{"id":109,"date":"2013-10-03T15:15:46","date_gmt":"2013-10-03T14:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/alumni\/?p=109"},"modified":"2014-08-13T08:57:20","modified_gmt":"2014-08-13T07:57:20","slug":"alumnus-switches-on-50th-anniversary-countdown-clock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/development\/2013\/10\/03\/alumnus-switches-on-50th-anniversary-countdown-clock\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumnus switches on 50th anniversary countdown clock"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Alumnus and member of the First 500 group John Platt helped the University to kick-start the countdown to its 50<sup>th<\/sup> anniversary year.<\/p>\n<p>John was the special guest at an official ceremony held on campus at Canterbury on 1 October. He switched on the newly installed countdown clock, which is positioned on the side of the Senate building and will tick down time until 1 October 2015 &#8211; the date the University\u2019s 50th year officially starts.<\/p>\n<p>The launch event was attended by students, staff and alumni. Professor Nick Grief, Dean of Medway and Kent alumnus, led the evening\u2019s festivities, whilst the University\u2019s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Dame Julia Goodfellow, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor Keith Mander and Alastair Ross, Head of European Administration, addressed the guests via Skype from locations including San Francisco and Brussels.<\/p>\n<p>John Platt said: \u2018When I joined Kent as one of the first 500 students almost 50 years ago I never imagined that it would grow to become such a successful, innovative and inspiring place to be. Now there are almost 20,000 students and campus centres in Europe. We\u2019ve come a long way in 50 years and as a proud alumnus I\u2019m looking forward to celebrating those achievements with everyone at the University over the coming year.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>To learn more about the University\u2019s plans to mark its 50<sup>th<\/sup> anniversary year and find out how you can get involved visit our dedicated website at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/planningfor50\/\">www.kent.ac.uk\/planningfor50\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alumnus and member of the First 500 group John Platt helped the University to kick-start the countdown to its 50th anniversary year. John was the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/development\/2013\/10\/03\/alumnus-switches-on-50th-anniversary-countdown-clock\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38580,"featured_media":221,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[118122,118124],"tags":[52661,807],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38580"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":222,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions\/222"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}