Have you ever entered Eliot College and found yourself walking through corridors which look the same, unable to find your destination easily?

The Estates Department has been working to resolve this issue and Eliot College has been undergoing an internal signage refresh recently. Each wing is becoming colour-coded and each sign will correspond to the colour of the wing.

Jenny Martine, Interior Services & Signage Manager in the Estates Department explains the benefits this will bring “At every stairwell and decision point there will be large maps, directories and clear wayfinding.  The scheme will add colour, improve the wayfinding process and bring the building up to date. This will hopefully reduce the anxiety of orientating around a complicated building.”

Eliot is the oldest College of the University of Kent. It was established in 1965, the same year the University opened, and is named after the poet T. S. Eliot. The nature of this mixed use building, with academic offices, study-bedrooms and several large areas for distinctive uses – teaching spaces, common rooms and the Great Hall with its views of the Cathedral, led to the adoption of a block design with the college divided into several square cores, each containing a distinctive interior space with study bedrooms or offices along all four walls. Given the complexity of the overall building design, and the challenges for internal navigation that this brings, the new clear and comprehensive signage solution should bring significant advantages for all.

The internal signage in Eliot College is scheduled for completion by 5 May and Rutherford College will commence shortly afterwards. Examples of the signage can be viewed on the Estates website here.

If you have any feedback regarding the new signage please let us know by emailing Estates Customer Services – estatescustomerservices@kent.ac.uk

Event: Wednesday 15 May, KLT1 Keynes College, 18.00 to 19.00

On Wednesday 15 May, The School of Economics will have the pleasure of welcoming Prof. Jeffrey Wooldridge from Michigan State University (author of Cengage textbook Introductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach). He will deliver a Q&A session led by Dr Olena Nizalova, which will examine his work in finding answers to real life questions.

Audience participation is strongly encouraged, please email any questions you may have to econstudentexperience@kent.ac.uk prior to the event.

The Q&A session will focus on:

• Education and what is needed to truly evaluate teachers and schools
• The challenges that analysts face in situations that involve large amounts of money
• His consulting work for the U.S. government
• The challenges of obtaining empirical findings which go against your political beliefs

The Q&A session will be followed by a book signing and drinks reception hosted by Cengage, where Professor Wooldridge’s book will also be available for purchase at a very special 20% discounted rate! You can reserve a copy of Introductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach here.

Please note that due to the popularity of this event, spaces will book up quickly, so tickets will be allocated on a first come first served basis. Book for your space here.

The Centre for the Study of Higher Education are delighted to invite you to a free one-day symposium on Contract cheating: Implications for academic integrity and assessment design on Monday 24th June 2019 between 09:00-16:00, Grimond Lecture Theatre 2, Canterbury Campus.

Keynote: Detecting and preventing contract cheating: what works? Associate Professor Phill Dawson (Deakin University, Melbourne)

Workshops in the afternoon will cover: training markers to detect contract cheating and discovering new ways to investigate contract cheating with Authorship Investigate (led by Turnitin UK).

Places are limited so please register here.

Laura Thomas-Walters, PhD Candidate from the School of Anthropology and Conservation was awarded funding from the Postgraduates Community Experience Awards to support her ‘Kent PhD Quilt’ project.

The project goal was to provide Kent PhD students an opportunity to explore alternative ways of communicating their research, while enhancing their own well-being through mindful creativity. This visual and tactile representation of the breadth of research undertaken at Kent will provide a unique form of public engagement.

PhD students and the Graduate School participated in workshops led by Laura. During these workshops, Laura encouraged students to distil their research into its core essence, and to think about how that could be represented visually. Laura then introduced them to the concept of fabric applique, and gave tips for creating an appealing piece of artwork. Each student was given a 15” square block to create a fabric collage that symbolises their PhD. These blocks were then sewn together by Laura, with the help and support of the Canterbury Quilters Society to create a stunning research quilt.

The Kent’s PhD Quilt was formally unveiled at a small reception on Tuesday 30th April in the Colyer-Fergusson Foyer. It will now go on tour around the country to be exhibited at a number of quilting competitions and events.

Visit the Graduate School website to see the final quilt and the level of detail that has gone into making each block, you can also learn about the research behind the artwork.

Professor Aylish Wood, Professor in Film, will be giving her Inaugural Professorial Lecture, entitled ‘Making Waves: Taking a software approach to Moanaand what it tells us about digital culture’, on Wednesday 8 May 2019 at 5pm.

The Disney animation Moana‘s release was accompanied by celebrations of animation software and the ingenuity of VFX practitioners. Frequently focussing on the feature’s quite fabulous looking water animation, these commentaries are a valuable starting point for challenging the extent to which simulations in cinema are, as is so often claimed, ‘realistic.’ Given their scale and increasingly detailed textures, it is easy to get caught up in the visual appeal of simulations created with VFX software. Aylish’s purpose in exploring Moana is to step around the power of this visual appeal, and map a route through to the computational and cultural influences that inform and shape simulations.

Aylish’s lecture will take place on Wednesday 8 May 2019 at 5pm in Keynes College Lecture Theatre 1, and will be followed by a drinks reception in Keynes College Atrium at 7pm. Attendance is free, but please book your place here.

Funding is available through the Kent Innovation & Enterprise Industrial Strategy Fund for business-university innovation collaboration. This round of funding is available until, and must be spent by, June 30th 2019, and will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.

This is support funding whereby a cash contribution from business is match funded from the University – in effect the University contribution is free of charge to the company. Business contribution must be a minimum of £3,000 and a maximum of £40,000.

The aim of the fund is to drive commercial development, economic growth and job creation by enabling UK businesses to undertake innovation projects with the University of Kent. Collaborative development projects are designed to assist the industrial community in areas highlighted in the UK Industrial Strategy.

If you’d like more information or have a collaboration in mind that you would like to explore please contact the Innovation & Enterprise team at enterprise@kent.ac.uk..