At Kent Union we value your opinion and we’re always looking for ways to make you more employable.

The Graduate Attributes are a set of qualities or features regarded as characteristic of the Kent Graduate which has been developed and embedded during their time at Kent. We’d like to gain your opinions about the current Graduate Attributes website and possible logos. Your contributions will make a real impact.

The discussion will last no longer than 30 minutes and you’ll receive a voucher to be redeemed at the Library Café!

All the sessions will run in the Meeting Room in the Student Media Centre. Below are the drop-in dates and times:

• Thursday 25th January 2018: 3 – 4 pm
• Friday 26th January 2018: 12 – 1 pm and 2 – 3 pm
• Monday 29th January 2018: 12 – 1 pm
• Tuesday 30th January 2018: 1 – 3 pm
• Wednesday 31st January 2018: 2 – 3 pm

Come along and have your say!

The next Pub Night is NEXT TUESDAY 30 January with the theme of business start-up. This will be a great opportunity to network with a range of alumni and current Kent students so don’t forget to register here to receive your first drink free.

The Kent Hub for Innovation and Enterprise will be joining us. Find out how you can start your own business and what help the University can give students, staff and alumni.

You’ll also get the chance to hear from and speak to Kent graduate, David Browne, who started his own business with help from the University so it will be great for those who are not sure where to start or those just starting. David founded Convert Energy, a renewable energy design and project management company based in Canterbury, with his business partner Ben Glancy.

We will be at the Miller’s Arms in Canterbury on Tuesday 30 January from 18.00 – 20.00. Please come along even if you aren’t thinking of starting your own business to meet with current students and fellow alumni! Contact alumni@kent.ac.uk if you have any questions.

Just because you don’t run doesn’t mean you can’t. If you can walk for half an hour, chances are that you can pick up the pace and give running or jogging a try.

The University of Kent is bringing you the Couch to 5K programme. It has been especially designed for people who have done little or no running.

You will work on your running and by the final week you will be running for half an hour, or approximately 5K.

And you won’t be on your own as we have our enthusiastic Run Leader, Barry Hopkins, who will be with you every step of the way to help you achieve your target.

This challenge builds in time and effort, so you’ll constantly be impressed with what you can do if you push yourself a little.

Every Wednesday through to 21 March 2018, 12.00-13.00. Please note the one hour session includes warm up, cool down, stretches and you therefore won’t be active for the full hour.

No need to register just turn up and meet at the Sports Centre Reception and Barry will welcome you.

Comfortable clothing and footwear advisable.

The sessions are £1 per person or free for Gold and Silver members. Any questions please contact: sportsdevelopment@kent.ac.uk

Alan Le Grys, an Associate Lecturer in SECL and an Associate Learning Advisor with SLAS, is running the Reading Half-Marathon on Sunday 18 March to raise as much money as possible for the Lawrence and Galton Cancer wards at Medway Hospital.

Alan and Linda Le Grys (CPP) tragically lost their son Peter to cancer in November, but want to thank the hospital staff for their compassion and kindness, as well as their professional skill.

The hope is to raise money to convert one of the side rooms on Lawrence Ward into a Relatives’ Room for families visiting gravely or terminally ill patients.

Please help us to make this happen by sponsoring Alan via the JustGiving page.

Image credit: Alan Le Grys

Why not join 80 other Kent colleagues already registered for this networking opportunity? There is still time to sign up (registration closes on 1 February 2018).

This Valentine’s Day, the Academic Division invites you to attend Kent’s first Strictly Professional Speed-Dating event. This will be a fun event on 14 February 2018 mirroring the well-known speed-dating format!

Sign-up if you would you like to meet colleagues across the University in an informal setting to understand their roles better, enhance collaborative working and build professional networks.

The event is open to all those working at Kent, whether based in schools or in central departments, either in an academic or a professional services capacity, and will take place in the Darwin Conference Suite (Canterbury) and Rochester Building (R2-09, Medway) between 11.00 – 12.00. followed by some additional networking time over a cup of tea/coffee and cake if you wish to stay back and meet yet more colleagues.

This event is part of the Kent Colleagues Connect scheme building on a number of very successful pilot projects run by the Academic Division over the last couple of years which brought together nearly 300 participants across 450 separate interactions. Kent Colleagues Connect will provide various opportunities throughout 2018 for informal meetings between colleagues across the University. The full calendar of events is available here.

Kent Colleagues Connect is the latest scheme from the Excellence Initiative, a professional development programme run by the Academic Division since 2012. The scheme is run with the support and participation of Commercial Services and the Learning & Organisational Development Office.

Please register here for the Speed-dating event before 1 February 2018.

If you have any questions, please contact us on kentcolleaguesconnect@kent.ac.uk

This week, The Street Kitchen is celebrating its 1st birthday. Help mark the occasion by accompanying them for some tasty street food – you might just bag yourself a freebie!

Each day this week, The Street Kitchen will be offering a FREE cookie with every main takeaway dish, courtesy of Vanilla & Muscovado who bake some exceedingly delicious homemade treats, right here on the University campus.

If you want to know what The Street Kitchen is rustling up this week, or what chef, Sam Ranger, had to say in a quick fire foodie quiz, follow the link to the Uni Kent Food blog.

For any enquiries, contact catering@kent.ac.uk

SMFA’s Fine Art Lecturer and artist Tim Meacham’s work Eye of the Needle is on show at the Hantverk & Found Gallery, Margate, from 3 February-18 March.

It is part of the offsite programme for Turner Contemporary’s major exhibition Journeys with ‘The Waste Land’, which explores the significance of T S Eliot’s poem The Waste Land through the visual arts.

Eye of the Needle, made with support from the University of Kent, explores TS Eliot’s relationship with the mechanical sound recording of the gramophone, making particular reference to its role in The Waste Land in providing the machine mediated sound track of modernity. The viewer accompanies the needle on its journey across the landscape of a gramophone record. The role of the needle is considered in first embedding sound, through creating the grooves of the record, and then as a “rider” travelling across the surface of the disc as it plays. 78-rpm records, made of shellac and slate dust, give something of themselves (dust) in order to release their sound, thus changing the landscape with each play.

Tim Meacham is an artist who works across media to explore space within the triangulated world of experience between seeing, hearing and touching. SMFA’s Partner and College Liaison Officer, he is currently undertaking a practice based PhD. For more information, see: www.timmeacham.space

Hantverk & Found is a celebrated seafood café and commissioning art gallery in the heart of Margate Old Town committed to supporting artists to make art, with a small gallery space to exhibit works by local and emerging artists. As well as providing support to artists, they frequently commission new work.

The Preview is Saturday 3 February, 18.00-20.00. Find out more at: http://www.hantverk-found.co.uk/

Are you a carer, or think you could be, would you like to talk to someone about your caring role? Then this new project is for you.

University of Kent and Carers FIRST recognise that gaining support for your caring role whilst studying can be difficult.

We are therefore offering you the opportunity to gain 1 -1 support in your caring role and share your experiences with other carers on campus.

Join us from 12.30 – 14.30 on:

• Wednesday 24 January
• Wednesday 21 February
• Wednesday 21 March

Room: R2- 05, Rochester Building

Carers FIRST Community staff will be on hand to chat to you about your caring role and offer what support they can.

We look forward to seeing you there.

For more information:

• Email medwaywellbeing@kent.ac.uk 
• Visit the Student Support webpages