The TESSA deadline is approaching!

Last year, we introduced the TESSAs. These Teaching Enhancement Small Support Awards are intended for any Kent colleagues who are interested in encouraging and enabling teaching and learning innovation; or who have a great idea that would improve the quality of teaching, teaching-related activity, support for teaching, or the student learning experience at Kent.

You can apply for funding of between £500 and £3,000, with up to £5,000 on offer for large, high-impact, collaborative projects operating across Schools and ideally in more than one Faculty, or across Schools and PSDs. All colleagues who contribute to teaching, learning or teaching support are eligible to apply – you don’t have to be an academic, or based in a School.

The closing date for the second round of applications this year, and the fourth round overall, is 12 noon on Tuesday 14 May 2019. This is for projects to start during the summer of 2019 or in the Autumn Term 2019-20; and we will tell you the results by Tuesday 28 May. If you are interested in applying, but for a project to start in the Spring Term 2019-20 or later, don’t worry – there will be another round of applications in Autumn 2019.

You can find out more, and download the short application form for a TESSA here – successful applicants have been very generous in allowing us to add their forms to the website, so you can see some strong applications, and work out if you can link up with someone doing a project similar to the one you are planning.

Please send us your applications and help improve the quality and enjoyment of education and the student learning experience here at Kent! If you have questions, please get in touch with April (A.M.S.McMahon@kent.ac.uk) or Jess (J.R.W.Sutherland@kent.ac.uk).

Floors 2 and 3 in Block B in the Templeman Library will be closed 09:00-18:00 on Monday 8 April while essential building work is carried out.

Access to books and services

• Classmarks: B, J, K, L, M, N
• Study carrels on Floor 2 and 3

If you need books or journals from Floors 2 or 3 please talk to staff at the IT & Library Support Desk on Floor 1 in Block C.  They will be able to check the availability of the item and arrange to fetch it for you. Books will be collected from B2 and B3 hourly, so there may be a delay in retrieving your item(s).

Study carrels will be checked and closed 08:00 before the work begins. Please return carrel keys to the Welcome Desk by 08:00.

Work on Floor 2 may finish earlier in the day. If this is the case every effort will be made to reopen the Floor as soon as it is safe to do so.

If you have any problems please talk to staff at the IT & Library Support Desk or contact their Welcome Desk (01227) 82 4777.

With the European market making up 19% of the Global Information Technology industry’s £3.8 trillion value in 2019, keeping up with the latest technological and innovation-related trends is crucial in developing and maintaining a successful business – and that is exactly what the #DigitalReboot Disruptive Digital Conference was all about!

The #DigitalReboot Disruptive Digital Conference funded by Santander Universities, was a free local event held on 27 February 2019. The aim of the event was to provide students, graduates and local individuals with expert knowledge in the UK’s fast-growing tech industry. Over 80 attendees were present at the event, creating a space for individuals from different academic and business backgrounds to socialise and create potential relationships with another as well as benefiting from listening to a series of expert speakers from different respective fields.

The conference focused on a key number of topics including how to digitalise your future, learning from one of the UK’s fastest growing tech companies, understanding how to keep tech trends diverse & inclusive, exploring the expectations of a modern workforce, reflecting on our engagement with tech and embracing the Cyber Challenge by surviving & thriving in a hostile cyber environment.

After the speakers gave their talks, attendees had the opportunity to ask questions to the speakers themselves as a specific time was allocated to a Q&A panel. Once the event finished, attendees helped themselves to some souvenirs to take home with them as a ‘thank you’ to the participation of the attendees from the organisers of the event.

Alumna Christina Irwin, who graduated with a BA (Hons) in History and Philosophy of Art in 2016, has recently gained a position on the Graffiti Project, part of a Canterbury Journey project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and based at Canterbury Cathedral, which is currently seeking new volunteers.

The Canterbury Journey aims to engage new, hard to reach and diverse audiences through a volunteer programme that develops and interprets Cathedral collections. The Graffiti Project is an initiative that engages volunteers in recording marks found in the eastern crypt, etchings of lost voices from the medieval world.

‘This is such a valuable project,’ explains Christina, ‘I am acquiring new skills at one of the world’s most significant  heritage sites, learning about historic collection practices and interpretation while meeting new people and sharing a passion with Cathedral professionals, volunteers and the public. It is exciting being part of this project which will become part of the Cathedral archive collections. I feel privileged to be part of this story.’

The graffiti tells us of religious devotion, fear of damnation, of love and of humour. Unlike contemporary graffiti or street art mostly seen as anti-social vandalism, medieval graffiti incised or scratched through vibrantly painted surfaces stood out clearly and would have been easily noticed suggesting that these images were totally accepted, these marks have meaning and function. There are prayers, devotional and votive, memorials, ritual apotropaic marks, compass drawn geometric designs, and five-pointed stars or pentangles, the symbol representing mathematical perfection in Ancient Greece, in abundance. There is relatively little published material about this subject and the imagery of the medieval parishioner is steeped in folklore and superstition, challenging the search for meaning.

The many voluntary opportunities can be found here.

The University of Kent Players would like to invite you to a script reading social on Monday 8 April at 17.30. The script we will be reading is Bothered and Bewildered, which we will be performing in September at the Gulbenkian.

Grimond Seminar room 3 has been booked from 17.00, with the script reading starting at 17.30. This session will be an opportunity for people to sit together reading through the script aloud. Each person will have the opportunity to play a different role, and sometimes several roles. This will be an informal session and there will be some soft drinks and snacks available.

This session is for actors interested in auditioning (or for those who just fancy a chilled out social), decisions on casting will not be made from this session. Information about the production and auditions can be found here.

Directions: Entering the Grimond building turn left down the corridor. The room is at the end of the corridor on the left.

Synopsis of the Play:

Bothered and Bewildered is a comic drama that follows Irene and her two daughters Louise and Beth as they begin a long journey in which the girls lose their mum in spirit but not in body. As her family struggle to come to terms with her Alzheimer’s, Irene’s past passion for romantic fiction blurs with reality. She discusses with her unseen and witty companion Barbara Cartland (Irene’s favourite and now deceased world famous romantic novelist) how best to write her ‘memory book’, disclosing to Barbara long kept family secrets that she would never reveal to anyone else.

We hope to see you there!