Congratulations to Dr Alexandra Moores, Dr Emma Hargreaves and Candis Roberts for their work on the Pre-Arrival Hub, which used the LearnSci Direct Virtual Learning Environment. Focusing on two core themes –  Digital Connectivity and Sense of Belonging – the hub helps to ensure success and engagement from the start of a student’s Kent journey.

The aim of the Pre-Arrival hub was to introduce students to the format and style of the VLE Moodle pages which students would be using in their day to day student life. Research has shown that the jump from sixth form/college to university is not always an easy transition for students. 

As well as the changes associated with moving away from home and a shift to independent learning, some students face extra anxiety if they weren’t taught essential course material before starting their degree.

The Division of Natural Sciences produced the Pre-Arrival Hub to support this transition by including numeracy skills worksheets by LearnSci. 81 incoming students attempted these worksheets alerting the team to potential gaps in prior learning and identifying support opportunities.

The Student Handbook was also accessible via the platform enabling students to be well informed before arrivals and feel part of a community within the Division. This student success project has developed interventions and activities to help support ongoing work in closing attainment gaps between certain cohorts of students.

The judges said:

‘Early student engagement is so beneficial to student wellbeing and belonging in higher education and their academic progress, it allows you to hit the ground running. This is a fantastic innovation and a great use of LearnSci’s Direct platform.’

Candis Roberts said:

‘I am so proud of what we achieved with this Student Success initiative. A huge thank you to Alex and Emma for their work and to Learn sci for recognising and supporting supporting our ambitions to help students transition into higher education and building a sense of belonging #studentsuccess’

Congratulations to the team and their continued dedication to the Student Success and Experience at the University of Kent. 

Richard joined the University of Kent in 2007 as part of the Telecoms Team as the Deputy Supervisor, in the Estates Department until its recent relocation as part of Information Services.

Richard was a valued member of the team, and was someone you could count on at work – even trudging his way up the hill to the campus any time there was thick snow and ice on the ground to make sure that the University switchboard would open on time.

Everyone who knew Richard, knew him as a person who was always willing to help and was never too busy to help others with their issues. Nothing was too much trouble and if he did not know the answer, he would find the answer.

Richard had a great, dry sense of humour and loved sharing jokes with his friends at work.  He also loved playing golf and was a passionate Sheffield United Football Club fan.

He was a great friend and colleague to many on campus and will be greatly missed by all who knew him.

A just giving site has been set up to have a memorial bench in Richard’s memory on Canterbury campus https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/richard-simpson2

There is a web stream of his funeral on Friday 10 February. If you would like to attend, please email Richard Charley at R.G.Charley@kent.ac.uk for the link to join online.

To launch KBS’s contribution to the UN PRME 10th Anniversary events with their focus on food, Catherine Robinson reflects on Veganuary and the rising demand for plant-based products  

The benefits of plant-based diets are felt by both consumers and the wider environment.  While the main motivation for following a vegan diet is often ethical, vegan diets are generally cheaper and healthier. Vegans and vegetarians are on average less likely to suffer from obesity and associated complications. Fewer health issues and a healthier workforce mean lower pressure on healthcare provision and improvements in workforce productivity.

In addition, the costs of meat-eating are not only felt by individuals but also by the environment. But to what extent are we as consumers responding to these social and environmental pressures?

In the UK, around 2% of the population are vegan with a further 6% being vegetarian; however, around 12% are flexitarian – largely vegetarian but occasionally eating meat or fish. Together this suggests around 20% of the population are committed to low or no meat and fish diets with plenty of variation among different groups, for example women and young people.

In the hotels and restaurants sector, the social nature of eating suggests that greater diversity in dietary needs shapes the choice of where to eat. So we have seen greater attention paid to vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free menus, creating an opportunity for restaurants and food producers to bring innovative products to market, leading to the development of new market niches in the food production and service sector.

The negative image of traditional vegans is being overcome but finding the middle ground in attracting the wider market without alienating traditional vegans is a challenge for vegan food producers.

However, the growth in more sustainable food products will lead to productivity benefits, creating a direct incentive for firms to innovate while food producers should be able to reap these benefits.

