A collection co-edited by Dr Axel Stähler, Reader in the Department of Comparative Literature, has just been awarded the Association of Jewish Libraries’ (AJL) Judaica Reference Award.

The AJL Judaica Reference Award was established to encourage the publication of outstanding Judaica reference books.

The winner this year is The Edinburgh Companion to Modern Jewish Fiction (Edinburgh University Press, 2015), co-edited by Axel alongside David Brauner from the University of Reading. The collection was published last year, and includes essays covering a wide range of American, British, South African, Canadian and Australian Jewish fiction.

The AJL awards committee felt that the work ‘was a most compelling resource that fills a great gap in the field. We were impressed by the diversity of works represented and the sheer scope of this work.’

There will be an awards ceremony on 21 June in Charleston, SC, in America.

For more details of the collection, please see the publisher’s web page.

Kent Hospitality is proud to announce its Investors in People (IiP) Gold award re-accreditation.

Having been continuously recognised as an Investors in People organisation since 1999, Kent Hospitality was awarded IiP Gold award status in March 2010 – the first employer in Kent to achieve this, retained Gold award status in 2013 following reassessment, and once again in April 2016.

The award, which showcases and celebrates outstanding people management, followed an external IiP assessment during March and April 2016.This involved an online survey with all Kent Hospitality staff and interviews with a selection of permanent and casual staff members, to ensure that the organisation once again continues to meet the high IiP Gold standards.

Simon Westerman, Commercial Services Director says: ‘We are delighted to have been re-accredited with IiP Gold award status.

‘The award underlines our commitment to continuous improvement in the delivery of excellence across the whole range of campus services with pride, passion and professionalism. The department’s achievement of IiP Gold is a reflection of how highly our staff rate our department, the remarkable customer satisfaction levels that they deliver as well as the many prestigious awards that we have won. At the heart of this success is the learning and development that our staff have undertaken.’

Kent Hospitality was assessed in the new IiP Standard which explores practices and outcomes within an organisation under three performance headings: leading, supporting and improving.

The IiP Assessor highlighted particular strengths including the excellent track record and strong commitment of supporting the learning and development of members of staff; the volume and breadth of benchmarking activity that is helping focus on developing value for money; the quality of communication across a disparate organisation; the overall remuneration package and the impressive group of temporary staff comprising in the main members of the student population.

The full detailed IiP report of the assessment can be viewed online and this will enable Kent Hospitality to continue to maintain and improve people management standards.

At this busy time of year, take some time out and relax with a book – one you can read without making notes.

You’ll find fiction, non-fiction and poetry books by School of English staff on display in the Library café from 16-20 May (week 26).

There are new books on display every day. You can borrow them, or just pick one up to read while you’re in the café.

Congratulations to Barrie Rooney from the School of Biosciences who last night won the BBSRC’s ‘Social Innovator of the Year’ award. Barrie is seen here with (on the left)  Nessa Carey and (on the right) Melanie Welham, Chief Executive of the BBSRC, receiving her trophy and a cheque for £15,000 at the ‘2016: Fostering Innovation’ event held at the Royal Horticultural Halls in London.

The British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society (BELMAS) has just announced the 2016 Doctoral Thesis Awards.

This year’s joint winner is Sue Shepherd, who works as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research on the ESRC-funded ‘Uncertain Futures: Extending Working Lives’ project.

The award is made to the individual whose thesis is deemed by the BELMAS selection panel to have made the most important contribution to our understanding of educational leadership and/or management and/or policy.

Sue was nominated by her Supervisor, Professor Sarah Vickerstaff, who said ‘Sue deserves the award for her outstanding research on the appointment of university pro vice chancellors, which has both important academic/theoretical and policy implications and has already received significant interest from the higher education media.’

Sue will collect her award at the BELMAS Annual International Conference at Carden Park in July.

Don’t miss the chance to see the quality, diversity and range of student work from the School of Music & Fine Art’s graduating students from Fine Art and Event and Experience Design which is celebrated and showcased from Sunday 22 May until Tuesday 31 May (not Monday 23) from 10.00-17.00 at The Historic Dockyard Chatham.

Get your Visitor Pass here: http://store.kent.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=1&catid=217&prodid=1308

Visitors to the Degree Show will also be able to visit the Historic Dockyard’s thematic exhibition of international contemporary art works, ‘Of the Sea’ part of Art in the Dockyard, a project in partnership with the University’s School of Music and Fine Art.
http://www.thedockyard.co.uk/plan/events/art-dockyard/

At the end of March this year, a group of Marketing students saw their winning Pitch It! session to the Pulmonary Vascular Research Institute (PVRI) receive a loud ‘Encore!’ from its Chief Executive, Stephanie Barwick.

PVRI, a global medical research charity aiming to raise awareness of pulmonary hypertension, a fatal cause of heart failure, had asked the Kent Business School students to consider ways to attract and engage corporate sponsors with the charity. Under the mentorship of KBS Senior Lecturer Marketing Communications, Dan Petrovici, student groups worked on the challenge and presented their results in a heated pitching contest to PVRI’s CEO.

Mrs Barwick was so taken with the innovative awareness campaign suggested by the winning team that she asked them to come back in the spring and re-pitch their ideas to PVRI’s entire operational team.

The second pitch, which took place on the 11th of May, was described by PVRI’s panel as creative, scalable, pragmatic and – most importantly – workable on a global level. Mrs Lynette Swift, Head of the PVRI Fundraising Committee, said: ‘The students came up with some excellent ideas and we will certainly discuss internally how best we can use these. Well done to everyone!’.

Mrs Barwick commented that ‘the ideas presented were so good that she could not see how PVRI would not implement them straight away’.

PVRI offered a summer internship to one of the students on the winning Pitch It! team, who will work with PVRI on further developing an awareness and fundraising campaign, targeting corporate sponsors.

For more information on KBS Pitch It! sessions, please visit KBS website, send an email to KBSbusiness@kent.ac.uk or call: 01227 824068.

For more information on PVRI, please visit their website: www.pvri.info