It wasn’t: Leah was a recipient of the Catherine Buchanan Scholarships, a fund set up by Richard and Julie Buchanan in honour of their young daughter, a physics enthusiast.

Seventeen year old Catherine was diagnosed with a rare form of Leukaemia in 2013 and died a week later.

Richard says: “Catherine had not initially planned to go to Queen’s, but when she became unwell, the head of her school at Strathearn spoke to Queen’s to see if Catherine could be accepted to do Astrophysics, if she needed to stay local. Queen’s said they would be happy to admit her on the basis of her predicted grades. In the end, of course, none of this was relevant.”

Since Catherine’s death, her parents have honoured her memory by becoming involved in Leukaemia and Lymphoma NI and by starting the scholarships programme at Queen’s to support young women in physics. “We decided to use some of the money we would have spent on Catherine’s education to fund scholarships here at Queen's in the Physics and Astrophysics department.”

The scholarships are specifically designed to help alleviate financial struggles at university so that students can better focus on their studies. For Leah, this meant being able to give up one of the two jobs she had been fitting in around her 9-5, Monday to Friday schedule.

“I was working two jobs to pay rent and bills, and I got to quit one which made life easier.”

When she was awarded it again the following year, she invested in an iPad to keep hold of her notes that she keep losing. She says: “I didn’t want to spend it on anything silly, I wanted to spend it on what they intended it for. When I met Mrs Buchanan, she said she didn’t mind what I spent it on, as long as I was trying and doing well at my degree.

“And it really helped me to focus in my second year. I put a lot of work into my exams and knew I did well but it was nice to the get the recognition – it makes you want to try even harder.”

Which Leah has certainly done – after being awarded the scholarship for the third year in a row, she is about to undertake her Master’s and hopes to go on to complete a PhD at Queen’s.

Speaking about the scholarships, Richard says: “It's been really powerful for us to see the impact that that money that we would have spent on Catherine's education has had. It's been very rewarding to be able to redeploy that to helping other young women students follow the career path and study path that Catherine would have followed.

“I suppose what we learned is that £2,000 in the grand scheme of things might not seem a huge sum of money, but for many students it's a very big deal.”

Leah adds: “It’s really, really generous. I’ve never heard of anyone getting anything like this just on performance. I didn’t think I deserved it but it meant a lot and it was really nice to meet Mr and Mrs Buchanan, knowing they did it entirely for their daughter, a real act of kindness.”

 

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For further information please contact Ciara O'Neill, Communications Manager at Ciara.ONeill@qub.ac.uk