October can only mean one thing… we’re celebrating Black History Month at Kent. This year, the national theme is ‘Time for Change: Action, Not Words’ and this has never felt more pertinent. At Kent, we are committed to ensuring that all our students and staff, including our Black students and staff, have the best experience possible whilst they are with us.   

Celebrating Black History 

Black History Month is an opportunity for us as an organisation to celebrate and recognise the myriad of ways in which Black people have contributed to the arts, science, culture, history and technology of Britain and the wider world. It allows us to shine a spotlight on those achievements, and also provides a platform for staff and students to discuss and reflect on their own experiences. Our activities here are organised by a team of people that include the BAME Staff and Student Networks and representatives.   

Get involved – Black History Month events 

Events to look out for include art exhibitions, a book club, online theatre screenings, an open mic night, a coffee morning, 10,000 Black Interns project, Inspirational Speaker Ezechi Britton MBE, film screenings, a Black Owned Business Market and lots of online resources for you to enjoy and to deepen your own learning.  

Plus, don’t miss our BHM staff webinars – Introduction to Anti-Racism and Next steps to Allyship. 

Check out Kent Union’s Black History Month website for all events and resources. 

Continuing the celebrations #Black365 

We don’t just limit this celebration to one month a year. That is why we have #Black365; a series of events and activities that take place throughout the year that continue the legacy of Black History Month.  

Challenging racism also takes a university-wide approach and we know there is always more we can put in place to both be better and do better. We recently launched our Antiracism Strategy which outlined our commitment to taking action against all forms of racism at the University, and beyond. 

We also launched our work on the Race Equality Charter, the national framework which universities use to identify and self-reflect on institutional and cultural barriers that stand in the way of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic staff and students to help us grow and improve as an institution.  

We really hope you explore and enjoy all the different events and activities that have been organised by staff and students for staff and students. We are always seeking to improve though, so if you have any ideas for the future, or feedback, please do get in contact with us on StudentEDI@kent.ac.uk  

Happy Black History Month 22!  

#BHMKent22  

Our official Employee Assistance Programme provider, Care first offers a numbers of services and provide useful advice and support.

Here’s the schedule for two weeks:

Week commencing 10 October 2022

Monday 10 October – ‘Mental health awareness – In association with World mental health day’– Awareness and information on Mental health, how to recognise and support
those experiencing mental illness and changes to their mental health.
Time: 12.00-12.30 – click on this link to sign up

Wednesday 12 October – ‘How Care first can support you’– A webinar for awareness and how to access the EAP service provided by Care first.
Time: 12.00-12.30 – click on this link to sign up

Friday 14 October – ‘Your counselling‘ call to Care first’ – This webinar provides an overview of what you can expect when making a call to the counselling help line.
Time: 12.00-12.30 – click on this link to sign up

Week commencing 17 October 2022

Monday 17 October – ‘Menopause awareness’ – This session looks at the impact of Menopause on a woman’s mental and physical health. Offering ideas for ways that may help you cope when
going through this stage of your life, Supported by a menopause specialist.
Time: 12.00-12.30 – click on this link to sign up

Wednesday 19 October – ‘How Care first can support you’ – A webinar for awareness and how to access the EAP service provided by Care first.
Time: 12.00-12.30 – click on this link to sign up

Friday 21 October – ‘Practical information and advice through Care first’ – The webinar provides detail about our Information Specialists and their role as part of your EAP service.
Time: 12.00-12.30 – click on this link to sign up

We are looking for staff to volunteer and get involved at our upcoming Open Days at our Canterbury campus

If you haven’t worked at an Open Day before, they are really good fun! You will be a warm and welcome face to potential students and their families whilst assisting and directing them to locations across campus. Watch our Canterbury Open Day video to get a taste of what you could be involved in.

Canterbury Open Days:

• Saturday 8 October 2022 08:45-14:15
• Saturday 22 October 2022 08:45-14:15
• Saturday 19 November 2022 08:45-14:15

Please note, all staff up to Grade 6 will be able to claim overtime. If you would like to volunteer, please email opendays@kent.ac.uk with your availability.

We’re celebrating National Inclusion Week with a call to action: Put inclusion at the heart of everything you do using an Equality Impact Analysis.

