The annual Enterprise and Impact Training Session is running on Wednesday 26 April 2017, 09:30 to 16:30, and there is still time to register.

This programme will provide you with the knowledge, confidence and practical tools necessary to engage successfully in enterprise activities such as consultancy and collaborative funding streams. You will also increase your potential to apply your expertise within industry, public sector and third sector organisations, and will learn about how enterprise and knowledge exchange activities can support your career.

The training, run by Kent Innovation & Enterprise (KIE), is recommended for academics and researchers, at any stage of their career, who would like to develop skills for enterprise activity and optimise their interactions with external organisations. It is also suitable for members of support staff that work at the interface between academia and external partners.

To book your place, please complete the online booking form.

A light lunch will be provided.

If you have any questions about the training please contact Janine Coomber or Kimm Sutter, Faculty Liaison Officers, on ext 4574 or enterprise@kent.ac.uk.
More information can also be found on our webpages.

Fancy having a go at a Triathlon? Ashford Tri Club is offering Kent staff £5 off entry to the Hythe Bay Tri on Sunday 21 May.

The event is suitable for beginners and experienced triathletes: it features a 250m pool swim, 15km bike leg from Hythe to Folkestone and back, and a scenic 5km run along Hythe promenade.

If you enter the race, you can also go to a free Beginners Guide to Triathlon talk in Ashford on 21 April.

More information is on the Ashford Tri Club website.

Sign up online and use code HBT17UNI to get the £5 discount.
Please note that the discount code is limited to 20 uses.

Chris Scrutton, Assistant Housekeeping Manager has received the April Pride Award. The Personal Responsibility in Delivering Excellence Award recognises his fantastic attitude to strive for excellence.

Here are extracts taken from three nomination forms we received:

I wanted to nominate Chris for the amazing support she provided us all within the BICS Assessor Training. It was a really tough course and there was a lot of expectation on us to succeed. But Chris was really supportive and her mentality was that we were all going to pass together and she wasn’t going to let anyone fail or fall behind. This meant that she took the time to use her breaks and spare time to print our information packs and research the answers to questions she couldn’t answer.

Chris has always been an absolute diamond; she is always there to lend a hand and give advice. However, the particular reason I wanted to nominate her now is for the time, effort and amazing support she put into helping our team through the BICS Assessor Training.

Chris does all of this with good humour. We try to be serious but there have been many funny moments. She is a great calming influence on us all. Nothing ever phases her, not even when many people what her attention. Chris’s work commitment to her team excels and she went well above her job role.

It is really easy to nominate someone for a Pride Award. Just visit our website and complete our online form. The closing date for the next Pride Award is on Wednesday 27 September 2017 at 13.00.

Dr Patricia Novillo-Corvalán, Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Comparative Literature, has just published an article in the latest edition of Woolf Studies Annual, Volume 23 (2917).

Woolf Studies Annual is a journal dedicated to advancing the study of the author Virginia Woolf (1882-1941).

In her article, entitled ‘Empire and Commerce in Latin America: Historicising Woolf’s The Voyage Out’, Patricia seeks to recuperate the overlooked Latin American contexts that inform Virginia Woolf’s first novel, The Voyage Out (1915).

Integrating archival research and a historicising approach, the article uses documentary evidence drawn from the research notes that Virginia Woolf made for Leonard Woolf’s study Empire and Commerce in Africa (1920) namely, empirical data relating to political-economic issues in Latin America and, more specifically, to countries such as Argentina and Brazil.

In so doing, Patricia demonstrates that Virginia Woolf puts the complex issue of Great Britain’s neo-colonial domination in Latin America squarely on the cultural agenda of The Voyage Out. In particular, she suggests that the archival documents (housed at the Leonard Woolf archive, University of Sussex) acutely illustrate the extent of Britain’s disproportionate economic control of Argentina through the development of the meat industry that turned the Argentine Republic into the abattoir of the British Empire. The article argues that this documentary evidence complements and complicates the overall political message of The Voyage Out, whereby Woolf mercilessly denounces Britain’s attempt to gain economic control of the continent through the predatory character of Willoughby Vinrace.

For more details about the journal, please see the publisher’s page here.

Come along to our Wellbeing Festival on Friday 7 April from 11-15.00 in the Student Hub to discover a variety of fun and practical ways to improve your wellbeing

We have an exciting line up of internal departments and external organisations coming to take part in the day, such as mental health and charity stands, Drill Hall library wellbeing, GK Union, mindful colouring, Medway Activities, Medway Park leisure centre and healthy snacks.

Highlights include:

• FREE treatments for students and staff from PURE beauty salon, including Indian head massage and mini manicures
• Have a go at stress putty making with Creatabot
• School of Sport and Exercise Science breathing health assessments
• FREE healthy snacks

Workshop
Mindfulness Session from 12 -13.00 for students and staff in the Mezzanine, Student Hub (please email medwaywellbeing@kent.ac.uk to register interest).

More information can be found here.

Study Plus courses are FREE to all Kent students and give you a chance to study for pleasure or improve your employability by learning new skills.

If you have summer travel plans, learn some useful phrases before you go, with:
Spanish (KE089), Japanese (KE090) or Arabic (KE091) for travel. You can take a beginner’s course in Business Mandarin (KE007) and if you already speak some Mandarin, you could take Discover Chinese Language and Culture (KE088).

If you’re looking to develop your employment prospects, look no further than:
Employability Skills (KE043), or Careers in the third sector (KE070). Post grad students can also sign up for Who are you? Improving your prospects by knowing your strengths (KE094). Our intensive 5-day course: Journalism (KE044) gives you the chance to experience the pressure and the pleasure of making real journalism  to real deadlines under professional leadership.

The very popular Digital Photography course (KE122) is back, allowing you to get to grips with your digital SLR camera and learn to take better photos of people.

Dirty History (KE004) will appeal to Game of Thrones fans and anyone interested in  separating medieval fact from fantasy.

Finally, Big Ideas (KE128-KE131) is a series of 4 stand alone workshops offering an introduction to western philosophy.

Most of the courses are on the Canterbury campus, but Journalism is at Medway. You can sign up for a course at Canterbury or Medway and use the free shuttle bus to travel to the course if it is not on your home campus.

You can sign up for a course via Workshops in the Student Data System. Please make sure that you are definitely able to do the course before signing up for it!

Find out more about Study Plus here.