Are you a volunteer or are you interested in volunteering? If so, help us shape the Kent Staff Volunteering Scheme by coming along to a workshop and sharing your ideas with us!

Canterbury   11.00-12.30    Senate Committee Room 1             26^th January 2023

Medway       10.30-12.00    Rochester Board Room R2-09 (TBC)      2^nd February 2023

Even if you can only pop in for 5 minutes please come along and give us your suggestions. If you can’t make it, share what you do and any ideas that you have at Kent Volunteers.

The Kent Staff Volunteering scheme gives each staff member 25 hours of paid leave for volunteering each year (pro-rata for part-time or fixed-term contracts). Volunteering is an excellent way to give something back to the community, enhance your CV and broaden your life skills, as well as the opportunity to meet new people and have fun.

To bring the scheme to life, we want your ideas to shape the scheme and help identify voluntary activities that benefit staff, the University and our communities.

January is often a tough month, with expectations high for the year. The days are dark, the weather is cold and it can be hard to get motivated. We’re here to help you crack those January blues and feel more energised and positive. That’s why we’ve reduced all our membership fees by 20% when you join between 16 January – 28 February 2023.

Already a Kent Sport member? Consider upgrading your membership to a package with even more benefits and save 20% when you do!

As a Premium Plus member, you have access to our whole fitness suite, a range of fitness classes, discounted fitness services and tennis tuition! It can’t get much better right? Well, you might be surprised to hear it can! New for 2023 and part of the Premium Plus package, you can access a suite of FREE Les Mills virtual instructor classes every week!

Our memberships are open to everyone, so the whole family can be involved. Hire a badminton court with friends, hit the classes with a colleague or explore our range of personal training sessions to help get you on your way.

What are you waiting for? Upgrade your membership at one of our sports receptions, or become a member today!

Come to the 7th Stephen Gray Lecture on the 9 March, where Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell will be the key speaker.

Many poets have written about astronomy and the night sky. Dame Jocelyn will select about half a dozen of these poems, give the scientific background and seek volunteer readers from the audience to read the poems. There will be a chance to look at the poems and discuss informally over tea an biscuits before the talk starts.

Register for the event

DATE AND TIME

9 March 2023, 15:30 for a 16.00 start.

LOCATION

University of Kent, Canterbury Campus (venue TBA)

About the Speaker

Jocelyn Bell Burnell inadvertently discovered pulsars as a graduate student in radio astronomy in Cambridge, opening up a new branch of astrophysics – work recognised by the award of a Nobel Prize to her supervisor.

She has subsequently worked in many roles in many branches of astronomy, working part-time while raising a family. She is now a Visiting Academic in Oxford, and the Chancellor of the University of Dundee, Scotland.  She has been President of the UK’s Royal Astronomical Society, in 2008 became the first female President of the Institute of Physics for the UK and Ireland, and in 2014 the first female President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She was one of the small group of women scientists that set up the Athena SWAN scheme.

She has received many honours, including a $3M Breakthrough Prize in 2018.

The public appreciation and understanding of science have always been important to her, and she is much in demand as a speaker and broadcaster.  In her spare time, she gardens, listens to choral music and is active in the Quakers. She has co-edited an anthology of poetry with an astronomical theme – ‘Dark Matter; Poems of Space’.

Our student record system, KentVision, will be upgraded from 21-22 January 2023, this is a technical upgrade only, to keep us in support with the system supplier (Tribal) and to ensure that we continue to receive essential updates.

During this upgrade the KentVision system will be unavailable to all users from 17:00 on 20 January until the upgrade is completed, until 14:00 on 23 January.

If students need to view their timetable during these times, they can integrate their timetable with a personal calendar (e.g Outlook or Google calendar) on a mobile or computer through iCal. Please refer them to the my study webpage and click the cog in the top right-hand corner to see the subscribe to calendar options.

Collecting data through surveys

When collecting personal data we are required to supply the person providing the data with certain pieces of information explaining why we are processing their data, how we will process it, if we will share it outside of the University, what their data protection legislation rights are, and who to contact with any questions or concerns.

One of the easiest ways to collect data is by using a survey tool. Whenever you set up a survey, you should only collect the data that you definitely need to meet your purpose. And you must include a Privacy Notice at the point of collection, normally this is achieved by including a link to the Notice in the survey itself.

We have produced some Privacy Notice Guidance, which includes a checklist to use to audit existing Privacy Notices, and a Privacy Notice template to use to produce your Notice if one covering your processing doesn’t currently exist.

Collecting data in the form of photographs / video recordings

Personal data includes a person’s image so when taking photographs or recordings of events on campus we need to highlight to those whose images might be captured that we are collecting this data and to explain what we are going to use it for. You don’t necessarily need consent as the lawful basis under UK GDPR to use the photos / videos but you do need to provide clear details (ideally in advance) of how the individual can ask that their image is not used. Best practice is to obtain permission even if you are relying on another lawful basis under UK GDPR. For some purposes (such as marketing) you will need to obtain written permission in advance in any event.

If the event is by invitation only, a Privacy Notice should be included with the invitation explaining that photographs / video recordings may be taken. If the event is open to all, a Privacy Notice should still be made available and appropriate for the intended audience and one easy way of doing this is by posting QR codes in the area of the event (although a paper copy should also be on display for those without their phones).

When the events include anybody under the age of 18 years old, their parents / guardians also need to be made aware and give their permission for the use of the images.

Mailing Lists – moderated, even for moderators

The cause of many data breaches is sending an email containing personal data to the wrong recipient. If this email is sent to an unmoderated mailing list, it is potentially even worse as it will be sent to multiple wrong recipients!

One control that can be put in place is to use Sympa to manage your mailing list. Sympa gives you an option to require all emails – even those written by a moderator – to be sent to the moderators for distribution. By having this control in place, the risk of sending an email to an entire mailing list of incorrect recipients is significantly reduced.

If you are a moderator of a mailing list, please select this option in Sympa. If you manage a mailing list outside of Sympa, please contact IT Helpdesk <helpdesk@kent.ac.uk> for assistance with the initial set up.

If you have any questions not answered on the Assurance and Data Protection sites, or if you need further support and guidance please do get in touch with the team by emailing dataprotection@kent.ac.uk.

Laura Pullin
Head of Data Protection / Data Protection Officer (DPO)

We are delighted to announce that Professor Iain Wilkinson has been appointed the Director of Division for the study of Law, Society and Social Justice (LSSJ).

LSSJ is a large, diverse, multidisciplinary Division comprised of the Kent Law School (KLS) and the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research (SSPSSR), plus the Centre for Journalism, the Centre for Health Service Studies (CHSS), the Personal Social Services Research Unit (PSSRU), the Tizard Centre, the Centre for Child Protection and the Centre for Philanthropy. LSSJ provides some of the largest undergraduate and graduate teaching programmes in the University. It also has a strong research culture with Kent Law School currently ranked 2nd and Social Policy and Social Work (including the submissions from Sociology and Criminology) ranked 3rd in the UK for their research quality.

Professor Wilkinson is a Sociologist by training and his research and teaching interests concern problems of social suffering, the social history and politics of humanitarianism, sociological theory, and the sociology of health and health care. He is also currently involved in developing the Kent’s civic mission to promote food justice, tackle food insecurity and become the world’s first Right to Food University.