When did you join the University and why?

I joined Kent in 2012 as a Student Support Officer in the School of Arts. Before that, I was a schoolteacher and worked for ten years in patient advocacy and support for children and young people with long-term medical conditions. I liked the idea of supporting young adults and gaining more experience in HE so when a friend mentioned the SSO post I was keen to apply. I did some lecturing in Arts alongside the Student Support role, but support services were where my interests lay. Becoming Head of College and Community Life last year has given me the chance to have a wider reach and influence over student experience, support and welfare; it’s a perfect fit.

What does being Head of Colleges and Community Life involve?

The University has eight colleges to which all students are affiliated when they come to study here. The College and Community Life team builds college, community and belonging for students on and off-campus. We’re a small team with big expectations, made up of three College Life Officers, who host events, offer support and advice to our student college community, and one Community Life Officer, who supports transition into becoming local student residents in the Canterbury and Medway area.

As the Head of College and Community Life, I’m lucky enough to liaise with the wider student undergraduate and postgraduate communities, to share in their experiences and promote their voices, and to work with Student Union officers and central teams like House Keeping and Campus Security, to ensure the best experience for our students. I also engage with local community stakeholders, such as Residents’ Associations, Kent Police and Canterbury & Medway City Council officers, to promote student safety and integration. It’s a fascinating and rewarding role, and I am really enjoying it.

What effect has the pandemic had on your work and how have you responded?

The pandemic has been a challenge without a doubt but it has also been rewarding to see students and colleagues work so hard and creatively to support each other. The CCL team have been at the forefront of offering practical support to self-isolating students, including friendly texts and calls to mobiles to check how households are managing, sending out jigsaws and baking boxes to do together, and delivering gift-bags funded by alumni supporters to households living on campus. We have hosted events for all our students -, from remote coffee mornings and arts and crafts sessions on Zoom to a face-to-face Escape Room in our office and even outdoor mini-golf – allowing them to come together safely in line with Covid guidelines. With that experience, we are now planning wonderful welcome and social events across the coming year, which will support our new and returning students. If there are challenges remaining, we will be here offering support.

Students playing mini-golf

Looking ahead, what are you and your team planning over the next year?

We are very excited about next year. We will set-up our mini-golf course for Welcome Week, challenging students to complete every hole with bespoke obstacles and some great prizes to be won! Alongside this, we are aware that new and returning students may need more advice and support than ever to get that feeling of belonging and to make social connections. As well as our college BBQs and a welcome talk from me, we will have postgraduate volunteers, called Residential Life Assistants (RLAs), in all our colleges, supporting students to form a College Committee who can suggest events hosted by students for students. All are welcome to get involved by planning, hosting or simply joining in with the fun. Our Community Life Officer will be reaching out to students living in private term-time accommodation too, to give advice on how to stay safe, get on with your neighbours and get support from us.

One specialism in our team is mediation when housemates find it hard to settle into shared living together or need support making connections with others. There will be plenty of information on our College and Community Life webpages and social media, which I would highly recommend students look at and follow. Personally, I am very excited to see students face-to-face on our beautiful campuses and to watch them grow and thrive. That is what we are all here for, after all.

Students planting seeds in the Community Oasis Garden

Outside work, how do you like to spend your time?

I am very boring, I’m afraid. During lockdown, I have discovered the joys of growing my own food on an allotment. I benefit immensely from being out of doors, and growing delicious food is a real bonus. Hopefully, many of our students will benefit in a similar way by volunteering at our Kent Community Oasis Garden. To switch off completely, I turn to fantasy novels (Urban or Pratchett are my favourites) and, once everything is open again, I will be having a cocktail and watching a film in a little cinema somewhere by the sea. Bliss.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

The best piece of advice I ever received and still use every day is “Go to the right people for the right support.” That is so true and it has helped me through some very difficult times. I pass it on, and don’t mind talking about when and what the context was for getting this advice.

As many more of us return to campus over the next few weeks, we have a new resource pack to help us prepare.

