Good Practice Benefits All. This is the theme of the Athena SWAN Awareness Event at Medway, and this is why the Athena SWAN Working Group would like to invite all staff to attend on Thursday 7 May 2015.

Working to the Athena SWAN principles, means working in a place where all staff are valued.

Kent received an Athena SWAN Bronze Award in April 2014, which recognised our commitment to the Athena SWAN initiative.

The initiative aims to advance the representation of women in science.

By perusing this agenda, we aim to create the best working environment for all staff, and this year’s event will cover themes relevant to staff across the Faculties.

We invite you to join us in the Rochester Boardroom at 09.30. The event will run until 13.45 and includes lunch.

We can confirm that Lenna Cumberbatch, Diversity Manager at the Royal Society, will give the keynote address. A panel discussion, led by the Dean of Sciences, Professor Mark Burchell, will give participants the chance to discuss the initiative and find out what we’re doing here at Kent.

There will also be workshop sessions on: Promotion; Career Planning for Early Career Researchers (and those wondering what their next step should be); and a special Research Services’ Grant Factory Workshop.

We welcome all staff – men and women; Medway and Canterbury based – to attend the event.

To find out more, and register for the event, go to the Athena SWAN webpages.

Professor Amalia Arvaniti and Dr Tamara Rathcke from the Department of English Language & Linguistics have secured funding from the Kent Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (KIASH) to organise the seventh international conference on ‘Tone and Intonation in Europe’ (TIE 7) at Kent’s Paris centre in September 2016.

TIE is a series of biennial international conferences that started in 2004, the culmination of a European Science Foundation-funded research network, where Amalia Arvaniti served as one of the main coordinators.

TIE7 will focus on two themes: (i) the interaction of tone and intonation with other components of prosody, such as rhythm, and (ii) the relevance of prosody for the learning and teaching of a second language.

The conference will be sponsored by the Association for Laboratory Phonology and the International Phonetic Association.

The exact dates of the conference are yet to be confirmed; a call for papers will be released in the future.

For more information visit the KIASH webpages.

Enjoy cake and a cuppa at the 50th anniversary staff tea party on Tuesday 3 March in the Colyer-Fergusson from 14.30 until 16.00.

At the party you can peruse the 50th anniversary spring programme and chat to the 50th Team.

You will also have the chance to try our special 50th anniversary cupcakes!

Find out more on the 50th anniversary webpages.

HR is pleased to announce that a refreshed RPD booklet and website is now available.

Thank you to everyone who has taken part in the review of the RPD framework over the last year; your comments have been extremely valuable and have helped to shape the new RPD framework, as well as provide areas of focus as this framework evolves. An overview of the changes are available on the News pages of the RPD website.

Both the RPD website and booklet can be accessed through the HR homepage by clicking on the link to Reflect, Plan, Develop.

Please make sure that you book on to one of the available RPD training sessions that are running throughout 2015 if you feel it will be valuable to you. For more information on the content of these sessions, please go to the RPD section of the Learning and Development website or complete the online booking form.

Sessions will begin on 19 March 2015 and will be available at both Canterbury and Medway campuses.

This is an invitation to provide input to the University of Kent People Strategy for 2015 – 2020.

We will be holding a series of focus groups in March 2015. At each focus group session, we will provide a brief overview of recent survey findings that highlight themes that have arisen to date. We will then work through a set of questions with you to obtain your further thinking on topics that staff have indicated are of particular interest and where we would welcome additional input. Time will also be allocated within the session to raise anything that you believe is important that we may have missed.

A set of dates, times and locations for the focus groups are available on the website here along with instructions on how to sign up. A number of targeted sessions will also be offered later in March.

Please do consider signing up for a focus group session if you would like the opportunity to provide input into our People Strategy development.

If you have questions about the focus groups or the People Strategy development, please get in touch with Cindy Vallance at c.d.vallance@kent.ac.uk

Background on the surveys: We recently conducted two brief staff surveys; one to new staff who have been at Kent less than 18 months and a second random sample of staff who have been at Kent for more than 18 months. We are using the results of these surveys to consider and identify priorities for the next five years in relation to our staff practices and processes. Consideration of these priorities will lead to the creation of our University of Kent People Strategy for 2015 – 2020.