For the consumer such innovations will lead to greater choice in food products available for everyone, omnivores and vegans alike. There should be other benefits from consumers feeling they’re able to make more ethical choices as well as improvements in their health. In addition, this could lead to lower food costs. However, research also suggests that in appealing to the larger omnivore market by requiring plant-based products to be more ‘meat-like’, vegan food production may face higher costs and price their products in line with direct substitutes (some of which may be meat- or fish-based products).

So, while the move to greater veganism uptake should be viewed positively from the point of view of choice, innovation, environmental and health benefits, it’s less clear that another benefit will be lower prices.

As part of the UN PRME 10^th Anniversary celebrations, Kent Business School, in conjunction with the University’s Right to Food campaign will be hosting a number of student-led events beginning in February 2023 to raise awareness of food security and reducing food waste. Look out for further information.

See the full blog post, of which this is an edited version

As the Vice-Chancellor updated in her recent Community Catch-Up, the financial challenges facing us here and across the sector are only becoming more acute. The challenge of the flat tuition fee set by the Government and rising inflation, at levels that are currently significantly above the norm, means that we have less to work with each year. Combined with the rising cost of living more widely this means we are having to plan for how we could reduce our costs. Along with reducing day-to-day spend on goods and services, this is going to mean looking at our ways of working to see how we can deliver our key activities and run our operations more efficiently. We need to retain our focus on key initiatives in areas where we are looking to grow our income sustainably, but our financial outlook means we are going to need to make further savings in the cost of running our operations in the near future.

Throughout January, high-level discussions have been taking place to start looking at how we could do this. In particular, Directors across areas have been looking at the relationship between Divisions and central Professional Services teams to find ways we can work together more closely while maintaining the positive aspects of the current divisional model. We want to ensure we keep the principle behind locally delivered Professional Services while reducing the disconnect that exists at times between different areas. We also want to build resilience and address issues with workload by ensuring there is enough resource in the right places to deliver the service and strategic functions we need.

Our academic divisions have been through a couple of cycles since they were formed and it was always the intention to review how the relationship between them and central teams were working once new structures had bedded in. It’s also natural they evolve based on what we’ve learned – both the bits that are working well and areas, such as processes, that have been more challenging. Alongside this, the financial landscape we are in has shifted significantly since we reshaped professional services and launched Divisions and we need to find a more efficient and sustainable way of delivering services as a result. None of this is a reflection on the hard work taking place across teams but is the difficult reality of the financial challenges we face as a sector.

Following the initial discussions in January which focused on how we work together, detailed work now needs to continue at senior level through February to establish what this might mean in practice. We recognise that there are a number of different ways we could approach this and it will take time to scope this out, with nothing finalised at this stage. I am, however, grateful to those who have helped inform this so far for their input. I know it can be unsettling for everyone whenever we have to look at savings and it’s not a position any of us would choose – however, it’s important we are all aware of the challenges we face and I will continue to update you all on this work as and when plans start to take more shape.

Since launching in September 2022, we’ve received lots of amazing feedback from staff, students and partners about our new Kent brand. It’s exciting, bold, ‘ambitious’ and really resonates with all our audiences. But we’ve only rolled out the first stage! It’s now time to focus on how we embrace and evolve the message for the next phase of Kent’s journey.

We’re excited to be working on the next step of our new brand. We’re generating a creative, memorable, and personalised campaign to make Kent stand out in the competitive market and appeal to students.

Our words have said the “what”, now we need to live and breath the “how” and “why” of the brand. We must contextualise ‘ambition’, explain it and, most of all, embody it. We need to shout about the University’s positioning in more diverse and exciting ways that will truly excite and inspire our audience.

We’re going to focus our new campaign’s purpose on building hype, excitement, and awareness for Kent as a University that is the home for ambitious, driven, and courageous students.

We’ve also got some brand updates that we are excited to share with you:

• Postgraduate prospectus 2023
• Undergraduate prospectus 2024
• New branded course page (currently being trialled on specific course pages)
• New templates available at www.kent.ac.uk/brand including new poster template, new report templates, new strategy template and virtual backgrounds.