The Future of Work resource pack builds on our COPE Framework – developed in response to the first Covid-19 lockdown – and reflects feedback from our Future of Work Staff Survey.

Designed for staff and managers, the pack complements all the support already available across the University as we continue to work through uncertain times. It’s a pack to dip in and out of and think about, rather than something for you to try and absorb all at once.

What’s included

The resource pack includes sections on:

• Reshaping our working environment – reflecting feedback from our Future of Work survey responses, including a call for line managers to have open, honest conversations with their staff and the importance of taking an inclusive approach.
• Connecting with life on campus – underlining the importance of working together and supporting each other, acknowledging that some staff may be anxious about returning to campus, and the key role of line managers.
• Managing meetings in a hybrid environment – planning inclusive communications as some team members are on campus and others work remotely. Reflecting feedback from staff, we are recommending a ‘virtual first’ approach for all meetings during the Autumn term.
• Microsoft Teams etiquette – reflecting our increasing reliance on virtual communications, there is new guidance on day-to-day use of MS Teams, as well as advice on using the private chat tool, and setting up new sites and channels.
• Health and wellbeing – highlighting resources, such as our Employee Assistance Programme and new Inclusion Passport.
• Other helpful resources – including the Staff Guide, our Crucial Conversations programme and MIND.

Tell us what you think

Don’t forget to share with us by email on hws@kent.ac.uk what you’re finding works for you in our new hybrid working environment, or anything you think would be helpful to include in future versions of this resource pack.

If you require the pack in another format to meet accessibility needs, please contact Ldev@kent.ac.uk.

As part of Kent County Council’s Reconnect scheme for young people this summer, the University is hosting four days of free sports and arts activities for 11 to 15-year-olds next week.

Reconnect is the council’s scheme to encourage young people to reconnect, socialise and take part in fun activities following the Covid-19 pandemic.

There are limited spaces available – on a first-come, first-served basis – for University staff to book their children to join the exciting programme of physical activities and creative arts sessions.

Sports sessions will be led by Kent’s Sports Development Team and include tennis, football and cricket alongside other physical activities and challenges within its campus sports facilities.

Creative arts sessions, including drama, will be delivered by the Gulbenkian Team.

Sessions will cater for all abilities and will take place either side of a free healthy lunch.

Reconnect at Kent runs from Monday 23 to Thursday 26 August (10am-3pm each day).

Individuals can register to attend and find out more by visiting Kent Hospitality’s Reconnect at Kent webpage.

From Nikki Hyde, Deputy Director of Human Resources

Celebrating our campuses as more of us come back to Kent

After such a long gap, it’s hard to believe it’s now nearly time for those who’ve been working off-site to return to their desks. When we first started thinking about our roadmap for staff coming back, it still felt a bit like planning with our eyes closed – and let’s face it, none of us thought it would take this long when we first learnt the language of Teams back in March 2020. 

So, while the impact of the pandemic has thankfully lessened, we recognise what a big impact it’s had on us all. That’s why we’ve put together our Life on Campus programme from 23 August – 17 September to help everyone prepare for our 20 September target of everyone being largely campus-based again. 

I’m sure many will have a few mixed feelings about the return, including those of you who’ve been working on campus throughout – it’s about to get a whole lot busier! It’s going to take time for everyone to adjust and we’ll all need support as we come back; plus a reminder of how special our spaces are and what they mean to us all as a community. 

Something for everyone

We hope there’s something for everyone. All staff can bring their family along to a special day for staff at bOing! on Friday 27 August, including a fantastical VR performance of Alice in Wonderland. Teams can get together for a free game of bat and trap or petanque throughout the month or use our tented village on the Registry Lawn for outdoor meetings, while our Sustainability team will be running special tours that showcase our beautiful surroundings. You can even grab a free coffee with a colleague as a good excuse to get chatting in person again. There are also some more practical things to think about – getting up to speed with what we’ll have in place to keep everyone safe or making sure you’ve popped back to reboot your computer in good time. We’re all going to be learning together, which is the main message in the guidance we’ve put together in our new Future of Work Staff Resource Pack. 

