The University’s priority at all times is the health, safety and wellbeing of its staff and students.

To help us all adjust to our new working environment, the HR Department have put together a new resource pack, with contributions from the Directors of Division and our Staff and TU Representatives. The ‘COPE Framework’ aims to help staff and their managers find ways to adjust to our new working environment.

The new resource pack and a one-page summary are available now on our Staff Guide.

The framework includes practical guidance to help us put in place working arrangements that, while recognising the stress of the situation we are currently in, relieve any unnecessary workload-related pressures.

The framework is based on four key principles – how best to:

• Collaborate, work together and support each other
• Organise and prioritise workload, to relieve unnecessary workload-related pressure
• Prepare for ongoing uncertainty and minimise any challenges and difficulties further down the line
• Enable ourselves to restore emotional resources and stay well over the time to come.

The pack is designed to complement all the support already available across the University, from departments such as Occupational Health, IS and Kent Sport.

While it does not claim to have all the answers, its guidance on remote working, communication, the role of line managers and flagging of additional resources (including our Employee Assistance Programme) should help relieve some of the pressures colleagues are under. It also paves the way for colleagues to put together their own COPE Framework, reflecting their own particular circumstances, with the support of their manager.

Take a look and have a chat with your manager about ways you might be able to improve your current working environment.

What’s your role at the University and how long have you worked here?
I joined the University in 2002 as Bar Supervisor in Mungo’s (Eliot College). I’m currently Food & Beverage Manager for Rutherford Dining Hall, which involves supervising a catering team in one of Kent’s last traditional dining halls – but with a modern twist including a wok bar!

My team of about 30 are multi-talented and can turn their hand to anything from day-to-day cafeteria food to a staff BBQ for hundreds.

How has your role changed as a result of the Covid-19 outbreak?
Rutherford is the only venue on Canterbury campus still offering a catering service – the only other place to buy food is the Co-Op shop. So, we are rotating around 100 staff from different catering venues on shifts – usually around one per week – to help us provide cooked food for around 700 students who are still on campus.

Rosie Ochs, from Mungo’s, preparing food in Rutherford

I’m still trying to lead from the front – I like being hands-on – but also doing a fair chunk of my work from home. I’m one of four food and beverage managers on campus so we take it in turns to lead the team, and work closely with other members of the Kent Hospitality management team.

How easy was it to adapt to the new way of working?
When we first found out about the new social distancing measures – on 20 March – I came back to work that Friday evening and literally helped adapt things overnight. Over the following week, we condensed all our stock – donating food items that were nearer their shelf date to local food banks – and moved everything over to Rutherford.

Rutherford Dining Hall was the obvious choice to stay open – it’s the largest catering space on campus so it’s been easier to put in place a safe-distancing policy. We ask students – usually around 100 per day – to wait in marked out spaces (at most three at one time) and then serve their food in a Bag It box with pre-packed cutlery. Payment is also contactless, so the only thing they have to touch is the takeaway drinks fridge, which we clean on a regular basis.

The new-look Rutherford Dining Hall

What’s worked well?
To my team’s immense credit, most of those who were able to were keen to get back to work and their attitude has been “let’s just do it”. Our team atmosphere is better than it has ever been – in my view, they’re all champions!

What’s proved more tricky?
It’s taken a bit of work to sort out communications across the catering team – especially as colleagues have varying access to technology. To ensure everyone’s connected and up to date with both our team and University news, I use a mixture of What’s App and texts. And I’ve made sure that all members of my team have access to and are using their Kent emails.

What’s the atmosphere like on campus?
It’s pleasant, but very quiet! It’s just us, the Security team and a few contractors. You see some unusual sights – the other day, I saw two students in their dressing gowns working in the computer room, at a safe distance of course!

What’s been the response from your customers?
Most of our students seem to be really happy with what we were doing. For many, it offers a welcome bit of normality in the present time.

Our catering service is usually term-based so we’re keen to let all students still on campus know that we remain open. There’s no commercial aspect to what we’re doing – we’re just keen to keep students fed in a safe environment.

