Kent alumna Amber Winston, who completed a BA (Hons) in Visual and Performed Arts at Kent in 2015 and an MA in History and Philosophy of Art in 2016, is currently Project and Marketing Executive for The Coffee Art Project, an art competition inviting artists to interpret the theme of coffee. As part her role, she selected Dr Grant Pooke, Senior Lecturer and Head of Art History, to be on the competition’s panel of judges.

The Coffee Art Project was featured at the London Coffee Festival, where 46 artist submissions were selected and displayed in a gallery. The Project is a non-profit initiative aimed at encouraging artists by providing them with an open platform to showcase their works.

Artists at all levels can enter one piece of artwork that connects to ‘coffee’ and/or ‘coffee shop’ experience. There is no restriction on media used; providing that they have a link to coffee. The project supports Project Waterfall, a charity committed to bringing clean water to communities which grow coffee. Project Waterfall has raised more than over £1 million and delivered clean water to over 37,000 people across 7 countries in partnership with WaterAid, Charity: Water and Water for People.

How did Amber come to be involved in The Coffee Project? ‘After graduation, I went on to a sales job for 20 months as a Business Development Executive, and took on another few roles throughout the business to gain some corporate experience’, she explains. ‘After this I took a big leap, took a big cut in pay, got myself a job in London as a marketing intern for a start-up company to experience in a more creative and autonomous role. After this ended I applied for a social media role at the Allegra Foundation, then – after seeing my work experience and past roles, plus my degrees – they asked me to take on the Coffee Art Project’.

Why did Amber choose Grant? ‘I had to select judges who would be able to fairly judge artwork based off four categories; Creativity, Impact, Connection to Coffee, and Spirit of Humanity. The reason I asked Grant to be on the panel was because he taught me since I started at Kent – I admire his vast depth of knowledge and how he made me try harder at each piece of written work on his subjects even though I struggled with dyslexia. I remembered he taught a class on globalisation (which is part of coffee culture) and thought that he would judge each piece with the same amount of composure he has for all his previous students’ work’.

To see all Coffee Art Project entries, please click here.

A group of Masters students from the School of Computing attended Athena Hack, an all-women hackathon, in London from 13-14 April 2019.

The hackathon was organised by ShowCode as an initiative to champion female technologists and focus their skills to help solve one of the biggest environmental issues around. Prizes were awarded for the best performing university team and the best performing company team with a top prize of £5000 cash.

The challenge was to use their skills to create an idea that would help solve the plastic crisis that is currently plaguing the world in support of Plastic Oceans UK. The team, called ‘bumblebees’, was made up of five Masters students; Asha Barathoki, Sybil Mayard, Mai Pham, Zhaneta Georgieva and Clarissa Ang.

The team developed an app, called ‘Plastix’, based on the augmented reality, machine learning and image recognition features which have become popular among smart phone users. It aims to use real-time object identification, personal record and data aggregation to address the lack of awareness and lack of data, as well as making it convenient for the user.

Plastix has three basic functions:

• -identifying an object in real time and whether it is recyclable
• reporting and booking rubbish hotspots
• allowing the user to receive rewards for recycling / cleaning the hotspot.

Asha Barathoki said ‘We had an amazing experience at the hackathon where we got to network and develop our skills via workshops. Unfortunately we didn’t win but the whole process was very inspiring for female students like us in the tech industry.’

Our Organising for Success webpages are being updated regularly.

Click on the webpages to find out the latest news and information, including new Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on:

• Timing of the Kent Voluntary Severance Scheme
• Engagement and consultation periods
• Equality Impact Assessments

Calling all early career research staff at Kent!  You told us that “Research staff fall through the cracks”.  Help us stop this from happening in the future.  Have your say in the Careers in Research Online Survey (CROS) from 1 May 2019.

CROS runs nationally every two years for early career research staff. CROS is your chance to tell Kent about your views and experiences. Key benefits of CROS are:

• The information you provide will be used to inform policy and practice around employment, management and researcher development: this should benefit not only you, but also have long-lasting impact for future researchers.
• A clearer picture of Kent’s progress towards implementing the principles of the Concordat to support Researchers; and on how we are meeting our Athena Swan goals, to continue to improve our gender equality support for early career research staff.
• A good response rate and national benchmarking will provide leverage for future changes at Kent.

CROS is anonymous. It is managed by Vitae and hosted on Online Surveys, a secure web environment.

Is the survey targeted at you? Vitae’s definition of early career research staff is:

“Researchers are […] individuals whose primary responsibility is to conduct research and who are employed for this purpose. It is recognised that this broad category of staffing covers a wide range of staff with different disciplinary backgrounds, levels of training, experience and responsibility, types of contract (fixed or open-ended, full- or part-time), and different career expectations and intentions.  However, […] there are likely to be early career staff who may be sustaining their research activity through a series of teaching or other professional contracts.” (2015)

If you have any queries about the survey, contact Dr Jo Collins (Postgraduate Development Advisor), j.p.collins@kent.ac.uk.

CROS closes on 31 May.2019.

Kent Hospitality summer housekeeping are recruiting team members for Canterbury campus accommodation. Candidates should be available to work between 10 June and 15 September 2019.

Successful candidates will need to be flexible regarding working days and hours. Some weekend working is required; you must be available to work on Saturday 15 and Sunday 16 June 2019.

Rates are:

• £8.82 p/hr 16 – 24 years old
• £9.41 p/hr 25 years and over (Living Wage)

Successful applicants will be required to:

• Attend an interview on Monday 20 or Tuesday 21 May 2019.
• Attend a three hour Health and Safety induction on Monday 3 or Tuesday 4 June. 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 work in the week commencing 10 June 2019 (minimum of two shifts for training).

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

Closing date for applications: 30 April 2019 (or earlier if we receive a large number of applications).

The Kent Hospitality HR department will then email you by Tuesday 7 May to let you know whether or not your application has been successful. You will then be invited to an interview at which you will need to provide documentation to confirm your eligibility to work in the UK.

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.

From Sunday 28 April Stagecoach are changing the price of some of their bus tickets.

Changes to fares that affect the University of Kent are listed in the table below:

Don’t forget that it is cheaper to purchase bus tickets on the Stagecoach bus app. Load and pay for your tickets and then activate them when you get on the bus.

The Stagecoach bus app also allows you to check live bus times and create favourites for bus stops and buses to make your journey planning easier.

See the full Stagecoach story for all fare changes.

Professor David Chadwick had the opportunity to prove himself as one of the most popular scientists in the UK in I’m a Scientist, Get Me Out of Here!. The Professor of Information Systems Security from the School of Computing reached the final three in his area of the competition after other scientists were voted out.

I’m a Scientist… is an online activity for school students to connect with scientists. It is an X Factor-style competition between scientists, where students are the judges. Students challenge the scientists over fast-paced online text-based live chats. They can ask anything they want, and vote for their favourite scientist to win a prize of £500 to communicate their work with the public.

David said: “I really enjoyed taking part in the competition and would encourage any of my colleagues to do the same. I took part in the relationship zone, which was primarily for psychologists but overlaps with my area of expertise in cyber security, eg, how do you know who you are really talking to over the Internet, via Facebook or other social media? The next event is happening in June and it’s a great way to interact with young people who are curious about the world around them.”

You can review David’s profile and see the questions and his answers at: https://relationshipsm19.imascientist.org.uk/profile/davidchadwick/

Scientists interested in taking part in future events can find out more at: https://imascientist.org.uk/2019/03/whats-been-happening-in-im-a-scientist-the-online-science-engagement-event/