We have organised a photoshoot to get new, fresh photography for both our Canterbury and Medway campuses and are looking for volunteers!

Our photographer will be taking realistic, candid shots to encompass life at Kent, so you don’t need to worry about posing. You will also receive £10 on your KentOne card/Medway equivalent as a thank you and we’re sure you will have a lot of fun in the process.

If you would like to participate, please fill in this form. We will get back to you with the exact times and further details. Here are the available slots:

Canterbury campus: Tuesday 26 April AM 
Canterbury campus: Tuesday 26 April PM
Canterbury campus: Wednesday 27 AM
Canterbury campus Wednesday 27 PM

Medway campus: Thursday 28 AM
Medway campus: Thursday 28 PM

The University of Kent is teaming up with Kent County Council to support the local community in becoming comfortable with using digital technology.

As part of KCC’s Digital Champions campaign, the University of Kent is encouraging students and staff to volunteer for an hour or two to support people in accessing the digital world. Your efforts could help save people time and money, make people feel more connected and better informed. Despite this, many people have never been online.

A Digital Champion is someone who helps others to understand the benefits of being online and can spend some time showing them how. Digital Champions do a range of simple things like:

• Teaching someone to use Google or a web browser
• Showing a beginner how to set up an email account
• Helping someone to use the internet to research and plan care
• Explaining computer terms and internet jargon

In return you’ll get:

• The opportunity to develop your own skills and knowledge about digital technology
• Free online training so you know better how to work with others and what sort of things you could teach them
• The chance to part of a community of Champions who can help each other and share ideas
• Rewards and awards! You’ll receive a Certificate and an online Open Badge for each Digital Champion course you complete – you can put it on your CV and show others what you’ve done
• Immense satisfaction that you’ve made a difference to someone else

What are we looking for?

You need a good level of basic computer skills, but you don’t have to be an IT genius. Much more important is having enthusiasm and patience to spend some time helping others to get online.

To find out more, join the introductory zoom meeting on Tuesday 26 April between 16:00-17:00

For more information, please feel free to contact James Corbin on J.I.H.Corbin-2@kent.ac.uk

Our ever-popular half-price membership offer for students, staff, and members of the public will be returning soon! You’ll be able to take out a half-price Premium Plus membership for one month at a time, between 19 April and 16 June 2022, which will give you access to all the modern sports and fitness facilities on the Canterbury campus including:

• Access to our extensive, air-conditioned gym for cardio and resistance/weights sessions
• A full timetable of the most popular fitness and dance classes
• A wide range of indoor and outdoor sports
• Use of our brand-new Indoor Tennis and Events Arena, featuring four acrylic tennis courts
• Participation in social sports sessions** with our ALL Active team

Once you purchase a membership, you’ll need to create an online account in order to book sessions and activities.

Our prices have also been frozen from last year, so there has never been a better time to take out a Kent Sport membership:

• University of Kent staff – £13 per month
• Juniors* –  £18 per month
• Alumni and public – £37 per month and includes a plus one

You can purchase your membership online or by visiting the Sports Centre and The Pavilion receptions. Half price membership offer is available for purchase from 19 April to 16 June 2022 inclusive and is for use for one month from the purchase date. Membership terms and conditions can be found at kent.ac.uk/sports/membership.

*To apply for the junior rate, you must be aged 16 to 18 years old. Proof of age will be required when purchasing a Junior membership. **Starting in term 3.

For Kent Sport news, events and special offers, Like us on Facebook and follow us on Instagram and Twitter UniKentSports.

Order Up! is our new catering app for mobile ordering. It allows you to order food and drink from your favourite cafés, bars, and restaurant on our Canterbury campus.

Veggie or Vegan? We have dishes with you in mind! Why not try Origin’s Smoky Vegan Bean Chilli served with rice and guacamole? Or if it’s meat you crave how about our Hut 8 Big Stack Burger filled with a 1/3 beef patty, bacon, and cheese? Those options and so much more you’ll find on our  various catering outlets and their menus.

We have 4,900 people who use our Order Up! app and counting! As a student, staff member or visit of Kent, you too will enjoy all our app’s features and services.

How do I use Order Up!?

When you use our app, you’ll choose from the features we offer:

• Order and pay at table
• Order for collection or delivery
• Use our contactless payment

You can also:

• Browse through our menus
• Look at your order history
• Select our meal deals

How do I get Order Up!?

Download our app from the Apps Store or Google Play and you’ll order food and drink from your mobile wherever you are.

Want to order from your PC or laptop? No problem! Use our Order Up! web app on Safari, Chrome or any web browser.

