Are you interested in starting your own business?

There is still time to book your place on our free Business Start-Up Workshops in conjunction with Study Plus and the Hub for Innovation and Enterprise at the Medway campus.

The workshops have been structured so that all students who are interested in freelancing or being self-employed can feel confident that they’ll walk away with valuable information. By the end of this course, students should be able to:

• Pitch a business idea
• Understand the finances, legalities and processes for starting up a business
• Identify a suitable structure for a business plan
• Generate a business idea
• Test a business idea
• Develop marketing research
• Understand sales processes
• Pricing
• Plan cash flow
• Know tax, insurance and VAT requirements
• Understand the elements of a business plan

To book your place on the course, click here.

For more information, visit the Study Plus website.

Colleagues are invited to attend the Learning and Teaching Network session titled ‘Working with and understanding international students’ on Wednesday 28 February 13.15-14.30 in Sibson Seminar Room 2, Canterbury.

Presented by Angela Koch, Student Learning Advisor, Student Learning Advisory Service, UELT and Charlene Earl, International Pathways Manager, Centre for English and World Languages.

Students’ differences provide a valuable setting where opportunities for learning, exchanging and reflection multiply. For this to happen activities and resources need to be designed in a way that engages students’ prior knowledge and skills, whether the intent is to build on that knowledge, to unpack it, or to encourage new ways of thinking and communicating.

Colleagues from SLAS and CEWL will share their experience and current practice of working with international students and will introduce some of the programmes and resources currently available to support them. There will be opportunities for reflection and discussion of possible ideas and instructional strategies to support inclusive teaching practices benefiting both international and home students alike.

All staff are welcome to attend, particularly those working with international students.

To book a place, please email cpdbookings@kent.ac.uk

Dr Ruth Herbert, Lecturer in Music Performance in the School of Music and Fine Art,  has been invited to give a guest lecture at Humboldt University, Berlin as part of The KOSMOS Workshop Mind Wandering and Visual Mental Imagery in Music from 16-19th May. Ruth is one of several invited from international experts in the field of mind, music and consciousness.

Funding from Humboldt University will allow MA music student Andrea Hepworth, who has an interest in music psychology, to accompany Ruth and participate in the conference.

Ruth’s guest lecture, Everyday Musical Daydreams and Kinds of Consciousness, will feature both music we actually hear plus music that pops into our heads – including so-called ‘earworms’.

A music psychologist and performer, Ruth has diverse research interests in the fields of music in everyday life, music, health and wellbeing, music and consciousness (including ASC and Trance), sonic studies and music education. Further research interests include performance psychology, evolutionary psychology and ethology.  She has published extensively on aspects of music teaching and education and is a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Sonic Studies, Musicae Scientiae and the Global Listening Centre. She is also a member of the Music Education Expo and Musical Theatre and Drama Education Advisory Committee, the NYJC/IoE Jazz and Gender Forum, and (latterly) the Musical Progressions Roundtable.

More info on Ruth  here: http://www.kent.ac.uk/smfa/staff/staff-profiles/musicandaudio/Herbert.html

Why not join 80 other Kent colleagues already registered for this networking opportunity? There is still time to sign up (registration closes on 1 February 2018).

This Valentine’s Day, the Academic Division invites you to attend Kent’s first Strictly Professional Speed-Dating event. This will be a fun event on 14 February 2018 mirroring the well-known speed-dating format!

Sign-up if you would you like to meet colleagues across the University in an informal setting to understand their roles better, enhance collaborative working and build professional networks.

The event is open to all those working at Kent, whether based in schools or in central departments, either in an academic or a professional services capacity, and will take place in the Darwin Conference Suite (Canterbury) and Rochester Building (R2-09, Medway) between 11.00 – 12.00. followed by some additional networking time over a cup of tea/coffee and cake if you wish to stay back and meet yet more colleagues.

This event is part of the Kent Colleagues Connect scheme building on a number of very successful pilot projects run by the Academic Division over the last couple of years which brought together nearly 300 participants across 450 separate interactions. Kent Colleagues Connect will provide various opportunities throughout 2018 for informal meetings between colleagues across the University. The full calendar of events is available here.

Kent Colleagues Connect is the latest scheme from the Excellence Initiative, a professional development programme run by the Academic Division since 2012. The scheme is run with the support and participation of Commercial Services and the Learning & Organisational Development Office.

Please register here for the Speed-dating event before 1 February 2018.

If you have any questions, please contact us on kentcolleaguesconnect@kent.ac.uk

This week, The Street Kitchen is celebrating its 1st birthday. Help mark the occasion by accompanying them for some tasty street food – you might just bag yourself a freebie!

Each day this week, The Street Kitchen will be offering a FREE cookie with every main takeaway dish, courtesy of Vanilla & Muscovado who bake some exceedingly delicious homemade treats, right here on the University campus.

If you want to know what The Street Kitchen is rustling up this week, or what chef, Sam Ranger, had to say in a quick fire foodie quiz, follow the link to the Uni Kent Food blog.

For any enquiries, contact catering@kent.ac.uk

SMFA’s Fine Art Lecturer and artist Tim Meacham’s work Eye of the Needle is on show at the Hantverk & Found Gallery, Margate, from 3 February-18 March.

It is part of the offsite programme for Turner Contemporary’s major exhibition Journeys with ‘The Waste Land’, which explores the significance of T S Eliot’s poem The Waste Land through the visual arts.

Eye of the Needle, made with support from the University of Kent, explores TS Eliot’s relationship with the mechanical sound recording of the gramophone, making particular reference to its role in The Waste Land in providing the machine mediated sound track of modernity. The viewer accompanies the needle on its journey across the landscape of a gramophone record. The role of the needle is considered in first embedding sound, through creating the grooves of the record, and then as a “rider” travelling across the surface of the disc as it plays. 78-rpm records, made of shellac and slate dust, give something of themselves (dust) in order to release their sound, thus changing the landscape with each play.

Tim Meacham is an artist who works across media to explore space within the triangulated world of experience between seeing, hearing and touching. SMFA’s Partner and College Liaison Officer, he is currently undertaking a practice based PhD. For more information, see: www.timmeacham.space

Hantverk & Found is a celebrated seafood café and commissioning art gallery in the heart of Margate Old Town committed to supporting artists to make art, with a small gallery space to exhibit works by local and emerging artists. As well as providing support to artists, they frequently commission new work.

The Preview is Saturday 3 February, 18.00-20.00. Find out more at: http://www.hantverk-found.co.uk/

Central Student Administration Office (CSAO) is seeking to recruit Invigilators for the 2018 examination period.

The task of CSAO and the invigilation team is to ensure that University examinations run as smoothly and efficiently as possible and in accordance with the University’s regulations on the Conduct of Examinations.

The main examination period runs from Tuesday 8 May 2018 to Friday 15 June 2018.

There are two examination sessions per day, Monday to Friday, and a morning session on Saturdays. There may also be sessions held on Saturday afternoons.

Invigilators are required to have good availability during this period.

No previous experience is required as training will be provided prior to starting.

Salary Scale: Grade 2 point 5 – £10.26 per hour

To apply, please see the University of Kent Jobs website.

Closing date for applications: Friday 23 February 2018 (or sooner, should sufficient applications be received).

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us: exams@kent.ac.uk

Exams Team
Central Student Administration