Tag Archives: Canterbury

Learning at Work Week 14-18 May 2018

We are pleased to be taking part in Learning at Work Week 2018 and can now announce our activities for 14-18 May 2018.

Staff from across the organisation have offered their time to provide a selection of workshops throughout the week. Ranging from ‘An Introduction to British Sign Language’ to ‘Managing a Busy Inbox’ these varied sessions are now available to book on our website. We also have access to some free online resources from external partners which can be found at the same page. These include the National Numeracy challenge on Wednesday 17 May, which any member of staff can access, and Reading Ahead, an online book club community.

We will also be launching ‘Kent Experiences’ – a selection of activities offered by teams and departments across the University to help increase organisational understanding. These activities will give staff the opportunity to spend a short time learning about specific aspects of the University they may never normally get to experience. These ‘Kent Experiences’ will be advertised and available for sign-up at our launch event and online throughout the week.

The launch event takes place on Monday 14 May 2018 from 09:30 – 12:30 with an informal drop in session from 11:30 – 12:30 for more information about the ‘Kent Experiences’ on offer. For further details or to register your interest in the launch event please check the event page.

Online booking available for Campus Shuttle

Online booking for the summer term is now available for the Campus Shuttle service.

The service starts up again from Tuesday 8 May 2018 and you can now book a seat to guarantee your travel from that date.

The Campus Shuttle is a free coach service between the Medway and Canterbury campuses that is made available for staff and students during term-time only.

World-leading research features in new campaign

Researchers at Kent use their expertise to tackle local, national and global challenges and address pressing public issues.

A new poster campaign celebrating the impact of this research will run in locations across Canterbury and Medway from 7 to 20 May. The campaign, designed by the Corporate Communications team, supports the University’s public engagement with research outreach programme.

The campaign highlights the public benefits of some of the most impactful research carried out at the University last year. The work featured includes scientific discoveries that could lead to new strategies for improving age-related health and for the use of immune therapy strategies to fight leukaemia; work to deliver the next generation of high speed 5G mobile networks; the discovery and identification of fossils that have changed our understanding of human evolutionary theory; and a major report recommending new housing legislation.

Fine Art PhD student wins prestigious film award

Fine Art PhD student Stephen Connolly won a 2018 British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS) Award for his film, Machine Space.

He won the Moving Image category under Best Practice Research Portfolio for his essay film exploring a city as a machine; a place of movement and circulation. Using a kinetic approach, issues of space, race and finance frame the city of Machine Space. Residents testify in voice-over about how the city as a spatial and financial machine shapes their experience. The city is Detroit, a place that has changed from producing the means of movement to producing space itself. The film uses formal representational devices to explore this content, and addresses issues of complicity of audiences in the state of affairs in the city. It is a visualization of the ideas of Henri Lefebvre, philosopher of space and urban life.

Stephen is an artist filmmaker and Kent 50 scholar who also lectures in Film Production at the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, and works as a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the School of Music and Fine Art.

He said: “The PhD has been such an amazing experience and deeply helpful for my practice, encouraging me to push forward towards publication. The process of academic research has allowed me to place the work in context and in conversation with other disciplines and artists. I aim to contribute to the further development of practice as research as a process of making moving image work in the arts.”

Stephen has also joined forces with Matthew Gibson, Arts GTA (Film) within the School of Music and Fine Art, and Patrick Brian Smith of Concordia University in Canada, to organise an inter-disciplinary symposium of scholars and media-makers on the topic of ‘Visualising Spatial Injustice and Exploitation’. The event takes place on Friday 8 June in Grimond Building on the University’s Canterbury campus and registration is now open.

New Staff Health and Wellbeing Strategy Statement

As part of its ongoing commitment to employee wellbeing, the University of Kent has published a new Staff Health & Wellbeing Strategy Statement. This has been put together by Occupational Health and Safety, (SHE) in collaboration with HR. It was presented to the Safety Health and Environment Executive Committee, (SHEEC) by Bernard Angus, Director of SHE, and was agreed as ready to publish following the meeting in February.

For more information about Staff Health & Wellbeing initiatives check the University’s Safety and Health & Wellbeing website.

Student Success Seminar on Critical Race Theory – New dates

The student success staff seminar on ‘Reframing the gap: Bridging ‘deficit’ readings and critical race theory to understand everyday racial inequities in UK universities’ has been rescheduled for May 2018.

Originally scheduled for March, it will now take place on:

Wednesday 16 May 2018, Canterbury Campus, Woolf College, Seminar Room 5, 13.00-14.00

Friday 18 May 2018, Medway Campus, Pilkington Building, Room 104, 13.00-14.00

The seminar will give an overview of Critical Race Theory and the important questions. Delivered by Dr Alex Hensby, the seminar will be challenging and thought-provoking and the team highly recommends that staff with student-facing roles attend and engage in the debate around race and university.

The past two decades have seen UK universities increase access for students from non-traditional backgrounds, as well as enhance their provision of academic and welfare support, yet across the sector the white-BME attainment gap shows no sign of significantly narrowing. This raises important questions about how racial inequities continue to be reproduced in higher education. Proponents of critical race theory (CRT) offer a direct challenge to longstanding analyses and intervention strategies on the grounds that they take a ‘deficit’ reading of the white-BME attainment gap. Instead, they advocate shifting the onus onto how universities unwittingly reproduce racism and racial inequities structurally and in everyday life.

To book a place on any staff seminar simply email studentsuccessproject@kent.ac.uk

More information on this and all the staff seminars can be found on the Student Success website.

A recording of the BTEC seminar and Prof Karen Cox’s Inspirational Speaker Talk can be found on the staff only section of the SSP website.