Where do I order from?

Visit our Catering website and you’ll find a list of all our catering outlets to order from when you use our Order Up! app.

What have we achieved?

We’re very proud to have recently won the Marketing Award at the 2022 Public Sector Catering Awards for our Order Up! app. The award celebrates marketing campaigns that prove to be successful and exceed expectations. To make sure it was easy for you to use our Catering team spent many hours building the app and testing it by using the back our house software system.

To find out more about our award, read through our Staff News story.

Commercial Services & Estates are thrilled to announce that the catering team have won the coveted Marketing Award at the 2022 Public Sector Catering Awards.

The awards, held at the Hilton London Metropole on Thursday 7 April, celebrate the culinary achievements of individuals, teams, and organisations operating in a public sector environment. There are 18 award categories that represent all areas of the sector.

The Marketing Award is an accolade which celebrates marketing campaigns that have proved to be successful and exceeded expectations. The University’s catering team were presented with the award for the development, implementation, and marketing of Order Up! – Kent’s debut food and drink ordering app. Find out more about Order Up! in our Staff News story.

The catering team worked incredibly hard to ensure Order Up! was user-friendly for customers and ready for the new academic year. Many hours were spent building the app, creating a brand identity, and designing promotional content. A tremendous amount of effort also went into testing the app and training staff on the back of house software.

Keith Williams, Head of Trading, said: “I am immensely proud of our remarkable team, it’s brilliant to see their hard work and collaboration recognised across the sector. The app they created was simply first class, a result of a tremendous amount of work and collective responsibility. Our customers have fully embraced Order Up! and benefitted from its introduction, making all the effort worthwhile.”

The three other shortlisted contenders for the Marketing Award included Zoe Gill from Brakes, Emily Reeves from Cypad, and Super Wellness from OCS.

Thursday 14th April 2022
10:00 – 16:30

Would you like an Easter treat? Hunt for eggs that have been hidden around campus and bring them to the College & Community Life office, above the Co-Op in the Locke Building to get your chocolate treat! 4 eggs will be swapped for an ‘egg’stra special prize.

Happy hunting!

From Professor Jeremy Carrette | Dean for Europe

The University of Kent has a long history of delivering postgraduate courses in continental Europe, beginning with the Brussels School of International Studies in 1998. While the University has many partnerships throughout Europe, the Brussels School and the Paris School of Arts and Culture, which opened in 2010, are key parts of our new Kent in Europe strategy to offer specialist postgraduate teaching in Europe.

The University of Kent European schools provide unique opportunities for students to gain international educational experience in locations relevant to the subject. They are recognized as examples of excellence in transnational education and are a key part of our new Global Engagement Strategy; being led by the new EG lead for global engagement, Professor Richard Reece.

In order to strengthen the Brussels and Paris Schools for the future, the University has agreed that the schools will be most effectively managed from September 2023 inside our new Divisional structures. This will enable a closer alignment of academic activities and an integration of the professional service teams to allow better support for staff and students. It will also mean that students in Brussels and Paris will have a deeper link to the University and its resources and provide Divisions with a stronger international outreach and recruitment opportunity. It will also enable the University to provide a clearer and more efficient central service support for the Divisions in their management of the Brussels and Paris Schools.

While the academic subjects are already integrated into Divisions, from September 2023 the Divisional links will be enhanced by linking professional service teams into the Divisions. HSS will manage – with the appropriate links to LSSJ and any other subject areas – the Brussels School of International Studies, and A&H will managed the Paris School of Arts and Culture. There will be a period of transition in the next academic year 2022-2023 to allow the most effective integration.

This integration will enable the Divisions to establish a stronger sense of ownership and have a clarity of operation in Europe for both teaching and research links in the cities of Brussels and Paris. It is hoped that this new structure will make the European schools more agile in responding to the new demands of global education. It will allow more effective management and provide an operational framework for other subjects in the University to benefit from European links and subject delivery through the new structures should they wish to explore these options.

In the increasing challenging world of global education, this new organizational structure of our European Schools signals how they remain a vital part of our vision for the future.

From The Congregations Team

Thank you to all of those who volunteered to help at the celebration ceremonies in Rochester and Canterbury.

It was such an important moment for our students who had graduated in absentia in 2020 and we know how much they appreciated that Kent made sure they could have their special day. The graduates are of course the stars of the day, but it takes a team to make sure the show can happen for them – and you were a big part of that.

We know our call for volunteers came at an already busy time and we are very grateful you joined us to make the occasion a success. We hope that you enjoyed taking part and the opportunity to make the Cathedrals your office for the day! Please do let us know if you have any feedback from the events that you would like to share with us.