We have had to limit what we do a little – the wok bar has stopped unfortunately – but we’re still able to source fresh local vegetables from a local farm and offer a full menu, including meat, fish and vegetable options, every day from 12-6pm.

Mike Sault, from Sibson Cafe, prepares a Bag-It order

Overall, are you happy with what you’ve achieved so far?
Very much so. I am enormously proud of my team – many of them are volunteering to do extra days! I am also proud that we are still able to provide an essential service – after all, for many of our students this is their home.

Research to be undertaken between the University of Kent and Queen’s University of Belfast is set to investigate a ‘common’ library founded in the 1420s at London’s Guildhall.

The £367,000 project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, will be led by Dr Ryan Perry, senior lecturer in the School of English and co-Director of the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, and will be co-investigated Dr Stephen Kelly in the School of Arts, English and Languages, Queen’s University of Belfast.

The library was one of the charitable legacies from the estates of that famously wealthy and most storied London mayor, Richard ‘Dick’ Whittington (d. 1423). This chained library of religious manuscripts was built by Whittington’s innovative executor, the Guildhall clerk, John Carpenter, explicitly for the benefit of London’s citizens and for its poorer priests who could not afford their own books to aid them in their ministrations in the City.  The entire collection was sequestered by Edward Seymour, Lord Protector of England, in January 1549, to fill the shelves of his newly constructed library at Somerset house, and only two books from the library are now known to have survived.

The project aims to ‘reconstruct’ the collection through identifying clusters of Middle English texts that were being repeatedly copied by London scribes in an explosion of pastoral writing in the City that coincides with the foundation of Whittington’s library. It is the project team’s contention that this revolution in religio-literary culture was facilitated through the ‘common’ library.

The project, titled Whittington’s Gift: Reconstructing the Lost Common Library of London’s Guildhall, will produce an anthology of texts sourced from the library and a monograph length account of Middle English religious textual production in the City and beyond.

Following Tuesday’s email on changes to Organising for Success, we are pleased to confirm all final senior leadership appointments within academic divisions. Kerry Barber will be Director of Operations for the Division of Human and Social Sciences, working with Professor David Wilkinson as Director of Division. Amanda Ollier will be Director of Operations for the updated Division of Arts and Humanities, working with Professor Shane Weller and Professor Simon Kirchin as co-Directors.

This completes all senior leadership appointments within academic divisions, with the full list of divisions and their leadership now on the Organising for Success website.

A number of other areas of the site have also been updated to cover the recent changes, including:

• Project Timeline: With details of the next steps needed to make changes in professional service areas and launch new divisions by no later than 1 November
• FAQs: Including more information on the impact of Covid-19, along with explanation of some of the key stages on the timeline such as the ‘staff mapping’ process

As we head into the Easter Bank Holiday, I have been reflecting on the extraordinary events of the last few weeks. You will have seen from my update earlier this week the vast amount of work that has been carried out in such a short space of time, I thank everyone for the part they have played in enabling all these things to happen.

One of things I am immensely proud of is how staff and students are responding to the impact of COVID-19 on our local community and beyond. The link to the webpages shows some of the activity that is going on across all our schools, departments and professional services. A number of you are supporting the work of the Canterbury Foodbank and more than 30 academics, postdoctoral researchers and PhD students in Biosciences have volunteered to help perform testing at hospitals across the county. Kent Hospitality has donated surplus stock to Dover Foodbank and we are working directly with the NHS across Kent and Medway to see how we can provide essential infrastructure support.

We are now all working in an adapted and dispersed way. In such an environment, it’s important to get our communications right and I am aware that, in recent weeks, I have been sending out a lot of emails to you all as well as communicating with TEAMS, Zoom and good old fashioned telephone! As we come back from the Easter break I want to ensure you have the right kind of opportunity to engage directly with me and colleagues across the senior team. We are currently looking at the best way to do this and will come back with further details.

I wish you and your families all the best for the Easter break, and look forward to working with you over the coming months as we all navigate our way through this unprecedented time.

Karen

Karen Cox | Vice-Chancellor and President