All of this will culminate in our first Staff Conference, where we want to start bringing our community back together after so much disruption. Everyone is also invited to either the Medway Summer Fete on 8 September or the Canterbury Summer Fete on the 17th, so we all get a chance to be together in person for a BBQ on our lawns before the next term begins. 

Having been on site recently, our spaces really are looking beautiful and more than ready to welcome you all, bringing life back onto our campuses before our students join us for the next academic year. I look forward to seeing you there. 

Nikki Hyde | Deputy Director of Human Resources

The E-Learning Team are pleased to announce that the next event in our series of ‘Digitally Enhanced Education webinars’ will take place on Wednesday 1 September, from 11.00-13:30 (BST), with the theme ‘How can we best engage our students in 2021/22’.

Please find the agenda for the event below:

11:00 – 11:05 – Phil Anthony (University of Kent): Introduction.

11:05 – 11:20 – Phil Anthony (University of Kent): Looking Back to Move Forward: Student Reflections on 2020/21

11:20 – 11:35 – Krishna Upadhayaya (Kathmandu University, Nepal): Online Project Based Teaching Learning in ELT

11:35 – 11:50 – Nina Joustra, Dani Bocmaru & Meiki Zeidler (students at Maastricht University School of Business): Online and Offline Learning – How to get the best out of both?

11:50 – 12:05 – Oliver Bills (University of Southampton): Taking the university community virtual with Discord: A Success Story

12:05 – 12:15 – BREAK

12:15 – 12:30 – Miranda Melcher (King’s College London): Teaching inclusively to improve student engagement and accessibility

12:30 – 12:45 – Dustin Hosseini (University of Glasgow): Podcasts as a medium for teaching and learning

12:45 – 13:00 – Jay Fulgencio (Roosevelt University, US): Engaging Students in the Netflix Era

13:00 – 13:15 – Eliana Elkhoury (Assistant Professor, Athabasca University, Canada): Maybe we need to think differently about academic integrity

13:15 – 13:30 – Dustin Blakkie (California State University): Fostering Student Engagement in Your Courses

If you would like to join the webinar series, please express your interest here if you haven’t already. We will add you the Microsoft Team linked to the series. Colleagues from outside the University of Kent are very welcome to join and so feel free to circulate.

If you would like to present at a future event, please complete this form and Phil Anthony will be in touch.

From Jane Higham, Chief Financial Officer

As we head into the summer after an especially challenging year, I wanted to give everyone an update on the work to embed the new structures put in place over the last 12 months. It’s been a challenging year for everyone and we really do hear what many of you are saying about the impact the changes have had on many people’s workload and wellbeing. As Chair of the Project Strategic Group overseeing implementation, I fully appreciate there is a lot still to do to get this right. In particular, our processes and ways of working are making it hard to realise the benefits of the new structures, and both these and the initial challenges with KentVision are vital issues for us to address to help make things easier.  

Actions are much more important than words with this and we are prioritising a number of immediate changes to start alleviating workload pressure as we head into next year. This is on top of accompanying work to clarify academic governance structures and to identify opportunities for short-term support where its impact would be most felt.

How We Work: Process Improvement

Activity led by the Project Management Office to fast-track process improvement university-wide is pushing ahead, with initial scoping work having identified a number of both quicker wins to work on along with some longer-term change initiatives that need to be prioritised. A number of the more immediate opportunities for improvement are already being addressed, with the PMO supporting teams and process owners to get changes in place quickly – thank you to everyone you sent in suggestions for this via the How We Work pages.

Framework Agreements 

The relationship between Divisions and central Professional Services teams is key to the success of our new structure. Those relationships are defined within framework agreements which cover how the different teams work together, where accountability sits and who leads on which areas of activity. The majority of the frameworks are now in place and are forming the basis of ongoing collaboration between Divisions and central teams – the remainder will be agreed by October at the latest. 

