursars,” she says. “You can’t be here for very long without being aware of the College’s history. I like that sense of continuity. I’m here as part of a chain and I will hand on something hopefully just a little bit more financially stable and a bit better developed than I inherited.”

Girton was Cambridge’s first residential college for women when it was founded in 1869, moving to grounds two miles northwest of the city four years later.
When women were admitted to full membership of the University in 1948, Girton received its official status as a College of the University. It became co-ed in 1979.

Today, Lowther occupies a spacious office in the oldest wing of the College’s first building. In her office, a large portrait of one of Girton’s former bursars, Marjorie Hollond, is on display. The view from the windows includes the College’s iconic red brick tower, built from donations given by early benefactors.

Lowther is Girton’s senior bursar; the assistant bursar fulfils the role of a chief clerk. Between them, they hold responsibility for all of the financial functions of the College. Unlike many Cambridge colleges, Girton does not employ a domestic bursar. Instead, Lowther has deputised department heads to fulfil that function as a team.

Her role is often looking at the big picture. “It’s more to do with the financial planning, the budgeting and the interpretation of accounts, the investment management and strategic planning,” she says. “That’s where I bring my professional skills to bear, I suppose. We try to do the day-to-day management at Girton through the committee structure.”

Lowther prefers to manage through a devolved structure and one of her first tasks as Bursar was setting up a decentralised budgetary system. “I think it empowers people if they have a budget to work with and they can plan what their department is going to do,” she says. “I think the main basis of my job is trying to bring professional discipline into the areas of financial planning. I want it to be actually democratic, so the Bursar’s personal views don’t really feature in decisions.”

Lowther is also active in University committees and is currently serving her second term on the University Council. It means she spends a lot of time on her bike, cycling into town, but she feels the effort is worth it. “I think it’s important that the College has those connections with the rest of the University,” she says. “It’s good to be able to present the Girton point of view.”

She has found Girton to be a college that has a strong sense of its own identity -- forged in part by its geographic distance -- with students, fellows and staff participating in a supportive community.

Lowther has even been known to join in that sense of community by rowing with Girton’s second ladies, and even, a few years ago, in the first boat. It’s a skill she picked up as an undergraduate at Selwyn College and the experience is one of the things she loves about Cambridge. She also is a dedicated runner, and her Girton colleagues were supporting her intention to run in the London Marathon on 13 April. As a breast cancer survivor, she ran to raise funds for Cancer Research UK.

She may or may not go down in the annals of Girton as the marathoning, rowing Bursar, but her skills as a financial manager will be on record to stand as her legacy.

“There’s that feeling that you will be remembered, for good or ill!” she says, and laughs. “Later generations will know you were here and they’ll know what you did. I think that’s a good feeling.”