Summer housekeeping staff vacancies

We are recruiting team members for Kent Hospitality summer housekeeping for Canterbury campus accommodation, who are available to work between 4 June and 16 September 2018. We will offer a minimum of 80 hours per month during this period. Successful candidates will need to be flexible regarding working days and hours, additional hours may be available.

Rates are:

£8.46 p/hr 16 – 24 years old
£8.97 p/hr 25 years and over (Living Wage)

Some weekend working is required; you must be available to work on Saturday 16 and Sunday 17 June 2018.

Successful applicants will be required to:

Complete an online contract and return this by 17 May 2018.
Attend a three hour Health and Safety induction in the week commencing 21 May 2018.

For the health, safety and welfare of staff and conference guests, all successful applicants will be required to attend a health and safety induction. Applicants must be able to demonstrate the required level of understanding in all areas covered in the training. Any staff not achieving the required standard will not be permitted to work.

Start working in the week commencing 4 June 2018 (minimum of two shifts for training).

If you think this summer vacancy is for you, please complete our online questionnaire:

Week and weekend applications: https://kent.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/summerhk2018
Weekend only applications: https://kent.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/summerhk2018weekends

Closing date for applications: 10 May 2018 (or earlier if we receive a large number of applications).

The Kent Hospitality HR department will then email you by Tuesday 15 May to let you know whether or not your application has been successful. Please do not contact the Kent Hospitality HR department to check the status of your application, as they will be unable to answer individual enquiries.

Beware: scams targeted at international students

If you receive an unexpected email, phone call or letter from someone claiming to be from the Home Office, be careful, as it may be a scam.

Some students have been tricked into paying large sums of money to fraudsters. The Home Office has issued new guidance on how to protect yourself from tricks and scams. Please see the Student Immigration Compliance website for details and a link to the guide.

Kent Gives Back in London: volunteers needed

Join the next Kent Gives Back project in London on Saturday 12 May. Kent Gives Back is a community outreach project which unites students and alumni by encouraging them to take part in a local community project such as volunteering at a homeless shelter or a food bank, helping tend to a garden and many more activities.

Walk the Walk is the UK’s largest grant-making breast cancer charity that is dedicated to not only raising money and awareness for vital breast cancer causes, but to also encourage women and men to become more aware of their own potential for fitness and wellbeing. They organise the famous MoonWalk overnight power walking challenges and are immensely proud to have raised over £122m, which has been granted to research into breast cancer and to improve the lives of people living with cancer now.

We are looking for dedicated, amazing volunteers to join us at The MoonWalk London on the evening of 12 May at Clapham Common . Join 15,000 women and men walking either a full or half marathon in their fantastically decorated bras, raising millions of pounds and awareness for breast cancer.

We are hoping to join the Saturday Evening Crew, a busy period when the Walkers & Volunteers arrive. Start times vary depending on the role, but are no earlier than 17.00 and finishing at midnight. The 24 available roles include Baggage, Kitchen and Water Crew. Volunteers will be required to make their own travel arrangements for the evening.

If you’d like to take part please register at the event webpage.

AUDE Conference 2018 showcases Canterbury campus

Peter Czarnomski, Director of Estates, recently hosted the AUDE Conference 2018 (Association of University Directors of Estates) on behalf of the University of Kent. This high profile event provided an opportunity to showcase the Canterbury Campus to more than 140 Directors of Estates across the sector.

Sibson Building provided an outstanding conference venue and over the three-day conference delegates heard from a number of high profile speakers. They included:

PY Gerbeau, serial entrepreneur and famously the ‘saviour’ of the Millenium Dome project
Dame Heather Rabbatts, former chief executive of the London Borough of Lambeth and the first woman to sit on the board of the FA
Sahar Hashemi, OBE, co-founder of Coffee Republic
Jim Lawless, author of ‘Taming Tigers’ and the first Briton to dive below the 100m barrier on a single breath of air
Roger Martin-Fagg, Economist and Rob McClatchey, Chairman of UPP Group Holdings Limited, who presented on ‘The possible financial outcomes of Brexit and how they might impact on the HE Sector’
Admiral Sir Trevor Soar, Chairman of The Historic Dockyard Chatham, who gave a unique insight into what it means to be a TRUE Leader, ‘Meeting the Challenge’

The final morning of the conference saw a highly entertaining presentation from Stephanie Davies, co-founder of Laughology the nation’s most talked-about training and development programme, and finally, Sir Ranulph Fiennes closed the conference with an awe-inspiring journey through just two of his epic expeditions in the last 40 years.

The highlight of the conference on Tuesday night was the AUDE Awards and Gala Dinner at Canterbury Cathedral’s Chapter House, hosted by writer and broadcaster, Gyles Brandreth. Two members of the University of Kent Estates team were recognised at the awards.

Sarah Cooke, Head of Customer Services and Engagement, was Highly Commended in the Chair’s Award for Long Term Contribution. Sarah was reocgnised for continually developing her role and contributing within the Estates Department, the University as a whole, and to the local community. Sarah joined the Estates Department in 1989. She was shortlisted alongside three long-standing University Directors of Estates.

Emily Mason, Environmental Sustainability Assistant, was Highly Commended in the Emerging Talent Award category, for her project, Futureproof. It uses the UN Sustainable Development Goals as a framework for staff and students from across the University to assess the impact of their activities and create bespoke, targeted action plans to improve. By developing Futureproof, Emily has delivered something with far wider-reaching impacts than we had ever envisaged.

Simon Fanshawe, OBE co-founder and partner of Diversity by Design expertly steered the conference through to a successful conclusion on Wednesday morning.

The AUDE Conference 2019 will take place at the University of Lancaster (University of the Year 2018). This year’s event was organised by Assured Events, Manchester.