The Learning and Teaching Network are running it’s annual Board of Examiners training in March.

The training is suitable for staff who are involved with organising, attending or recording Board of Examiner meetings. Staff new to Boards of Examiners are strongly encouraged to attend.

For details of dates please visit the Learning and Teaching Network website

The University of Kent’s Community Cup staff team are looking forward to their first fixture against Canterbury Christ Church University on Sunday 9 February at 10.30. The match will be at the University of Kent’s grass pitches at The Pavilion.

‘The Kent FA Community Cup is a great opportunity for staff members from across the University to play 11 a-side football in a competitive but enjoyable format and to put into practise the hours spent playing at our casual small sided staff football sessions throughout the week.’ – Billy Radford, Sports Development Officer for Kent Sport.

The Kent FA Community Cup is a tournament hosted by Kent FA, open to organisations and businesses across the county and providing opportunities for players to compete in a competitive but enjoyable atmosphere. The University of Kent players are from departments all across campus with wide ranging roles. Other local Kent FA Community Cup participants include South East Water and KCC Highways.

So why not show your support by joining them next Sunday 9 February for the 10.30 kick-off and enjoy this exciting match.

The Pavilion Café Bar will be open for refreshments.

On the January 29 2020, the Hub for Innovation & Enterprise, part of Kent Innovation and Enterprise launched its first i-Teams session. i-Teams is supported by the business and innovation gateway team at the University of Kent and delivery partners the Kent Invicta Chamber of Commerce .  A programme funded by the  Enabling Innovation, Research to Application project (EIRA).

 ‘i-Teams is a great opportunity to blend the line between academia and the corporate world’  James Valentino, Head of Innovation, Digital & Marketing at Lucas

 The challenge sponsors:

Lucas: A Kent based Construction Company originally specialising in spray painting.

TMLEP: Improving Patient Safety and Healthcare Standards: A Medical Logistics Enterprise Practice.

Southeastern: Southeastern have been running a rail service between London, Kent and parts of East Sussex since 2006.

 ‘We are really excited to be working with the University of Kent. We are looking forward to hearing about the inspiring ideas that could help improve the customer experience across our services.’ Graham Mollison, Southeastern

The Challenges:

Southeastern Rail:  ‘How can you enhance the passenger experience?’

TMLEP: ‘How can you generate profit from TMLEP’s portal?’

Lucas: ‘Investigate how we can exploit existing and emerging technologies to build upon existing relationships and communicate more effectively with customers to drive a better customer experience.’

 ‘Having been involved with the Employability Points Scheme for a number of years, when asked to join i-Teams as a challenge provider, we were more than happy to help.’  Alexander Acaster, UK Clinical Services Manager at TMLEP

Read the full article on the Hub for Innovation Blog:

If you want to know more about i-teams or even attend the grand finale, please contact the Hub team at: unikenthub@kent.ac.uk or on 01227 827376

The University of Kent Players are delighted to present JB Priestley’s Dangerous Corner at the Gulbenkian, Canterbury, 27-29 February 2020.

One of Priestley’s ‘time plays’, the plot concerns a group of people enjoying a dinner party when a cigarette case and a chance remark leads to secrets being revealed about the suicide of friend. Once things start to be known, there is no turning back – even though it feels like they are driving at high speed with dangerous corners ahead. Will their lives ever be the same?

Tickets priced at £12 (£10 for concessions) are on sale now on the Gulbenkian website.

The University of Kent Players are entirely self-funded and the only money available for productions comes from ticket sales, membership fees and any donations. So they need as many people as possible to come along and support their productions. Your support is appreciated!

Since the start of the year, talks have continued between UCU and UCEA in an attempt to find a resolution to the current industrial action. UCEA have now made a series of proposals that address the specific issues of pay and working conditions. These will be considered by UCU at a meeting being held today (30 January) and we will provide a further update shortly after.

The proposals set out a series of expectations on individual universities on the three non-pay areas of dispute: workload, gender and ethnicity pay and casual employment. The position on pay remains unchanged.

The University welcomes the proposals put forward at national level and believes that, although considerable work has already taken place in these areas at Kent, there is further work to do at sector-level.

You can read more about the proposals here:

UCEA press release 28 January 2020

UCU briefing 28 January 2020

You can also find regular updates on our Industrial Action webpages.

Organising for Success brings together work that will empower staff to transform our students lives, helping us meet our Kent 2025 strategy and ensure a future we can be proud of.

As part of this, we are currently consulting with affected staff on a proposed new central professional services leadership structure. During the consultation period, we will both agree the final leadership structure and discuss with individual affected staff what this will mean for their roles. Teams affected at this stage have been directly contacted by their relevant Executive Group member – the proposed University-wide leadership structure is also now available for information on the HR website. The final confirmed structure will be shared once consultation is complete.

