Yearly Archives: 2018

SMFA Professor of Contemporary Music Tim Howle has new work premiered at the Art & Science Days Festival in France

Professor Tim Howle, SMFA Professor of Contemporary Music has a new acousmatic piece premiered on 27th June in Bourges, France at the Art & Science Days Festival. False Memory of Normandy (2018) was composed in collaboration with the poet J M Fox. Link here: https://soundcloud.com/tim-howle/d-day

Professor Howle’s interests include developing composition, primarily sonic art, acoustic music and music for experimental video. More here: https://www.kent.ac.uk/smfa/staff/staff-profiles/musicandaudio/3Howle2.html

Additionally, Sarva Mangalam (2017), which was premiered at Electric Spring, at the University of Huddersfield earlier this year, is performed at the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival on July 17^th. It is also being shown at the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), South Korea, 5-10^th August. It is an audio-visual piece in collaboration with video maker Dr Nick Cope (https://nickcopefilm.com/ ) who currently holds an honorary position at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China. At its premiere, the performance was supported with a paper: Avoidance Strategies relating the ideas in the piece to those of Brian Eno and Cornelius Cardew at Ambient@40 held at the same time.

Link to Sarva Mangalam: https://vimeo.com/255044916

Further, Professor Howle’s piece Phantom Ride (2014) composed with Dr Paul Dibley from Oxford Brookes University, will be performed at ICMC and at WOW- soundMIGRATION, Madrid in September. Link to Phantom Ride: https://soundcloud.com/tim-howle/phantom-ride

Sports Massage

Good news! The Kent Sport Physiotherapy Clinic will be running a discount on sports massages throughout the month of July to help you get rid of those nagging injuries. Sports massages are being offered at £15 for 30 minutes – and that’s the same great price regardless of whether you’re a Kent Sport member or not.

To book an appointment, please visit the reception desk inside the fitness suite or call the clinic staff on 01227 824375 or email physio@kent.ac.uk.

Please note that due to the renovation of the flooring in the fitness suite to improve customer experience, all physiotherapy and sports massage appointments will take place in the first aid room until 28 July. Please check in at the Sports Centre main reception before your appointment and you will be directed to the first aid room.

To keep up to date with the latest events and offers, follow Kent Sport Physiotherapy Clinic on Facebook.

Join the Gulbenkian Advisory Board

Would you like to help transform lives through culture and creativity?

Gulbenkian is seeking new members for our Advisory Board, and we would love to have staff and students well represented.

As we approach our 50th anniversary, we are looking to strengthen our existing Board members’ knowledge, skills and expertise in a number of key areas by recruiting well-connected and experienced individuals.

We want to recruit board members from all backgrounds, ages and sections of the community.

These are opportunities to make a real difference in the lives of young people and be part of one of Kent’s most vibrant creative organisations.

To apply please send a CV and a brief covering letter (no more than 2 pages of A4) setting out why you’re interested in becoming a member of the Advisory Board and what you may be able to contribute, for the attention of: Oliver Carruthers, Director, Gulbenkian via email o.j.carruthers@kent.ac.uk or by post to Gulbenkian, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NB.

Download Advisory Board Recruitment Pack for more information.

Deadline for applications are on the 16th July 2018 at 5pm.

Changes to Giles Lane car park

Over the summer there will be changes to the Giles Lane car parks. This includes essential maintenance for health and safety reasons.

Giles Lane car park will be fully closed from Monday 9 July with the aim to reopen the car park by September. This work has been scheduled over the summer vacation to cause minimal disruption.

We are taking this opportunity to reduce the level of the pink zone so Giles Lane car parks will be consolidated into one car park. The car park will become fully pink zone. From checks carried out by the Transport Team, less than 15% of the blue zone car park is being used by student blue zone permit holders; around 75% is being used by staff and associates and around 10% is being used by other persons.

Blue zone parking will still be available in the Sports Centre blue zone, Park Wood Courts, Pavilion and Oaks car parks.

Creating one level car par park allows us to improve the parking experience by installing Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) barriers in the car park and Variable Message Signage (VMS) along Giles Lane to provide information to drivers on the number of available spaces in Giles Lane car park. This will help with parking enforcement and traffic management. Environmentally, the introduction of VMS should help to reduce carbon emissions as drivers will spend less time driving around Giles Lane car park in search of a parking bay.

Levelling the car park will also create some additional parking bays within the car park.

Do you need to travel by car?

If it is an option for you why not consider changing up your travel to campus by walking, cycling or taking the bus? The University encourages sustainable travel wherever possible through the University’s Travel Plans. Did you know you can save over 50% when you purchase a staff discounted bus pass? Check out our travel discounts and planning your journey webpages.

How do I find out more information?

The Transport Team are working with key people in the Gulbenkian, Kent Sport, Conference Office and Recruitment to help manage their large number of visitors over the summer. If you are aware of any large events over summer outside of these departments that may be affected by the changes to Giles Lane car park, please email the Transport Team .

The Transport Team will be providing regular updates throughout the summer vacation period via their newsletter.

VC Open Forum for staff – Medway, Friday 6 July

A reminder that our Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Karen Cox, will be holding an Open Forum at Medway campus this Friday (6 July).

The Forum, from 10.30-11.30 in Pilkington Lecture Theatre, is open to all University of Kent staff. It’s an opportunity to share your thoughts on the University – what works, what doesn’t work and how you’d like to see things done differently. Your feedback will help to shape the review of the University strategy and priorities over the next few years.

