The American University of Paris, University of Kent Paris School of Arts and
Culture and the Centre Culturel Irlandais (Irish Arts Centre) are pleased to
announce that Daniel Hahn has been appointed to the first Paris Writer’s
Residency. We look forward to welcoming him to Paris to work with our
students and to join our community of writers.

Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor and translator with around 50 books to his
name. His work has won him the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the
International Dublin Literary Award and the Blue Peter Book Award. He has
been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize and the LA Times Book
Awards.

Recent books include the new Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature
and a co-translation of a Guatemalan novel. He is a past chair of the Society of
Authors (the UK’s writers’ union) and currently on the board of a number of
organisations that work with literature and free expression.

The Royal Literary Fund (RLF) publishes bite-sized audio recordings by writers, exploring topics around writing. Dr Maggie Butt, RLF on the Canterbury campus, talks about why she writes on the RIF website.

The RLF is a charity which places professional writers into universities around the country to work one-to-one with student writers. The RLF Fellows hosted by the Student Learning Advisory Service  (SLAS) are here to support academic writing at all levels, both at Canterbury and Medway.  Their aim is “to help write now”. Appointments with them can be booked through SLAS CONNECT, the online booking system for SLAS. In order to book 1:1 appointments, students need to visit this site.

The University was very sorry to hear of the death of Jacqui Suggett on 13 January 2018, following a long illness.

Jacqui, who retired from the University in 2008, was the Alumni Database Manager in the Communications & Development Office. After she retired Jacqui returned to the University on short term contracts until 2010, as her wealth of experience was vital to the smooth running of the University’s Degree Congregations. Jacqui’s hard work had made a considerable difference to the Degree Congregations for years.

Jacqui was employed by the University in August 1976 as a Secretariat Assistant (Word Processing Machine Operator) in the Academic Division of the Registry. In 1989 Jacqui started to work for the Public Relations and Information Office on desktop publishing, the University prospectus, and database work. In later years Jacqui worked in Alumni Relations, with particular responsibility for the alumni database until she retired.

Jacqui was an extremely dedicated and accomplished colleague, who pioneered the use of office technology in its infancy training many people to use word processors when they were first adopted. Jacqui was also knowledgeable, wise, and a wonderful friend who would do all she could to help fellow members of staff.

Jacqui’s funeral has been arranged for Thursday 8 February at 1.15pm. The service will be held at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, Clarence Road, Herne Bay. Following this a short service will be held at Barham Crematorium. Refreshments will be provided, with details to follow.

Jacqui requested no flowers, and instead asked for donations to the Church or to the Pilgrims Hospice, Canterbury.

Dr Bike are now offering their services to University of Greenwich staff and students as well as University of Kent staff and students.

The next date Dr Bike is at Medway campus is Thursday 15 February 2018.  Find Dr Bike outside the Student Hub 11.30- 14.30 for your free bike check-up.

Dr Bike are trained bicycle mechanics who regularly come onto campus to check and adjust your bike for free.

Additional work will be quoted individually but will always be at a special reduced rate.

For more information visit the transport webpages.

Colleagues are invited to attend this session of the ‘New Approaches to Teaching for Experienced Staff at Kent’ series taking place on Tuesday 27 February 2018, 12.55-14.00 in the UELT Seminar Room, Canterbury.

Presented by Dr Elisabeth Curling, School of Biosciences.

As an academic member of the School of Biosciences, I have seen the incidence of acute anxiety within our student population rise year by year. This trend is seen across the HE sector. In a recent 2016 YouGov article (1) one in four students suffer from mental health problems, of which 74% are anxiety related. A research paper from Cambridge published in December 2017 proved in a randomised trial that Mindfulness training in helped students to be more resilient to stress, particularly at exam time (2).

We have so far run 3 X 5 week Mindfulness courses and drop-in sessions (with Lorraine Millard, a qualified Mindfulness teacher) for Bioscience students, and I will outline some of the positive feedback we have received in my presentation. The 5 week course has now been adopted by the School of Arts, and other schools could benefit from introducing Mindfulness to help their anxious students reach their full potential.

Dr Elisabeth Curling is a lecturer in the School of Biosciences with particular interests in immunology, human physiology and student welfare. After completing the 8 week Mindfulness course for staff in 2015, she has been running successful 5 week Mindfulness courses for Bioscience students (from October 2016).

References:

1. https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/08/09/quarter-britains-students-are-afflicted-mental-hea/

2. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(17)30231-1

To book a place please email cpdbookings@kent.ac.uk

On 6 February 1918 over 8 million women aged thirty and above were given the vote following decades of campaigning by suffragists and suffragettes. Throughout the year, the University of Kent will be marking the centenary with a range of interesting interdisciplinary events including round table discussions, outreach workshops and lectures.

For further details contact the Athena SWAN Team: m.k.janhonen@kent.ac.uk

Staff from across the University came together recently to present projects they are working on to enhance the student experience at Kent.

The ‘Festival of Projects’, attended by around 140 colleagues, was hosted by Professor April McMahon, Deputy Vice-Chancellor – Education and Sukhi Bath, Assistant Project Officer, Student Services.

The Festival was an opportunity for staff to network and identify opportunities for project collaboration. Among projects presented were:

• the award-winning Student Success project and work on the Virtual Student Adviser, helping to create a tailored online experience for students in EDA
• the OPERA project and Integrated Student Frontline Services project, aiming to make our services and information easily accessible to all students
• Kent Union’s work on improving students’ employability and how it is joining with the University to improve academic communities at Kent
• Careers and Employability Service’s Work-Study Scheme and B-Kew work experience bursary
• Student Support and Wellbeing projects, including increasing support for students on the autistic spectrum, encouraging individuals to look after their own wellbeing, and a number of mental health projects
• Internationalisation projects, including ways of adding more international elements to study programmes and encouraging awareness of global issues

The festival was organised by Chloé Gallien, Master of Keynes; Sukhi Bath, Susan Carte and Natalia Crisanti from Student Services; Jess Sutherland, Office of the Vice-Chancellor; and Ben Watson, OPERA project.

You can view all the projects and project leads in the Festival of Projects booklet (pdf).

Student Success Staff Seminars will  be taking place on a monthly basis, both Medway and Canterbury Campuses throughout the Spring and Summer terms.

You are warmly invited to the second staff seminar on ‘Why monitoring the academic attainment of students with BTECs is important’, taking place on:

• Wednesday 14 February, 13.00-14.00 – Canterbury Campus, Keynes College, Seminar Room 14
• Friday 16 February, 13.00-14.00 – Medway Campus, Pilkington Building, PK104

To register attendance at this or any of the other seminars published online, please email through to studentsuccessproject@kent.ac.uk

This seminar will be delivered by Dr Lavinia Mitton, Senior Lecturer in Social Policy based at the University of Kent’s School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research (SSPSSR).

Further to the Student Success 2017 BTEC Report, this talk will present a more in-depth analysis of 17 interviews with Kent students that were designed to explore the student identities of undergraduates who had taken Level 3 BTECs instead of, or alongside, A levels. We analysed the role of the academic–vocational divide in their student identity construction.

The purpose of this event is to allow colleagues from across the University exchange insights and explore how pathways in further education effect students at higher education.

For more details about this, and the other staff seminars, please visit the Student Success website