Other updates across the project:

Directors of Operations

We are delighted to announce that Amanda Ollier has been appointed as Director of Operations for the Division of Arts, Culture and Design – see the Transitional Arrangements section of the website for more information.

Strand 3 / 4 – Divisional operations and professional services design

These two areas of work have now ‘formally’ come together, to reflect the amount of overlap between them. There is more information on the Implementation section of the website. Alongside this:

– Workshops are ongoing between Directors of Operations and central professional service leads to begin establishing where accountability and resource should sit in the new structure

– Workshops will also start shortly to begin mapping processes in key areas so we can agree how they could be reflected – and simplified wherever possible – when divisions launch in September. The Project Management Office (formerly known as BIPU) will contact relevant professional service leads shortly to arrange these, and assistance with providing initial details on any existing processes in advance would be greatly appreciated

Strand 5 – Standing down Faculties

Considerable progress has also been made to transfer essential activity currently taking place within Faculties to divisions. Recent highlights include:

– Protocols agreed for managing the final faculty committees, which will take place this summer – IS are also working on ensuring key website information is retained and transferred appropriately

– A vision for Quality Assurance in the new structure has been drawn up and will go to Senate in March, ensuring we have a have common framework and a consistent approach

– A team drawn from the Faculty Support Office, QA, the Graduate School, Student Services and Kent Union are also beginning to rewrite our codes of practice and regulations, with support from an external adviser to ensure everything is aligned in our new organisational structures

For latest information on Organising for Success, see the Updates section of the website. There is also supporting information under Frequently Asked Questions

The School of Art’s Studio 3 Gallery has launched a new exhibition this month, entitled ‘AI and I’.

The exhibition will run until the Thursday 20 February 2020 and the gallery is open Monday to Friday, from 10.00 – 17.00.

The exhibition has been curated by Alice C. Helliwell, who is currently on the PhD in the History and Philosophy of Art, and Studio 3 Gallery curator Dr Eleen M Deprez, as well as Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms.

The exhibition is an experiment: using works from the Kent Print Collection, the exhibition explores how AI can facilitate curating and enhance the visitor’s experience of art.

AI broadly refers to technologies that create intelligence in a computational machine. Some AI recreates human behaviour (such as writing a text or identifying objects in a picture). Others aim to go beyond our human capabilities, avoiding human error. AI has an increasingly wide application, from face recognition on social media, to voice assistants Siri and Alexa. In the arts, people are developing AI that can identify, evaluate and create artworks.

The exhibition explores these possibilities by utilising a number of AI technologies. AI was used to help select, design, interpret and describe the works on display. Google Vision API suggested how works could be displayed together and EyeEm helped inform which works were aesthetically pleasing. AI looked carefully at the various portraits in the collection and suggested matching faces in other works of art. GPT-2 wrote short narratives based on the works. The ‘AI and YOU’ section of the display is designed to encourage you to try out some of the technologies yourself.

For more details of the Studio 3 Gallery, please take a look at this blog 

What would our world, our city and our lives look like if we all took action? Join us for a fun family day focusing on themes of sustainability and saving our planet.

When: Saturday 15 Feb from 10.00 – 16.00

Where: Gulbenkian, Canterbury

Tickets for the WHOLE DAY are only £2! and can be booked online now. Please note some of the events below have a limited capacity, and will be first come, first served on the day.

Book now on the Gulbenkian website 

Join artist Amanda Thesiger on a Nature Walk through the university grounds with no particular destination in mind, allowing yourself to be led by your senses.

Artist Peter Morton is back with a hands-on Animation Workshop inspired by all things treeish.

Enjoy a live performance from members of Pequeño Samba Pelo Mar, Whitstable’s community samba band.

Our chefs demonstrate live how to cook a delicious meal, using only locally produced ingredients from within a 30 mile radius!

Spoken word artist Henry Maddicott asks you to put pen to paper and write a Letter to the Earth (you can perform it too later if you like!).

Help artist Hope Fitzgerald to make small folded books which capture important ideas from the day.

Come and have your say on a range of climate change topics in one of our Mini Citizens Assemblies, and put in your vote on how you think things should change.

At the end of the day, join a discussion panel of climate change experts and activists and hear the results from our day of Mini Citizens Assemblies.

What will you do to help save the planet? Grab a pen and add your action or pledge to our Sustainabili-TREE.

Film Screenings: (ticketed separately at £3pp)

Wall-E – 10.00

2040 – 13.00

The Biggest Little Farm – 16.00

An updated copy of the University’s Privacy Notice is now available.

The Privacy Notice sets out how everyone’s personal data is collected, processed and stored by HR.  The full Notice can be found on the HR webpages.

Key changes in this update are the use of CCTV images, retention periods for data in Staff Connect and the introduction of an archive system to enable us to provide basic employment references for staff for many years after leaving our employment.