Author Archives: Allie Burnett

Join Legal Walk in Canterbury

Teams are assembling for the inaugural Canterbury Legal Walk, a 10km sponsored walk around Canterbury to raise money for the Kent Law Campaign.

The Canterbury Legal Walk offers a unique opportunity to explore both the city and Kent’s beautiful hill-top campus in the company of leading members of the legal profession on Saturday 13 June 2015.

Led by the UK’s Justice of The Supreme Court, The Right Hon the Lord Clarke of Stone-cum-Ebony, teams of students, staff, solicitors, Barristers and legal practitioners have already begun registering for the walk.

Walking with Lord Clarke, who is also patron of the Kent Law Campaign, will be Professor John Fitzpatrick, Director of Kent Law Clinic, Professor Richard de Friend, Chair of the Kent Law Campaign Board and Richard Honey, Barrister at Francis Taylor Building.

The walk is open to all and friends and families of students, staff and legal professionals are welcome to register either as individuals or teams. The walk will end with a celebration party on Senate Lawn overlooking Canterbury Cathedral.

Registration is free but participants are asked to pledge to raise as much money as possible for the Kent Law Campaign, a £5million fundraising project to build a new home for the Kent Law Clinic and for Kent Law School’s Mooting Programme.

The University of Kent will match each pound raised with another so if you raise £50 and it is eligible for Gift Aid, your gift will become £125.

Give Volunteering a Go

You told us that you would like more Kent Union volunteering projects. As a result, Tom Abbott, Kent Union’s Volunteer Projects Coordinator, created some ‘Give it a Go’ volunteering sessions for students.

These included a shoebox appeal and knitting for charity.

Over 40 volunteers helped out over two days with our Shoebox Appeal by donating presents, wrapping shoeboxes and knitting scarves. Thanks to the volunteers we were able to send 49 boxes to Smile International for disadvantaged children around the globe.

We have continued to knit scarves for charity in the Media Centre every other week.

Keep an eye out for these and other projects on the Kent Union Volunteering page.

Voicemail unavailable on 18 Dec

Work is due to be carried out to enhance the University voicemail system on Thursday 18 December at 5.30pm.

The voicemail will be unavailable for approximately three hours from 5.30pm.

Should you experience any problems with your voicemail account on Friday morning, please email telexchange@kent.ac.uk.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

If you have any queries please contact the Estates Helpdesk on ext 3209.

Kent Foodians Support Catching Lives

Kent Foodians have been raising money for Catching Lives this term as well as promoting healthy and easy ways to cook student meals.

In November, they held a joint social with Kent Italian Society at Woodys which raised £100 for Catching Lives. This included a meal, a quiz and a competition for the most creative red, white and green outfit!

In December they embraced the Christmas spirit and held a carolling concert which raised a further £82.25 for the same charity.

Catching Lives is a charity that supports the homeless and vulnerably housed in Canterbury and East Kent. The money raised for them is essential for continuing the services that they provide.

Kentmas winner

Congratulations to Sarah Harden, a second year Religious Studies student, for winning the top prize of an iPad Mini in the ’12 days of Kentmas’ student competition.

The ’12 days of Kentmas’ is festive quiz which involves students answering daily questions about the University’s student experience.

This year we received over 1,200 entries. Six students won a 50th anniversary bunny and a further six students received a special edition University of Kent Monopoly.

Thank you to everyone who took part!

Join the Santa Run on 17 Dec

Santa Claus is coming to town! Or more specifically, a whole bunch of Santa’s are coming to Kent’s Canterbury campus, 17 December 12.30 at The Pavilion.

How? It’s simple really. Buy your own Santa outfit and join other students and staff members who will be running around campus to help raise money for charity this festive season.

So get yourself on the ‘nice’ list this Christmas by signing up today and give a little to those in need while getting active with your mates at the same time.

Spaces are limited so jingle that change all the way to the Sports Centre and sign up today!

£5 entry (includes a donation to War Child).

Conference on ‘Fact/Value Distinction’, 16-17 Jan

Dr Lubomira Radoilska (Philosophy) and Dr Kelli Rudolph (Classics) are organising a conference entitled ‘The Fact/Value Distinction: Contemporary and Classical Perspectives’ with generous support from the Mind Association, Aristotelian Society, Analysis Trust, Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, Kent Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (KIASH), and Kent’s Centre for Reasoning.

The facts-value distinction animates significant debates about the nature and scope of inquiry in contemporary analytic philosophy and in the social, natural, and medical sciences. In addition, it clarifies the ultimate ambitions of a theory by asking whether it is an explanatory or a normative project.

