The University has been commended for its positive progress on Technician Commitment.

The Technician Commitment is a sector-wide, collaborative initiative led by the Science Council and supported by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation’s Technicians Make It Happen campaign, to ensure visibility, recognition, career development and sustainability for technicians working in higher education and research.

Kent signed-up to the Technician Commitment in September 2017 and has formed a working group chaired by Mark Ellis, Assistant Director, University Operations Support. In October 2018, the working group submitted a self-assessment and two-year action plan to the Technician Commitment Steering Board.

The Steering Board has recently provided its feedback on the submission and commended Kent for ‘positive progress coupled with a clear and ambitious Action Plan’ which is comprehensive, well-structured and aligned to the aims of the Technician Commitment. The University will be presented with an Award of Submission at the next Technician Commitment Signatory event.

The Technician Commitment Working Group at Kent is in the process of developing resources for technical staff and there are a number of upcoming events:

• 6 March – Information session on technical Apprenticeship standards to tie in with National Apprenticeship week
• 22 May – Kent Technician Network, Technician’s Symposium at the Canterbury campus (details available soon).

Further information about the Technician Commitment is available on the Learning & Development webpages.

Colleagues are invited to attend the Learning and Teaching Network session taking place on Friday 8 March, from 13:15-14:30 in Rochester Boardroom R2-09 on the Medway campus.

Karthikeyan Muthumayandi, from the School of Sport & Exercise Sciences, will present this session on ‘Learning clinical special tests through gamified seminar’.

The primary objective of this feasibility research is to compare the delivery of gamified seminar to that of the traditional methods in teaching clinical skills. We used free web-2 technologies in developing a gamified seminar in the virtual network.

Eleven therapy students underwent learning through traditional seminar and gamified seminar in a random order. A semi-structured interview, pre and post student satisfaction level, knowledge and understanding scores were measured. Gamified seminar had better scores than traditional seminars in most variables but similar scores on the knowledge and understanding. Gamified seminar can be an adjunct to different seminar delivery methods.

If you have not already confirmed your attendance and wish to attend please complete the online booking form.

Kent RaG have teamed up with K-Bar, Woody’s, Origins, Mungo’s and Cargo to host a campus-wide charity pub quiz on Friday 8 March to commemorate International Women’s Day!

‘A Quiz Night Out’ is all about celebrating the achievements of women while raising money to help those living in poverty. Money raised will be given to CARE International, a charity fighting deprivation and injustice in the world’s most vulnerable places. CARE save lives, finds long-term solutions to poverty, and supports women and girls to overcome inequality and fulfil their potential.

The five campus bars will simultaneously be hosting the same pub quiz, on the same night, at the same time. Not only will teams have the chance to win locally in their chosen bar, but also become ‘Campus Quiz Champions’ – the overall winner from all five bars.

Quiz rounds will have a focus on famous females and feminine feats, alongside all the popular classics – geography, history, TV, sport etc. So, are you ready to get involved in this year’s biggest and most competitive quiz?

The quiz starts at 20.00. Entry is £2 entry per person (pay on the day). Maximum six people per team. All are welcome!

Find out more via this Facebook event link.

Kent colleagues came together recently for an AUA @ Kent Think-in event in the Sibson Building on Wednesday 6 February.

Taking the theme of ‘Thinking and Learning Together’, presentations included:

• Finding your True North – Gill Ledgerton, Head of Operations, External Relations, Marketing & Communications, University of Liverpool
• Using Mindfulness in Changing Times – Esther Van Hout, Business Development Manager at our Tonbridge centre.

The Think-In was organised by the AUA@Kent leadership team: Melissa Mulhall, AUA Advocate; Natalia Crisanti, Student Services; Mita Modal, Engineering and Digital Arts; Amy Green, Politics and International Relations; James Redmond, SSPSSR; and Alison Webster, Faculties Support Office.

The event was well received and is a good example of how the AUA@Kent network gives Kent colleagues the chance to get together and reflect on their work journeys from a different perspective, without the time and cost of travelling to off-campus training and conferences.

AUA/follow-up events
Why not join us for the next Kent events? The next talk in the AUA CPD chats series, on the topic of ‘Developing Self and Others’ is scheduled for 22 March.

This will be followed by the 4th Southern Regional Symposium at Canterbury Christ Church University on 24 April. Professor April McMahon will be one of the keynote speakers and will be talking about her experiences as a subject TEF panel chair for the Humanities panel. A spring walk and summer picnic are also planned for lunchtime (12.30) on 29 March and 13 May.

There is no need to be an AUA member already, just come along to see if it is of interest and of benefit in your current role/future roles. Contact one of the AUA leadership team above for further details.

If you decide to join the AUA, you can claim tax relief on your membership. AUA subscriptions can be claimed back via the HMRC Tax Relief for Employees website – there’s no need to complete a self-assessment tax form.

Visit the AUA website to find out more about membership.

You are invited to make nominations for two representatives of non-union members of staff to join the Joint Staff Negotiating and Consultation Committee (JSNCC); one position to represent staff in grades 7 and above, and one position to represent staff in grades 1 to 6. All University staff are eligible to nominate themselves.