Embedding inclusion in our work, from the start

When we create or make changes to policies, processes, events, and even meeting schedules and timetables, it may seem that everyone will be impacted equally. However, if we consider the changes more closely, we may find that they impact certain groups of people differently.

An Equality Impact Analysis focuses on the impact of the piece of work on each of the protected characteristics and whether it is putting someone with one or many of the protected characteristics at an unfair disadvantage. It is crucial to complete an EIA at the very beginning of your work – this will mean you avoid making changes later down the line and potentially causing yourself extra work. You should never complete an EIA on your own – the point of an EIA is to widen your perspective, and the easiest way to do this is to include colleagues in this work.

By carrying out an EIA, the owner of the piece of work will benefit from:

• identifying areas of impact that may not have been otherwise considered
• thinking of possible ways to mitigate any negative impacts
• a way to show how equality considerations have been considered and addressed

An EIA that has been completed to an acceptable standard will include the following:

• A consultation with key groups of people – we call these groups our ‘critical friends’ (staff network members, student network members, EDI Leads and Reps, ‘expert staff’ e.g. researchers in the specific topic of policy you are creating or updating)
• A list of mitigations put in place to lessen any unavoidable impact on protected characteristic groups
• A list of changes made based on feedback from your ‘critical friends’

Practicing inclusion every day makes the EIA easier every time

EIAs can feel overwhelming when you first complete one – that’s ok. Remember, you should never be completing an EIA on your own, so this should instantly lessen the burden. Be open to suggestions from colleagues and ‘critical friends’, and use this as an opportunity to learn about the wider community of students and staff here at Kent.

We’ve built a toolkit and a template you can use to begin your journey with Equality Impact Analyses. You can find these, a training module and some example EIAs listed on our webpages here. If you think you’d benefit from some more training, just let us know! Email us at equalityanddiversity@kent.ac.uk and we can arrange a training session for you and your team.

The Division of Natural Sciences, Supply Stores are doing an Autumn food bank collection running Monday 3^rd – Friday 7^th October

Items wished to be donated can be brought to the Science Supply Stores, Ingram Building, Ground floor G22 (near Ingram reception).

Pop by any time Monday – Friday 09:00-16:45

All donations are gratefully received!

The Canterbury Food Bank is community project and registered charity providing emergency (three-day) food parcels to individuals and families in short term financial crisis across the Canterbury District (Canterbury, Whitstable, Herne Bay and surrounding villages).

Any and all tinned/canned/packeted/long life products are of course welcome, but for those wanting a shopping list they are particularly low on:

• Instant Mash
• Canned Potatoes
• Tinned Beans and Vegetables
• Tinned fruit
• Tinned dessert
• Rice Pudding
• Pasta sauce
• Cup-a-soup
• Tinned soup
• Long-life fruit juice
• Long Life Whole Milk
• Coffee (small jar)
• Canned Ham
• Tinned Fish
• Shampoo
• All Toiletries
• Male and female deodorant
• Size 3 nappies
• Size 5, 5+ 6 and 6+ nappies
• Washing-up liquid
• Cleaning sprays
• Washing powder
• Baby wipes
• Dog food

The Canterbury Food Bank is registered charity No. 1153791.

In September, UKRI and the Leverhulme Trust announced that they would be increasing their annual stipends for doctoral studentships by 10%, from £16,062 to £17,668. Recognising the importance of this increase in the current financial climate, the University will be applying this same increase to all of its internally-funded PhD studentships. This includes GTAs, studentships funded through specific schemes such as the Global Challenges Doctoral Centre and Signature Research Themes, and match-funded studentships with external organisations.

Commenting on this increase, Gordon Lynch, Director of the University’s Graduate and Researcher College, said, ‘I’m very pleased that the University has been able to do this, building on financial returns from its successful performance in REF2021. I’m also grateful to staff who have been working to tight deadlines to ensure that our students receive this money as soon as possible. We recognise the cost of living pressures faced by students and this will remain an important priority for the University in the coming academic year.’

This stipend increase will be effective from 1^st October 2022, and will be applied to the first payment rounds that students receive this autumn.