This May we will be hosting our graduates from 2021. We begin in Rochester on 11 May, and then Canterbury from 16 – 20 May. We hope you will join us again, and that you will also encourage colleagues to take part.  Please sign up online here.

We have made this video to thank the staff involved, and we hope it will also show others that it may be hard work, but it’s a lot of fun too!

From Martin Atkinson | Director of HR & Organisational Development

I am pleased to be able to let you know that the local branch of the UCU has accepted the proposal we made on 23 March and that the local ASOS, including the marking and assessment boycott, has now been brought to an end. You can read our joint statement with UCU for more background on this.

This means that marking and assessment is now resumed as normal, although the national Action Short of a Strike (not including a marking and assessment boycott) remains in place.

Any work that was not assessed during the boycott will now be assessed alongside other work, with Divisions working with their staff to agree on areas to prioritise. We anticipate that all outstanding marking will be completed by Friday 6 May 2022.

We would like to thank our local UCU for their part in the negotiations which have brought the dispute to a close. We would also like to thank those of you who have been providing extra support to students throughout the periods of industrial action.

This year has been particularly difficult for our students, and I want to recognise their patience in the face of the uncertainty and stress caused to them by the ongoing disputes. I sincerely hope that they can now look forward to some stability and certainty as they enter the examination period.

Ongoing negotiations  

I am also conscious of how challenging recent weeks have been for colleagues in Divisions which have been reviewing their activities and which face continued challenges due to national changes in where prospective students’ interests lie.

Whilst no compulsory redundancies have been proposed as part of these reviews and would only ever be considered as a very last resort, we understand that reviews can be unsettling for staff and I hope this agreement will take some of the pressure off while this work continues. I’d also like to thank colleagues for their continued involvement in working collectively on what a positive and sustainable way forward might look like. For the avoidance of any doubt, the commitment made in the joint statement to UCU members also applies to all other staff across the University.

We are also continuing our talks with UCU on the national issues in the hope that we can build on progress in the areas that we can influence at Kent – bearing in mind that many of the issues on the national ballot are out of our control. I will continue to keep you updated on progress with all these issues and hope we can now all concentrate on preparations for the summer term.

With all good wishes,

Martin

Martin Atkinson | Director of HR & Organisational Development

From Richard Reece| Deputy Vice-Chancellor | Education and Student Experience

At Kent, it is important we continually reflect on our provision and the experience we offer our students. Back in 2016/17, the University began a consultation with staff and students concerning the shape of our academic year. This was delayed by other organisational priorities and, of course, the covid pandemic. However, we are now in a position to continue this important work.

Kent is unusual in the HE sector in not holding a Winter assessment period after Autumn modules. This means our students can have a long period of time between teaching and being assessed on what they have learnt. We have received feedback from both students and Kent Union that this causing significant levels of anxiety. Many staff have also highlighted the challenge of the six-week turnaround of exams in the Summer, which is becoming increasingly difficult to manage with the complexity of our portfolio.

During the last consultation, we received significant feedback from staff and students. This insight has been used to shape the proposals presented to you. We are now asking for staff input in shaping these proposals, to ensure the one we choose provides the best structure for our whole University community.

Please get involved and share your views. Information about the proposed changes can be found on this dedicated SharePoint site. Here you will find further context to the changes as well as the three potential academic year structures. You will find a feedback form online, so you may leave comments and ask questions.

I will be holding a series of webinars, one for each division, during early April. These will be an opportunity for you to find out more about the proposed changes and ask questions relevant to your division and role.

Each Division has already been invited separately to their own dedicated webinar. To attend the Professional Services webinar on Thursday 7 April 13.00 – 14.00, please use this Teams link.

Here’s a schedule of each Divisional webinar:

5 April – 10.00 – 11.00 – Law, Society & Social Justice

5 April – 12.30 – 13.30 – Natural Science

5 April – 16.00 – 17.00 – KBS

6 April – 15.30 – 16.30 – Arts & Humanities

7 April – 9.00 – 10.00 – Computer, Engineering & Mathematical Sciences

7 April – 11.30 – 12.30 – Human & Social Sciences

7 April – 13.00 – 14.00 – Professional Services

It is important we also understand the views of our students and these help shape our decisions. Information on the potential changes will be provided to students through our Your Uni Your Say campaign, allowing them to find out more and ask questions.

Whether to change the structure of our academic year is an important decision that we must take together. I hope you will participate in this consultation and help shape our future at Kent.