The University of Kent Players are back with another radio play extravaganza!  We will be taking a trip down the rabbit hole with Alice in Wonderland to be performed on 29 and 30 November 2019.

Auditions will be held on:

• Tuesday 24 September 12.30-14.00 in CE329
• Thursday 26 September 17.30-19.30pm in CE329 (arrive from 17.00 for a 17.30 start)

It would be great if you’re able to attend both audition dates, but this is not essential. The audition process itself is fairly informal, with a chance to meet everyone and ask questions before the audition begins.  We will ease you into the audition with a couple of warm up exercises, before breaking into small groups to work on different sections of the script which will then be performed to the audition panel and the other auditionees.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to get in touch at players@kent.ac.uk

There are a number of acting and non-acting roles available – we need everyone from cast to tech to front of house.

The Players are a super friendly group with diverse levels of experience, so everyone is welcome!

And if you’re new to The Players, or generally feeling a little unsure, then we’d be glad to meet up over a coffee and help put you at ease.

The School of Computing hosted the first UK and Ireland computing education conference (UKICER) on 5 and 6 September. The intention is for this to become the first of a series of annual conferences to create a community of computing education research within the two countries.

Conference Chair Janet Carter said: ‘The atmosphere was relaxed and supportive with presenters talking on a range of themes including transitions to higher education, assessment, environments and context.’

The University also hosted the ACM-W Inspire 2019 workshop. The theme was “Rising Together” with exciting talks on supporting, mentoring and advocating women to achieve their full potential in both tech industry and academia.

Read more on the School of Computing webpages.

The University has joined forces with other public sector bodies to ensure Kent becomes a digitally inclusive county.

The Kent Digital Accessibility Working Group – made up of the University and its ‘Kent Connect’ partners including local authorities, police and fire – aims to meet rules outlined in the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations (2018).

Members of the group from across the University are already working on a training plan for all organisations involved, as well as adding to the team of experienced accessibility auditors across the county to ensure that all Kent websites are accessible to all.

The Kent Digital Accessibility Working Group are also taking steps to ensure the University’s own digital content is fully accessible. The aim is to improve access for all and this work compliments the Kent Inclusive Practices (KIPs) that the University has already endorsed.

In addition, the new web template – Site Editor – is designed to be highly accessible, and digital guidelines are being shared with schools and departments to help prepare content for those webpages. i.e a review current content and removal of obsolete information

The following principles can and should be applied to all digital material at Kent to help ensure a fully inclusive environment. They include:

• Keep content simple
• Keep it efficient
• Make sure the text is accessible to other applications
• Structure your text with style sheets/semantic tags
• Ensure text can be personalised and reflows when magnified
• Use short image descriptions known as alt-tags
• Test it!

You can see the digital guidelines for more detailed support and information. The working group also have created a Digital Accessibility e-learning package in Moodle to give more detail about the regulations and how they will be rolled out across the University of Kent.

Chris Morrison will be running another Copyright the Card Game session, in the Templeman Library, at 10am on Tuesday 17 September.

The game allows participants to understand the ways in which copyright law impacts on the day to day workings of an educational institution, looking at teaching, research and engagement. It is appropriate for all staff who work with copyright material (so pretty much anyone who uses a computer) and participants will learn about:

•  the things that copyright protects,
•  the activities that are restricted by copyright
• when licences provide permission to use copyright content
• when fair dealing exceptions apply to those activities.

Places can be booked via staff connect.

Master of Turing College, Dr Emma Bainbridge and colleagues decorated the underused planters in the Turing Hub.

Emma has been a keen crocheter for several years and has been involved in some of the yarn bombs in and around the School of English. Using her skills, she decided to put together a project involving some of the staff from the school. The project entailed crocheting a generous amount of flowers for the empty planters. Within 4 hours, the team had created vibrant crochet flowers to fill the underused planters in Hut 8.

Emma hopes to continue developing the project and also hopes to put in place more projects for incoming Turing students in the next academic year.

You can now book to attend a Crucial Conversations two day course in October. The objective of the course is to support leaders at Kent to achieve results through bold, courageous dialogue, with their teams and each other. To enable leaders to create a climate of mutual trust and respect and to provide tools, techniques and materials for participants to take away and apply to real-life leadership situations.

This two-day programme is for academic and professional service leaders. The target audience is primarily Grades 9&10. However, if you are operating in a Leadership role outside these grades and you feel it would be of benefit to you, please contact us before booking, by emailing LDev@kent.ac.uk

See Staff Connect for more information and to book.

Further dates for 2019/20 will be announced shortly.

The University is adding to its green credentials with a move to replace plastic drinking cups across campus.

All new students staying on campus will once again receive an eco-friendly reusable Bamboo coffee cup and a fully recyclable, sustainable water bottle.

And, for the first time this year, a free water bottle will be offered to all staff too. The bottle, made from sustainable sugar cane, is fully recyclable and has a negative carbon footprint. As well as the University of Kent logo, it includes a QR code which users can scan to find the nearest available refillable water station.

The bottles will be available, on production of a KentOne ID card, from next week (wc 16 September) at Kent Hospitality outlets across Canterbury and Medway campuses. Bamboo coffee cups will also be available at the same outlets at a cost of £5 each.

The new bottles and cups are part of a package of measures at Kent to reduce our carbon footprint and increase our sustainability. This latest initiative has been led by members of Kent Hospitality, working alongside Kent Union, Estates and Procurement as part of the University’s Sustainable Food Steering Group, which oversees our sustainable food strategy.

The initiative also fits in well with the University strategy, Kent 2025, which states that, we will ‘embed sustainability through building the UN Sustainable Development Goals into our research, education, leadership, operations, administration and engagement.’

Kevin Stuckey, Director of Commercial Services, explains: ‘We were already working with Kent Union’s President Sasha Langeveldt to provide sustainable drinking cups and bottles. However, our Vice-Chancellor was keen for us to extend this across campus and eventually remove the need for any single-use plastic cups.

‘We therefore doubled our order for new water bottles this year so we could offer staff, as well as new residential students a sustainable alternative. We hope this will be welcomed by not only our staff, but the wider community, as Kent does its bit to reduce its carbon footprint.’