At this time of the year, as students move out of their off-campus accommodation, litter can build up in our community. We want to make sure we leave Canterbury clean and as such we are organising a community litter pick!

Clean and green environments can nurture positive mental and physical wellbeing and promote a happier community. A litter-free place reduces damage to local habitats, and by recycling materials that might otherwise become litter, natural resources are also protected.

This links with goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities and goal 15: Life on Land on the UN sustainability goals.

Find out more about this community litter pick on our events page here.

You can sign up individually or with your team by emailing communityliaison@kent.ac.uk. All gloves, litter pickers and bags are provided, and you can come along for as long or as little as you want!

We hope you can come with us to protect our local environment and develop the excellent relationship we have with our neighbours off-campus.

Join colleagues from a range of research and innovation roles at the University of Kent for this one-day opportunity to share expertise and experiences.

Time and place

The conference will take place on Tuesday 5 July, Templeman Library, Canterbury campus.

What to expect at the conference

Lunch and refreshments will be provided for all delegates as well as opportunities to meet with colleagues from across the University.

A fascinating range of presentations, workshops and discussions, from our professional and academic colleagues, will help you to discover new opportunities and find out about different ways of working, including:

• Building a positive research and innovation culture at the University of Kent
• Understanding the Knowledge Exchange Framework and how this applies to our institution
• Discovering the expertise that technical, and other professional roles, can bring to funded research projects
• Attitudes to the role of part time and flexible working in Higher Education, and how this looks at the University of Kent
• How members of the public, including professional staff, can get involved in designing and carrying out research.

How to book your free place

All staff who support or have an interest in research and innovation across the university are invited, but we particularly welcome staff in professional support roles.

Book your free place via Eventbrite by Tuesday 28 June.

Contact us

Email the organising committee with your comments or questions.

How we communicate and present ourselves to the outside world is more and more important in the increasingly competitive environment we work in. More than ever, we need to make sure the University stands out, creates impact, and that we way we talk about what we do really shows who we are and what we stand for. 

The imagery we use, the colours and fonts we employ and the design of our marketing materials are all part of how we convey who we are. However, this is also about the identity that’s shared by so many across the University – from student societies to research communications, student recruitment to staff engagement. With it being almost a decade since Kent last refreshed its look and feel, this is time to consolidate our identity with something that all audiences can feel proud of and that brings us all together as one University. 

Your feedback is key! 

Throughout the work to refresh our brand, we have been seeking views from different stakeholders on what most resonates with them – including current and prospective students. The cross-University working group steering this has drawn upon the in-depth research last year into the themes of Connection, Collaboration and Community that run through our work , while also carefully thinking through how our new position fits with our evolving global perspective. 

Now we need to hear from all of you about how our new direction is coming together to help shape things further before we launch our updated look and feel in September.  

We want as many staff and students as possible to come along to our Brand Roadshow, with events in Canterbury and Medway. There is also an online-only version for those who can’t attend in person. 

We want our new direction to work for everyone and celebrate the best of who we are – getting your feedback is key to that so we hope to see as many of you as possible this week! 

Share your views at our Brand Roadshow events 

Canterbury: Templeman Library Foyer between 10:00-15:00 on Thursday 16 June and Friday 17 June. 

Medway: Student Hub social space between 11:00-14:00 on Thursday 16 June.  

Brussels and Paris: Simone Davies, Director of Marketing, Outreach, Recruitment and Admissions will be holding a drop-in on our Brussels campus on Wednesday 15 June and a drop-in on our Paris campus on Thursday 16 June. If you have any questions please visit Simone on these dates. 

From Tuesday 31 May, the old part of Registry building has become temporarily closed due to rewiring works.

The Registry extension remains open, including the visitor’s reception, which is staffed by Jenny Overy on Tuesdays, Thursday and Friday. You can contact Jenny at Regreception@kent.ac.uk.  The Registry is expected to fully reopen in the new year.

Departments who have moved out of the Registry are now based in the following buildings:

Darwin

• Finance

Rutherford

• Central Student Administration
• Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity
• Governance and Assurance
• Human Resources
• Office of the Vice-Chancellor
• University Operations

There are two receptions in Rutherford. The main reception is staffed by the University Operations team and is open 8.30 – 17.00, Monday – Friday.  Staff radios can be collected from this reception. You can communicate with the main reception at Rutherford_reception@kent.ac.uk

The Central Student Administration reception is open from Monday to Friday, 9.00 – 17.00. Students can continue to visit this reception for replacement ID card collection, stamps for official documents, student record queries, (supplementary) status letter collection and to collect their Biometric Residence Permits (BRPs).

We have continued to listen to feedback, engage with colleagues, and design system improvements to ensure that KentVision improves a variety of processes as its implementation continues.

We have confirmed the immediate and future SITS features and functionality required with diverse stakeholder groups. The KentVision Delivery team has continued delivering the agreed enhancements, features, and functionality to meet the short-term academic calendar timelines.

Functional Area Working Groups

To ensure colleagues views and recommendations are fully considered, the KentVision Board established six Functional Area Working Groups to enable and track feedback from a variety of teams across the University. This has enabled the team to best prioritise future improvements to the system.