An email was sent out to staff from Denise Everitt, Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Chief Operating Office, launching the nomination process on Monday 25 February. If you wish to nominate yourself as a candidate for one of these positions, please click on the link in your email to complete the nomination entry form. You will be asked to provide a personal statement and the details of two people who support your nomination.

If you do not have time to complete the form immediately, it will remember your answers and you can pick it up again later on by clicking on the link in your email.  The deadline for completed nominations is 17:00 on Monday 11 March.

What is the JSNCC?

The committee is the main forum for consultation between the University and its staff and is one of the most important and influential committees in the University. Its membership includes management, union and staff representatives who meet each term. The current non-union staff members are Mark Ellis, Denise Twomey, Stephen Rowlstone and Becky Verlin.

Find out more about the JSNCC

Why join the JSNCC?
Acting as a staff representative is interesting and rewarding. It provides the opportunity to discuss and comment on University plans and policies, to meet a wide range of new people and to gain valuable personal development. Training and support will be provided to the successful candidates.

Further information about the JSNCC and the nomination and election processes can be found on the JSNCC website or by contacting HR via ERBP@kent.ac.uk

In the latest episode of the Nostalgia podcast series, Dr Chris Deacy, Reader in Theology and Religious Studies in the Department of Religious Studies, speaks to Professor April McMahon, Deputy Vice Chancellor for Education and Professor of English Language and Linguistics.

In this episode, April talks about being born in Edinburgh during a Beatles concert, how there weren’t many opportunities open to her as a child, being into the New Romantics, Altered Images and musicals, what inspired her to go to university, giving a lecture on the day that Margaret Thatcher resigned, how her Christian faith came along while she was in her 30s, listening to ‘Junior Choice’ on Saturday mornings as a youngster, her mother’s sudden death, and why it is important to enjoy the present.

Dr Sophie Quirk, Senior Lecturer in Drama and Theatre in the School of Arts, has featured on Morning Edition, broadcast on National Public Radio in America, yesterday 20 February 2019.

Morning Edition is the most popular news radio programme in the United States.

Sophie was interviewed for an item called ‘The Other Side of Anger’, which explored how comedy can be cathartic way of expressing anger. The piece particularly focused on comedian Mo Amer, who has used comedy to explore his experiences as a Kuwaiti-Palestinian man in modern-day America. The topic coincides with Sophie’s research interest in the social and political impact of contemporary stand-up comedy performance.

‘There are some comedians who I actively want to see when something happens that makes me angry, say, politically,’ explained Sophie, ‘because they have had the same experience of current events, and they are going to talk about them. And the people around me are going to be expressing through their laughter and their groans a real empathy with what I’m feeling.’

The broadcast can be heard online here, with Sophie featuring 4’30” into the programme.

Professor Simon Kirchin, Professor of Philosophy and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, and Dr Graeme A. Forbes, Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, along with colleagues in the University’s School of Arts, have been awarded funding from the British Society of Aesthetics, for ‘Aesthetics and comedy: how to do things with jokes’, a conference about the philosophical background of comedy.

Dr Forbes said, “analysing comedy is said to be like dissecting a frog: no-one’s that interested, and the frog dies. But comedy writers and performers often analyse comedy: to craft new material or perfect timing. By bringing comedy writers and practitioners together with philosophers we can potentially change how comedians understand their craft, but also add fresh impetus to debates in aesthetics, ethics, and theoretical philosophy about how comedy works and what it is for.”

The conference will take place in October 2019, bringing together philosophers from a number of areas with comedy practitioners. The University of Kent is uniquely placed to host such a conference, as the home of the Aesthetics Research Centre, the Centre for Practical Normativity, and the Centre for Popular and Comic Performance. As well as being the home of a number of philosophers interested in comedy and performance, Kent is one of the leading universities for the academic study of comedy, both nationally and internationally, and hosts the British Stand-up Comedy Archive and the British Cartoon Archive.

Dr Sophia Labadi, Senior Lecturer in Heritage and Archaeology in the department of Classical & Archaeological Studies, has recently released an action plan on World Heritage, Sustainable Development and Civil Society following a workshop which took place in March 2018 at the University’s Brussels School of International Studies.

The workshop on World Heritage, Sustainable Development, and Civil Society took place on 29 March 2018 and saw the gathering of 50 civil society actors from all over the world. The aim was to find innovative ways for civil society actors to implement the UNESCO’s 2015 Policy on the Integration of a Sustainable Development Perspective into the Processes of the World Heritage Convention. This workshop was part of the official programme of the European Year of Cultural Heritage and was organised in cooperation with Europa Nostra, and with generous funding from the European Cultural Foundation and the University of Kent.

The policy on World Heritage and Sustainable Development, adopted by UNESCO in 2015 represents ‘a significant shift in the implementation of the (World Heritage) Convention and an important step in its history. Fundamental considerations such as the respect of human rights, gender equality, poverty alleviation, among others, will be now integrated in conservation and management approaches of the Convention.

This workshop was part of the official programme of the European Year of Cultural Heritage, organised in cooperation with Europa Nostra, and with generous funding from the European Cultural Foundation and the University of Kent.