Heads of Profession 

Supporting this will be Heads of Profession who will provide leadership, training and support for colleagues working in their professional areas across the University. It has taken time to develop this role and the expectations for interaction between different areas that come with it – again, these will be in place in line with the final framework agreements by October. 

Ongoing Engagement 

Bringing new communities together while working remotely has been a challenge, and we are currently developing plans for ongoing engagement in different areas to help with this. This is to ensure there are regular opportunities for different key groups to come together, supported by a broader programme of staff engagement activity throughout the year opening with the proposed Staff Conference in September.  

Whilst I can’t promise things will get better quickly, I hope this reassures you that the pressures staff are experiencing are recognised and that actions are being taken to address what we can as quickly as possible. In the meantime, while I know it remains a busy time for many – and particularly those involved in the huge Clearing efforts this week – I hope colleagues can take advantage of reduced email traffic and some time off over the summer and I look forward to continuing to improve how we work together in the year ahead. 

Jane Higham | Chief Financial Officer

The University was very sorry to learn that Philip North died on 4 June, 2021, aged 72.

Dr North obtained his PhD from the University of Kent in 1979, on the topic of Statistical methods in ornithology. He was an active member of an Ecology Research Group, which predated DICE.

In addition through his research, links were established with the British Trust for Ornithology and the Centre d’Ecologie Fontionnelle & Evolutive, CNRS Montpellier, which are continued by the current members of the Statistical Ecology at Kent research group in SMSAS.

He became Director of the Applied Statistical Research Unit at Kent (subsequently ASRU Ltd), which for many years undertook consultancy with a range of pharmaceutical companies.

Words by Byron Morgan, SMSAS

Congratulations to Professor Keith Somerville on being elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (RHS).

Keith’s current roles at Kent include teaching Propaganda, and Communication and Humanitarianism modules at the Centre for Journalism, and being an active member of the Durrell Institute (DICE); for example, giving lectures on the ivory trade to Master’s students.

The RHS Fellowship recognises Keith’s contribution to historical research, including his history of research and publication (five books and several journal papers) on modern African history. This has culminated in Africa’s Lond Road Since Independence, The Manu Histories of a Continent, and his last three books on the history and current nature of human-wildlife conflict in Africa, dealing with the ivory trade, human-lion conflict and demonisation of the hyena by humans.

Commenting on his Fellowship, Keith said: ‘The RHS is an excellent forum for exchanging ideas and finding out about new research… Being a Fellow will be invaluable as a networking and research tool and is a very welcome recognition of my contribution to historical study.’

Keith is also a Fellow of the Zoological Society of London; a member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group; and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London. His book on Ivory won the Marjan-Marsh Conservation Award in 2016.

A full list of the recently conferred RHS Fellowships can be seen on the Society’s webpages.

From the International Partnerships team:

We are pleased to announce that the University’s first application to the UK Government’s new Turing Scheme has been successful!

Launched earlier this year, the Turing Scheme is a replacement for the UK’s participation in the EU Erasmus Programme, which will end by May 2023. The Turing Scheme will support Global Britain by funding  international opportunities in education and training across the world.

Grants will be provided for students from UK institutions to study or work abroad for periods of four weeks to 12 months, starting in September 2021. Priority will be given to widening access, with additional funding for less advantaged students.

Kent success

In the first round of applications, Kent has been awarded a substantial amount of funding to allow us to support a wide range of international placements for Kent students in 2021-22. These range from studying Astrophysics in the USA to working as a Conservationist in Fiji, or attending a summer school on Economics in India.

We are also delighted to have secured additional funding to support students from disadvantaged backgrounds and those with special educational needs or disabilities. We will be working closely with Divisions and Professional Services departments to promote the global opportunities and associated funding available to our students.

Our Turing funding is in addition to our substantial Erasmus funding which will give grants to Kent students studying and working throughout Europe in 2021-22. All international placements for 2021-22 are subject to approval following a thorough process of Covid-related risk assessments and the lifting of any travel restrictions.

For more details, please contact internationalpartnerships@kent.ac.uk or visit the Turing website.