This conference addresses the extent to which explanatory and normative objectives should be conceived as mutually exclusive, as the initial question implies or, alternatively, as intimately and helpfully intertwined.

Classical approaches to the scope and nature of inquiry conceive of the relationship between facts and values in a related but distinctive way, thus providing a fresh perspective on contemporary debates.

By employing complementary systematic and historical approaches to this central issue, the conference will offer a new framework for constructive dialogue and exploration of the fact-value distinction across disciplines.

Student volunteers spread Christmas joy

In our 50th anniversary year, University of Kent students are doing even more to support charities and local volunteering organisations.

In the countdown to Christmas, Kent Union has donated an amazing total of 49 Christmas shoeboxes packed with gifts to be given to disadvantaged children through Smile International.

Many kind donations of presents by students, staff, societies, sports teams and local businesses were received and 40 Kent Union volunteers joined the ‘Give Volunteering a Go’ sessions to decorate and pack the shoeboxes.

Celebrating staff

Kent celebrates its staff in many ways and was even recognised for its staff practices through its top rankings in the 2014 Times Higher Education (THE) Best University Workplace Survey. In addition to formal annual promotion and salary award schemes that are in place for all staff, the University recognises the efforts and achievements of staff across five different University level schemes through a series of annual staff awards events.

Each of these schemes recognise different elements of the staff experience:

Green Impact awards focuses on the desire to make a difference locally and globally through our environmental efforts
Innovation and Enterprise awards help staff to make a difference by engaging with and supporting our community
Learning and Development awards encourage the support of a continuous learning environment for all our staff
Learning & Teaching awards recognise the importance of our staff efforts in creating a positive student learning experience
VC’s Cup awards emphasise the value of maintaining a healthy work environment through team efforts

Additionally, as part of the work taking place through the 50^th anniversary celebrations, a new scheme and event celebrating Research will be added during the current academic year.

Celebrating and inspiring a positive staff experience is not just a one-off activity. We are in the process of developing case studies from individual schools/departments to share good practices that are also underway with a view to encouraging all to consider how they acknowledge the efforts of their staff. Each of the schemes are different and has been created to fit the particular working environment and context. The University of Kent’s goal is to continue to grow and share these good practices to enable us all to continue to be inspired by the excellent work of our staff.

Does your School or Department have a good practice case study of a staff awards or recognition scheme that you would like to share with others? Please get in touch with Cindy Vallance.

Cycle app wins Innovation Day

More than 60 people gathered at Woolf College at the University of Kent last weekend for the Kent Connects Transformed by you Innovation Day to find the final winner of this year’s challenge.

There was a strong field of competition and very innovative ideas so the judges had a tough decision to make.

The winning idea is an app called MyCycle and the winning team had three Computer Science students, Max Harris, Matthew Boakes and Jamie Pont, assisting with the development.

The MyCycle app aims to connect less confident cyclists with experienced riders in their community and pair up novice cyclists looking to set out on bike rides around Canterbury and Kent with similarly intrepid locals.

Whether for fun or as a means to speed up commuting and running errands in town, everyone would be able to use MyCycle-Kent to build up their expertise and confidence with the help of a more proficient rider, enjoying a safer and more relaxing time.

People will use the app to discover local cycling buddies, find the safest routes to their destination and track their progress over time in comparison with other new cyclists.

Plans for future development include a school-cycle section to organise ‘cycle to school’ groups, which are safety checked and responsibly co-ordinated.

The MyCycle team came together on the day, and worked brilliantly together to develop and present their final idea.

Team members are local resident Frederica Lowndes, Simon Langton Grammar School student Sam Gooch and his mum Sarah who came along with the idea for developing a cycling app and Pedro Romano. They were supported by University of Kent students Max Harris, Matthew Boakes and Jamie Pont who started work to develop the app.

The MyCycle team has won a package of support, worth £20,000, to help make the product idea reality. Support is provided by organisers Kent Connects and sponsors Cisco, Barclays Bank, Kent IT Consultancy, Canterbury Christ Church University and the University of Kent Makerspace (The Shed). The team will benefit from development, business and marketing advice over the coming year.

The day was hosted by the University of Kent who sponsored the challenge as part of its 50th anniversary celebrations and it day included a visit to The Shed, a MakerSpace which is part of the School of Computing. The space is equipped with a wide variety of machines (eg 3D printers and laser cutters) and development equipment (eg the Oculus Rift and Raspberry Pi to support new kinds of innovative teaching and learning by taking advantage of the increasing accessibility of electronics and engineering with a rapid prototyping capability. It was great to see 3D printing and digital laser cutting in action.