A thank you from Professor Richard Reece:

Dear Colleagues,

On behalf of the University, and particularly on behalf of our students, I would like to take this opportunity to extend my thanks and appreciation for all of the work that you have done to ensure that the campus has been so ready to welcome students this week, and begin teaching for the majority of students next week.

We are living through extraordinary times and it is hard to imagine, even just thinking back to January, that the University experience over the course of the 2020/21 academic year could have changed so radically. For many students, the experience of starting (or restarting) their university life is a stressful and disorienting one. I wanted to take this moment, therefore, to thank all of you for your diligence and generosity as we work together to respond as circumstances require. I have been enormously impressed with the dedication, commitment and skill that all of you have brought to ensuring that we are as ready as we can be for the start of the new term.

I literally cannot say ‘thank you’ enough. The changeable times that we have all encountered since lock-down foster tremendous levels of anxiety and bring each and every one of us face-to-face with profound uncertainty, with worry for loved ones, and with dislocation in all aspects of our lives. By continuing to work together, in a collegiate, supportive and kind way, I have no doubt that that we will overcome undoubted obstacles that we will face as the term progresses.

With many best wishes,

Professor Richard Reece| Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education and Student Experience)

(Watch Richard Reece’s thank you on this YouTube video)

With your Kent email address, you can benefit from free upgrades to a wide range of FutureLearn courses.

As a Kent student or staff member, all you need to do is connect your University email address with your FutureLearn account using this FutureLearn Campus link and verify your email address. You don’t need to already have a FutureLearn account.

This is a great resource for staff and students wishing to supplement their studies, professional and personal development too. There are a wide range of courses available under this offer, including courses created by the University of Kent and other institutions. On completion, you will receive a free certificate of achievement and perpetual access.

At present, this offer is available until the end of December 2020.

Do you communicate with the media in your role?

Colleagues who would like to learn about working with the media are invited to enrol on  Why The Media Matters, a series of short films, audio, text and scenarios covering topics from understanding the media landscape to how best to respond to journalist requests.

Produced by Inside Edge, the University’s media training partner, Why The Media Matters is intended to be an introduction to the benefits and importance of media engagement.

The training is available for all staff but recommended for anyone who has to communicate with the media as part of their role and the resources can be found by clicking this Staff Training Moodle link and reviewing the Personal Effectiveness category.

For further information or to discuss any aspect of media training or engagement, please contact Gary Hughes, the University’s Head of Press relations.

Kent Hospitality have reopened their catering outlets for the 2020/21 academic year.

Bag It, Create (takeaway only), Dolche Vita, Hut 8, K-Bar, Mungo’s, No.1, Origins, Rutherford Dining Hall, Sibson Café (takeaway only), The Galvanising Shop Café and The Street Kitchen are now open. For the most recent opening times for each outlet, please visit the catering website.

As of Monday 21 September the Gulbenkian Café will also be serving hot food to eat in and takeaway.

Please note that The Sports Café in the Sports Centre will be closed until further notice.

Although our outlets are running reduced menus, we are still offering a wide variety of dishes; including the Katsu Chicken from Dolche Vita, street food from The Street Kitchen and classic burgers from Origins.

If you have any questions, please email catering@kent.ac.uk

Professor Yong Yan from the University’s School of Engineering and Digital Arts has received the highest accolade in the field of instrumentation and measurement with a Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Yong Yan was one of 50 engineers admitted to the Royal Academy of Engineering at its annual meeting on 22 September. He was recognised for his “distinctive contribution to improving combustion efficiency and lowering emissions through innovation in electronic instrumentation and successful development of novel instruments, thereby making an important impact on the power industry nationally and internationally”.

Commenting on the Fellowship, Yong said: ‘I am very honoured and extremely privileged to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, one of the most prestigious engineering institutions in the world.’

He added: ‘The Fellowship is only awarded to an engineer who has made exceptional contributions in any field of engineering. It will enable me to perform at a higher level in my research and teaching with a range of support and services from the Academy. The recognition will also help me promote the importance of measurement science and engineering to the UK and the wider world.’

Yong is also a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) and the Institute of Physics (IOP). He was recently awarded the gold medal as the most published author of all time in the UK from the IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, a leading journal in the field of electrical and electronic engineering. He has published more than 470 papers in international journals and conference proceedings.

Early career

Yong studied for BEng and MSc degrees at Tsinghua University, Beijing, before coming to the UK in 1989 to study for a PhD degree at Teesside. He joined the University of Kent in Canterbury in 2004 from the University of Greenwich (Medway Campus).

‘I joined Kent,’ he said, ‘because it has the best research facility and support in my area of research, including a well-equipped instrumentation laboratory and technical support for applied engineering research.’

Role at Kent

As Professor of Electronic Instrumentation in the School of Engineering and Digital Arts, Professor Yan contributes to teaching, research and administration. He was the School Director of Research from 2008 to 2018. Since 2018, he has been the School Director of Innovation, playing a leading role in promotion of engineering innovation and collaborations with industry, as well as managing the Year in Industry modules. Professor Yan also heads the Instrumentation and Control Research Group, including coordination of our REF submission in this area.

Professor David Stirrup, Professor of American Literature and Indigenous Studies in the School of English, has provided a comment for an article entitled Native Americans reclaim history 400 years after Mayflower landing for NBC News.

On 16 September 1620, the Mayflower set sail from Portsmouth and landed at Cape Cod after 66 days at sea. The Europeans encountered the Native American Wampanoag tribe, who helped them to survive their first winter. However, their interaction did not remain peaceful, with European diseases killing many of Native Americans, and rising tensions leading to war.

While the European settlers kept detailed records, the Wampanoag did not have a written language to record their experience. In the piece, David argues that this colonial perspective undermines not only the tragedies Native Americans endured, but also their contributions to history.

David says: ‘some of the people who helped the pilgrims survive that first winter had already been to Europe. Some of them spoke enough English to mediate. They were organised societies, not uncharted peoples just waiting for European forms of ‘civilization’. The native people played a quite considerable role in the development of the modern world, [they] weren’t just kind of agencyless victims of it’. 

The full piece can be read on NBC’s website. 

From Monday 21 September, Gulbenkian Café will be serving hot food (eat in or takeaway) on weekday lunchtimes (Mon – Fri 12-2.30).

Our lunchtime menu includes favourites like our Homemade Thai Fishcakes, Sweet Chilli Chicken Burger, and Chicken and Avocado Cesar Salad, plus toasties and jacket potatoes.

The café offers drinks, cakes and snacks at other times, with full opening hours listed below:

Monday – 8.30 – 15.00*,

Tue – Fri – 8.30 – 15.00* & 18.00 – 20.00

Saturday – 18.00 – 20.00

Sunday 13.00 -15.30

(*Hot food served 12-12.30)

Our official Employee Assistance Programme provider, Care first offers a numbers of services and provide useful advice and support, including weekly webinars.

This week’s (Monday 21 September – Friday 25 September) webinars are as follows:

Monday 21 September 2020 –  ‘How Care first can support you & an update on our services’
Time: 12.00-12.30 – to register please click on this Go to webinar link.

Tuesday 22 September 2020 – ‘Positive Minds’
Time: 12.30-13.00 – to register please click on this Go to webinar link

Wednesday 23 September 2020 –  ‘Fake News’
Time: 12.00-12.30 – to register please click on this Go to webinar link

Thursday 24 September 2020 – ‘Returning to the Workplace
Time: 12.00-13.00 – to register please click on this Go to webinar link

Friday 25 September 2020 – ‘Work Life Balance’
Time: 12.00-12.30 – to register please click on this Go to webinar link