With the school holidays just around the corner, Kent Sport has the perfect solution to keeping your children entertained this summer – SummerZone!

With up to two weeks of professional sports coaching, led by qualified and DBS checked coaches and supported by sports supervisors, SummerZone cures the summer boredom and gets your children active. If your child(ren) are aged five to 14 and would enjoy taking part in a variety of sporting activities on a daily basis, including football, kwik cricket, tag rugby, hockey and tennis, then book them on SummerZone 2019!

SummerZone will run from 9.00 to 15.00 daily from Monday 12 to Friday 16 August (week one), and Monday 19 to Friday 25 August (week two). Late pick-ups are available from 15.00 to 17.00 and will include staff-led fun games and creative activities.

You can book places for SummerZone now through the website. Booking is available for one week, two weeks or individual days. For full details visit www.kent.ac.uk/sports/summerzone. Booking closes on Friday 26 July.

The University of Kent Players are proud to present Gail Young’s ‘Bothered & Bewildered’ this September.

The play will be performed at 7.30 on the 5-7 September at the Gulbenkian Theatre, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NB.

Tickets are now on sale via the Gulbenkian website, in person at the Gulbenkian ticket office, or over the phone 01227 769075.

Bothered & Bewildered is a comic drama that follows Irene and her two daughters Louise and Beth as they begin a long journey in which the girls lose their mum in spirit but not in body. As her family struggle to come to terms with her Alzheimer’s, Irene’s past passion for romantic fiction blurs with reality. She discusses with her unseen and witty companion Barbara Cartland (Irene’s favourite and now deceased world famous romantic novelist) how best to write her ‘memory book’, disclosing to Barbara long kept family secrets that she would never reveal to anyone else.

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Visiting Board reviewed the Kent School of Architecture and Planning last week, and concluded its validation on Friday 21 June.

The RIBA validates architectural education in the UK, and worldwide, and its seal of approval is an important marker for the quality of any institution’s provision of architectural education.

Head of School Professor Gerry Adler commented ‘I am delighted to report that the RIBA Visiting Board recommended a full five-year unconditional validation for our Part 1, BA (Hons) Architecture and Part 2, MArch, programmes. This is the best possible outcome, and an endorsement of the quality of our offer at Kent. We look forward to welcoming new entrants to our validated programmes in September, and success to all our continuing students.’

In celebration of the Netball World Cup 2019 being hosted on home turf in Liverpool (12-21 July) this summer, Kent Sport would like to take this opportunity to invite departments throughout the University to participate in our University of Kent Departmental Netball Tournament, being staged here at the University of Kent!

This event is open to all abilities and departments, and aims to be a fun celebration of Netball.

Date: Monday 22 July 2019

Venue: Sports Centre, main hall

Timings:

• 17.30 to 19.00 tournament (please try and arrive promptly)
• 19.00- 20.00 complimentary buffet

In celebration of this event, Kent Sport would like to invite your team to join us in a complimentary buffet on the sports hall balcony after the tournament.

Team details: Teams are to be made up of players from within your department only. Departments can enter more than one team, if they have enough players interested.

Team size: Seven aside (maximum squad nine). Maximum three men in squad, two men on court at any one time.

Equipment and clothing: All equipment will be provided. Please ensure your team are in suitable clothing and footwear to take part in sporting activities. We recommend that you remove jewellery for the safety of everyone.

Charity collection: As one of England Netball’s partners is Cancer Research UK, we would like to use this event as an opportunity to support a very worthy cause and raise some money. Suggested voluntary donation of £5 per person.

How to enter: Please email mailto:sportsdevelopment@kent.ac.uk no later than Monday 8 July with your entry request, detailing:

• Your team name
• Your department
• Contact name
• Contact email
• How many participants will be staying for the buffet and any dietary requirements: (we will need to know for catering purposes)

Due to an essential water mains inspection we are unable to provide a hot breakfast service at the Gulbenkian on Thursday 4 July. 

We will still be open for hot drinks, snacks and cakes.  While you are here try our new cakes from local baker Winnie Bakes including Jammy Dodger Blondies, Cookie Dough Brownies, Salted caramel flapjacks and Caramel Crumb Cake.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused, we hope to reopen Gulbenkian Cafe’s kitchen for lunch on Thursday 4 July and resume hot breakfast service on Friday morning.