If you are able to attend the Forum, please register your attendance here.

Calling all current and future parents at Kent!

As part of our commitment to improving and developing services and initiatives for current and future parents who work and study at the University of Kent, the Athena SWAN team are running a series of focus groups to explore what support and networks parents would like to see established and how to improve communication and information about maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental leave policies to all staff and students.

The dates of the upcoming workshops are as follows:

Canterbury:

10th July- 10.30-11.30
11th July- 10.30-11.30
12th July- 9.30-10.30

Register via Eventbrite for the Canterbury event here.

Medway:

12th July- 15.00-16.00

Register via Eventbrite for the Medway focus group here.

These focus groups and events are open to all parents and carers (current and future).

We are delighted to invite you to the next Mainstream Initiatives Launch of the Student Success Project for colleagues at Medway Campus on Tuesday 24th July 2018 at the Medway Building- M3-04.

The event will showcase the improved Student Success Dashboard- QlikView Phase 2, the Student Success Resources Toolkit (SStaRT), and the highly anticipated Progress Profiles. The second version of the Student Success QlikView dashboard, which can provide data about school cohorts is released with added functionality, and granularity. Dashboard is strictly limited, so this is your opportunity to see what data is available to you and to find out who has access in your department.

So, come and find out how the toolkit can help you find the best initiatives for your school and hear how you can contribute your own activities and best practice to the toolkit.

This event is free and open to all Kent Staff and to hear when this will be available and what information it will contain, register attendance on EventBrite.

If you have any questions feel free to contact studentsuccessproject@kent.ac.uk

SummerZone 2018

The school holidays are just around the corner, and that can only mean one thing… “I’m bored!” Kent Sport has the perfect way to keep your children entertained this summer, with up to two weeks of professional sports coaching, led by qualified and DBS checked coaches and supported by sports supervisors. If your children are aged five to 14 and would enjoy taking part in a variety of sporting activities on a daily basis, including football, kwik cricket, tag rugby, hockey and tennis, then book them on SummerZone 2018!

SummerZone will run from 9am to 3pm daily from Monday 6 to Friday 10 August (week one), and Monday 13 to Friday 17 August (week two). Late pick-ups are available from 3pm to 5pm and will include staff-led fun games and creative activities.

“Just to say that EasterZone has been fantastic once again! Jack has been so happy, has made new friends, gained in confidence and has slept so well!! Can’t wait for SummerZone!”

You can book places for SummerZone now through the online store or by filling out an application form, available online or at reception. Booking is available for one week, two weeks or individual days. For full details visit our webpages. Booking closes on Friday 20 July.

To stay up to date with Kent Sport news, Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter UniKentSports and if you have any questions you can email sportsenquiries@kent.ac.uk.

You are invited to The Centre for Professional Practice Pop-up event

Thinking about professional development programmes?

The Centre for Professional Practice, which offers flexible, part-time, work-based studies is coming to Canterbury campus with its Pop-up stand to provide information to the University’s staff who may want to further their careers.

Come and find us:

Wednesday, 4 July, 12.00-13.00 near Gulbiankin and 13.00-14.00 near Blackwells Book Shop

The Master’s in Professional Practice or BA/BSc Top-up in Professional Practice are flexible, part-time programmes which have been developed for professionals who want the opportunity to validate the professional knowledge, experience and skills they have amassed during their careers and use this to progress their professional careers:

BA/BSc Top-up in Professional Practice. This two-year, part-time programme is suitable for those who already have an Undergraduate and Foundation Degrees, HND or equivalent and would like to top it up to an honours degree.

MA/MSc in Professional Practice. This three-year, flexible, part-time programme has proved particularly popular amongst managers and professional staff in a range of organisations and businesses. Requests for accreditation of prior experiential and certificated learning (APECL) are welcome.

The programmes enable participants to:

• Gain new perspectives on their professional role and develop new approaches to transform their work-related practice

• Develop professional knowledge and enhance career opportunities

• Stimulate thinking about the challenges associated with their area of practice

• Engage, review and analyse the currents debates associated with work practice

The programmes, delivered by the Centre for Professional Practice at the University of Kent’s Medway Campus, offer a flexible way of study (on average 6 weekends a year, Friday-Sunday) and are currently recruiting to the 2018/19 intake, which commences on 19 October 2018.

Students may be eligible for staff fee remission or loans (subject to eligibility criteria).

For more information see Centre for Professional Practice page.

Julie Williams- Kent Hospitality’s June PRIDE Award Winner

We are delighted to announce that the winner of the June Kent Hospitality PRIDE Award is Julie Williams, Turing College Domestic Assistant. The Personal Responsibility in Delivering Excellence Award recognized Julie’s caring personality while consistently providing additional support to residential students on the Canterbury campus.

An extract from one of Julie’s nomination reads: ‘…she has always made sure that I am OK even when I am anxious about exams and she will always give me the best advice […] When I fell very ill, and an ambulance was sent to me, Julie showed the paramedics where I was and a few days later she came around to see if I was OK’.

Any Kent Hospitality staff member (permanent or casual) may be nominated from Canterbury and Medway campuses. The award is given in March, June, September/October and December with each winner receiving £100 of shopping vouchers, a certificate and a Pride pin badge.

It’s really easy to nominate a member of the Kent Hospitality team for a Pride Award. Just visit the Pride website and complete our online form. The closing date for the next Pride Award is Wednesday 26th September 2018 at 12 noon.

Well Done Julie!