Functional Group members represent a mixture of colleagues from Divisions, professional services and central teams and are split across the following operational areas:

• Statutory and Core student record
• Admissions, Clearing and Recruitment
• Assessment
• Finance
• PGR
• Student Activity and Experience

The work of the Functional Groups, with the support of an independent SITS consultant, has enabled us to fully assess and prioritise the requirements of future improvements to help move forward key areas of work, reprioritising our plan where required in response to our changing circumstances. We will be updating colleagues on this delivery schedule for 2022 during June.

Our technology teams have been very busy in the background working to enhance various pieces of functionality, via a series of technology improvements, throughout the last year and we would like to share an update on our most recent deployment:

Assessments – Board of Examiners Meetings

The KV delivery team have worked hard with colleagues to gather as much feedback as possible to improve the Board of Examiners Meetings functionality – we have taken this feedback and held extensive discussions with staff through a series of workshops facilitated by our business analysts and developers.

The improvements that were recently deployed to live functionality have been widely praised by staff – with positive feedback received from our Show and Tell sessions. The improvements will help enhance processes – and deliver a better experience for our staff and our students. This year, we will gather live feedback during Boards so we can make fixes and enhance the functionality to prepare for future improvements in this area.

• Significant development across all aspects of the board process following detailed user feedback. Functionality deployed to the live environment with a read-only version of board to be released.
• Reconfigured board screens to ensure faster processing times for Divisions – enabling a smoother user experience.
• A detailed results letter review was conducted with divisions and central teams; new templates created for agreed progression outcomes.
• Significant changes to post-board processing functionality for central teams enabling a defined process and wider use by team members.
• New end-to-end process in KentVision from mitigation committee through to internal, main, and post-board changes. All note recordings (module actions and outcome recommendations) are now recorded within the system.

These improvements are the culmination of months of hard work behind the scenes, and we commend everyone involved for their work -especially the users of the system dedicating time to ensure improvements are realised.

Next Steps?

• Technology and process improvements are to continue with deployments scheduled through June and July.
• A staged approach and timeline for delivery during 2022, of the far-ranging and numerous improvements, will be shared in June.
• Detailed business readiness activities, including transition plans and training and communication.
• Continuous updates on how our improvements, plans and communications are informed by feedback from our students and staff.

Article from Josh Turner, Community Life Officer:

This year we are working to communicate with our students early to ensure when they leave their privately rented homes, they have as little negative impact on the local community as possible.

We are working with local charitable partners including British Heart Foundation, to encourage our students to donate and avoid unnecessary waste.

Furthermore, Kent Union provide fantastic services including Freecycle and Student Food Bank, supporting the current and future students studying at Kent.

Canterbury City Council is also running a two week Bin Amnesty, where additional black bags of general waste will be collected with the usual collections. To communicate this we will be holding two Neighbourhood Days where we door-knock in areas which are highly populated by students to ensure students and residents are ready, as well as communicating through blogs and social media.

We appreciate that when moving out, extra rubbish can be generated but we want to work to reduce any impact on the local community.

Working in partnerships, we are helping making it easy to get rid of unwanted items through:

• Bin Amnesty: In central Canterbury, thanks to the Canterbury City Council and Canenco, there will be a bin amnesty from Monday the 20 June to Friday 1 July where all rubbish left out in key areas will be picked up as part of a weekly collection.
• We are teaming up with the British Heart Foundation to make it easy for students to donate unwanted possessions to this fantastic cause.
• Promoting the central donation services provided by Kent Union, including the Foodbank and Freecycle service.
• Promoting local removal and disposal services in Kent.
• Planning local litter picking volunteering opportunities for students on Monday 6 June and Monday 13 June.

If you have any concerns throughout this busy move-out period, you can get in touch with our Community Life Officer for support.

For more information email Josh on communityliaison@kent.ac.uk

Calling all academics!

Join our workshop, ‘Generating and Capturing Impact Through Strong Stakeholder Relationships’, held on our Canterbury campus on Wednesday 22 June,  from 12.00 – 14.00.

This face-to-face workshop and is aimed at helping you understand why sustainable relationships with stakeholders are important for evidence gathering. We will identify how to build such relationships and speak about engaging with end users in order to extend your networks and to maximise your research impact.

The workshop will help you to:

• Understand the importance of strong relationships with stakeholders and how to maintain them
• Understand how to widen your impact network through key stakeholders and engage with end users
• Understand how to set out expectations with stakeholders from the onset to maximise impact capture
• Access support and resources, including the Research Impact KURIE Moodle

Pre-booking is essential as this is an interactive workshop with breakout sessions and places are limited.

Programme:

• Introduction – Claire Perera, Research Excellence Team
• On the evolution of strong, sustainable stakeholder networks and their importance for evidencing impact – Professor Darren Griffin, School of Biosciences
• Interactive Breakout Session: Extending networks and thinking about engaging with end users – Dr Ann Kinzer, Research Excellence Team
• Using Logframes for Measuring Impact and Embedding Evidence Capture into Collaborative Processes – Sunder Mahendra, Research Excellence Team
• Maintaining Stakeholder Relations – Simon Barnes, Knowledge Exchange and Innovation

Visit the Research Policy and Support webpage to book your place.