Lizzie Arbus, a Chargehand for Kent Hospitality is the winner of the June Pride Award. The Personal Responsibility in Delivering Excellence Award recognised Lizzie as an ‘active and supportive member of the team’ and specifically her ‘swift action’ in resolving a problem that occurred in a student flat.

Lizzie’s nomination noted how she went ‘above and beyond to help support [the students] giving advice, reassuring them and contacting the relevant people in order to quickly come up with a resolution’.

Another extract from her nomination read ‘I would like to thank Lizzie for her help and support on this day and week, having just returned from annual leave and getting straight into dealing with this issue in the absence of her supervisor and managers. Great job.’

Any Kent Hospitality staff (permanent or casual) may be nominated from Canterbury and Medway campuses. The award is given in March, June, September/October and December with each winner receiving £100 of shopping vouchers, a certificate and a Pride pin badge.

It’s really easy to nominate a member of the Kent Hospitality team for a Pride Award. Just visit the Pride website and complete our online form.

The closing date for the next Pride Award is Wednesday 25 September 2019 at 12 noon.

Delegates were welcomed by Professor Philippe de Wilde, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation)  to an event on 20 June 2019 at the University of Kent to understand the future of machine learning and its impact on society.

Organised by Kent Innovation and Enterprise, businesses and other organisations attending the event heard from wide range of speakers about how machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) is disrupting traditional business models in key sectors.

Speakers included KROHNE, a world-leading manufacturer and supplier of solutions in industrial process instrumentation.  Edward Dukes, General Manager and Technical Director, KHRONE Ltd  outlined the benefits of adopting a collaborative approach to complex flow measurement through data-driven modelling.

The issue of cyber security and the role of machine learning was presented by the University’s Professor Shujun Li while the likely future role of robotics was discussed by Dr Konstantinos Sirlantzis from the school of Engineering and Digital Arts.

As an example of a key sector where AI and machine learning will have a significant impact, Professor Jian Zhang from the SMSAS focused on whether these developing technologies could power new drug discovery and affect the timescales between discovery, development, testing and availability of new drugs in the healthcare market.

Delegates attending were able to spend time looking at new areas of research in a series of posters presented by PhD and graduate students. Dr Fernando Otero, School of Computing, offered some insights into how organisations make sense of data through the power of machine learning, and the role of Network Structure Learning was explored by Sa Ren, a PhD student in SMSAS.

The event was closed with concluding remarks from Professor Farzin Deravi, Head of the School of Engineering and Digital Arts.

If you would like more information about this event or any future events like this please get in contact with Innovation & Enterprise www.kent.ac.uk/enterprise

More than 1,400 staff enjoyed an al-fresco lunch last week thanks to the Vice-Chancellor, even without the glorious sunshine we experienced in previous staff BBQs.

Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Karen Cox, invited staff to join her for a lunchtime BBQ on Monday 24 June in Medway and Wednesday 26 June in Canterbury. The events provided the perfect opportunity for staff to come together, catch-up with colleagues and friends after another busy year.

Across the BBQs, a total of 1,344 burgers, 204kg of sausages and 1,500 ice creams and sorbets were eaten!

The staff BBQs have become a regular annual event since the University’s 50^th anniversary in2015, and have established themselves as a highlight of the year.

Yet again, the catering staff did everyone proud with amazing food, from the classic BBQ fare of sausages and burgers to tasty paellas and vegan coleslaw, and ice creams and sorbets all round for dessert. It was well received that single use plastics was radically reduced, with wooden cutlery a new addition.

A special thanks goes to Kent Hospitality and the Development Office for arranging such a well-organised and successful event.

In the latest episode of the Nostalgia podcast series, Dr Chris Deacy, Reader in Theology and Religious Studies in the Department of Religious Studies, speaks to Professor Douglas Davies, Professor in the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University.

Douglas discusses the concept of career planning, its relationship to issues of social class, and why he thinks there is an element of futility to nostalgia as luck and chance are the two great facts of life.

Douglas reveals his a problem with ‘what if?’ scenarios, synchronicity and the desire for patterns, seeing them as a pathological expression of the drive for meaning. We learn about destiny, triviality, why Douglas has a problem with revisiting special moments, the paradox of Durkheim, why the British don’t like apprenticeships, and wisdom.