By Jessica Messenger | Research Excellence Assistant

Earlier this year the University received funding through Kent County Council’s schools programme to run a Youth Summit on campus, the idea being to reconnect young people in Kent to their learning after two years of missed activity. Although the plans for the event were exciting and ambitious, we still needed to put a lot of work into realising our ideas and to make them happen.

I’m pleased to say that, with a lot of hard work by a lot of people across the University, including a reschedule of the date from the summer to October, those early ideas have developed and those plans have been firmed up. Not only that, the programme has proved to be popular beyond what we could have hoped for with more than 800 young people coming to our campus over three days next week.

Take a look at the programme and you’ll see a wide range of exciting and innovative sessions, including workshops exploring maths through natural and everyday objects, exercises that combine drumming with movement, a ‘multilingual Tempest for our times’, opportunities to take part in a court trial in a fun and interactive way, stand-up comedy workshops, sessions to create environmental land art, workshops on cyber security, the showing of a contemporary Ukrainian play called The Grain Store, and much more.

Each day there will be a plenary session including a UN-style debate on Monday led by our Humanities and Social Sciences Division on key challenges facing our young people, an interactive film called ‘Anthropocene’ on our changing environment and KMTV will deliver a Generation Genome event that aims to inspire young people to delve deeper into the world of genomics. It all amounts to what we hope will be an incredible festival of learning for our young people who have missed out on so much over the last two and a half years.

Every Division has been involved in helping to come up with the programme, and our Signature Research Themes have been in the thick of developments, contributing some of the highlights of the week. Students too will be on hand to help deliver the learning activities and make sure things run smoothly.

One of the key objectives of the Youth Summit was to give our young people a voice and a platform to tell us about their hopes and ideas for the future. So we’ll be eliciting their ‘ideas for a better world’ to compile and to make them available in different formats to send to MPs, council leaders, headteachers and other senior figures in the region as a clear statement about what our young people want for their future.

I hope as many of you as possible will drop by between 3 and 5 October to take in the atmosphere of the Youth Summit, follow it on KMTV or through our comms channels. It promises to be something special.

The University’s Hybrid Working Scheme has now been in operation for just under a year and we are pleased to announce some enhancements to the scheme, resulting from feedback received from a variety of stakeholders following a review of the scheme earlier this year.

Thank you to all managers and staff who contributed to the review – either through the survey of Directors/Heads of Service, through sharing feedback with your managers or through taking part in individual consultation with the project team.  The review sought to ensure the scheme achieves a balance between providing as much flexibility as possible for staff whilst maintaining essential on-campus services and having consideration to the fact that we are a campus-based university.  In addition, a key aim was to make the process as light touch as possible.

Please view a summary of the findings of the review here.

The main headlines for staff to be aware of are:

• The HWS has been widely accommodated by managers, in line with the over-arching principle that managers should seek to facilitate hybrid working where operationally possible. In the period under review 86.3% of applications were approved and 13.7% declined.
• Going forward, there will be Director discretion regarding the maximum permitted number of remote working days. The standard maximum will remain as two days per week – meaning a 60:40 office to home ratio – but Directors will have discretion to specify parameters within their area that exceed the standard maximum, subject to guidelines.  This allows working practices to be more agile in view of business needs, particularly to take into account market forces in different areas.
• We will keep the standard policy under review, taking into consideration the impact on the student experience and changes to service needs over time.
• In order to make the process more ‘light touch’, we have simplified the application approval process so that Directors are no longer required to sign off on individual applications. Managers and staff fed back that the additional level of authorisation in Staff Connect proved cumbersome and time consuming. It also led to a number of errors, which may have slowed things down.
• There will be no annual application window. Both new starters and existing staff who are not already in the scheme can apply at any time.
• Additional support has been arranged to support managers with the challenges in leading hybrid teams – see here: Leading Hybrid Teams
• The University remains absolutely committed to facilitating greater flexibility for staff where possible, to improve work-life balance. Hybrid working is unfortunately not operationally viable for some staff, due to the nature of their roles, but it’s important that no grades of staff feel that they are automatically barred from applying to the scheme due to their grade (as opposed to the nature of the work they do).  The University will also be establishing a separate project to explore other ways of introducing more flexibility into working practices for campus-based staff for whom hybrid working isn’t operationally viable.

Updated scheme guidance documents are available on the Hybrid Working webpages.