Thank you to everyone who has already offered to help at this year’s Celebration Ceremonies and Congregations.

Graduation is a key moment in the lives of all our students and, following the pandemic, we’re keen to ensure this year’s ceremonies from March onwards are extra special.

It’s great that so many colleagues across the University have already shown an interest, but we always need more help – for roles from ticket collection to graduate registration, ushering and handing out certificates.

Benefits for you

These are wonderful occasions to share with our graduates and help celebrate their success, but there are plenty of other benefits for you too, including:

• The ceremonies are a great way to get to know colleagues in both your own team and across the University.
• If you work two or more ceremonies, you will receive a free lunch/dinner.
• If you’re on grades 1-6, you can claim for TOIL (time off in lieu) or overtime payments.
• If you’re on a higher grade, you may be able to claim time back, subject to agreement with your manager.

Find out more

Watch our video on how you can help make our ceremonies extra special!

Further information on what’s involved is also available in our Congregations Factsheet and you can find out about the ceremony dates here. Feel free to email us at congregations@kent.ac.uk if you have any questions.

If you’re ready to sign up, please complete this form asap.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Liberty Chambers and Chloe Cooper, Congregations team

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 16 February from 14:00 – 16:45 (GMT), with the theme ‘Pedagogy and Practice when teaching and learning Online’.

Agenda:

• 14:00 – 14:05 – Dr Phil Anthony (University of Kent): Introduction
• 14:05 – 14:20 – Professor Kathleen M Quinlan (University of Kent): Returning to the lecture hall? how to trigger students’ interest in large group settings
• 14:20 – 14:35 – Jessica Moody (Advance HE): Building ‘belonging’ in online teaching
• 14:35 – 14:50 –  John Moran, Professor Debbie Holley & Adam Bancroft (University of Bournemouth): ‘Martian Attack: the story so far…
• 14:50 – 15:05 – Katalin Hanniker & Irina Niculescu (University of Surrey): Co-designing a module with students and staff from different universities, time zones and cultures
• 15:05 – 15:20 – Amy Rattenbury (Wrexham Glyndwr University): Locking down the fundamentals for Scaling Up your teaching
• 15:20 – 15:30 – Break
• 15:30 – 15:45 – Chris Morrison (University of Kent) & Dr Jane Secker (University of London): Copyright and online learning at a time of transition
• 15:45 – 16:00 – Dr Mark O Connor (University of Kent): Online and blended provision: What can we learn from MOOCs… and what else do we need?
• 16:00 – 16:15 – Ben Watson (UCL) & George Rhodes (University of Westminster): What are the foundations for meaningful adoption of a digitally accessible culture in the education sector? Lessons from multiple organisations.
• 16:15 – 16:30 – Dr Suzanna Klaf & Dr Amanda Irvin (Columbia University): Five Principles for Inclusive Teaching and Learning  
• 16:30 – 16:45 – Dr Julie McGurk (Yale University) & Dr Jamiella Brooks (University of Pennsylvania): Rigor as Inclusive Practice

Please share

Colleagues from outside the University of Kent are very welcome to join this community and so feel free to circulate. Please ask anyone wishing to join to complete the Digitally Enhanced Education registration form if they haven’t already. We add them to the mailing list linked to the series. 

 If you would like to present at a future event, please submit a short synopsis and Phil Anthony will be in touch. 

Best wishes,

The E-Learning Team

We were sorry to hear news of the death of Sir Crispin Tickell, Chancellor of the University of Kent from 1996-2006.

Sir Crispin was a career diplomat. He advised four prime ministers and, as cited in his Guardian obituary, had formidable intellect and displayed impeccable timing when intervening in policy.

In a long career, he had often found himself in the right place at the right time. In 1956, as a junior Foreign Office official, he dispatched a Royal Navy destroyer to deter a threatened Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands, an intervention that was successful.

He was involved in many negotiations on behalf of the British government, from arms control with the Russians, to entry talks to the European Community in 1972. But perhaps his greatest contribution to forming policy was on the environment. He argued for mandatory international pollution control, something that is finally taking shape.

In 1977, while taking a sabbatical at Harvard he wrote Climatic Change and World Affairs, one of the first, and for at least a decade, the only book on the coming climate crisis, and what governments should do to prevent it.

Sir Crispin’s final diplomatic post was as British ambassador to the United Nations and permanent representative on the UN Security Council from 1987 until 1990. It was in this post that he played an active part in the talks to end the Iran/Iraq war.

Following “retirement”, Sir Crispin chaired Major’s government panel on Sustainable Development from 1994 until 2000 and was a member of two Labour government taskforces. He was warden of Green College, Oxford from 1990 to 1997 and Chancellor of the University of Kent from 1996 to 2006. He was also president of the Royal Geographical Society (1990-93) and the Marine Biological Society (1990-2001).

You can read the full obituary for Sir Crispin on Guardian online.