Dave Thomas, a PhD candidate within our Centre for the Study of Higher Education, has been inducted into the American Association of Colleges and Universities Future Leaders Society.  

Dave, who is also an EDI adviser and an associate lecturer at Kent, was invited to join the Future Leaders Society after becoming a finalist for the prestigious K Patricia Cross Award. The award recognises graduate students who “show exemplary promise as future leaders of higher education and who are committed to academic innovation in the areas of equity, community engagement, and teaching and learning.”

Each year, the award attracts hundreds of nominations from across disciplines. Dave is the only student from a university outside of the USA to be selected this year. Since he began his part-time doctoral studies in Higher Education in 2017, Dave has amassed an exceptional record of achievements including:

• engagement of student and staff communities at Kent through the Decolonise UKC initiative and the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) Staff Network
• local community engagement that strengthened connections between African and Caribbean heritage residents in the Medway region and the University of Kent
• research on race equality and enhancing teaching and learning in higher education, particularly for minoritised students
• and service across the UK higher education sector on race equality. 

During Dave’s doctorate, he contributed as a student success professional at Kent before recently taking up appointments as a Senior Advisor for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at Advance HE and Associate Lecturer in the Kent and Medway Medical School.

Professor Richard Reece, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Education and Student Experience, says: ‘It is excellent news that Dave’s substantial accomplishments have been recognised.  He will be able to exchange expertise with American colleagues on this very important aspect of higher education as he continues to grow as a leader in HE here in the UK.’

Colleagues involved in teaching or supporting student learning are invited to submit proposals for workshops, discussion papers, mini-presentations, or posters for the 2022 Learning and Teaching Conference. Contributions should address the theme, “Rethinking assessment and feedback designs for learning enhancement”, and be received by 28 February 2022. The full call, including the proposal submission form, is available via this blog.

How we design assessments and opportunities for students to gather and act on feedback are critically important aspects of teaching practice.  Assessment design is a key point of leverage for enhancing education because many students strategically focus on it, and it is obligatory. Feedback can be one of the most powerful ways of enhancing students’ learning if students are prepared to seek out and use all available sources of feedback to improve their subsequent work. We invite contributions that address assessment and feedback in various ways or contexts, for example:

• Diversifying assessments as part of diversifying the curriculum for cultural and racial inclusivity
• Gamification
• Digital tools for automating or innovating processes
• Using questions and unmarked tasks strategically and systematically to enhance seminars, labs or lectures
• Authentic assessments
• Wider audiences for student work, such as presentations or performances for the community or business stakeholders
• Promoting self-feedback or peer feedback
• Noticing, interpreting, and making changes based on feedback from technologies of the discipline (e.g. lab equipment readings, results of computer code, sense-making of statistical data and outputs)
• Innovative use of materials, spaces, or technologies
• Co-curricular, partnership, work-based, or employability activities

The conference will be held on Monday, 20 June 2022 in Darwin Conference Suite. Sign up to attend. Questions can be emailed to heprogsadmin@kent.ac.uk.      

Professor Paul Allain and Dr Alison Charles with Divisional and central colleagues will be holding the webinar, ‘Responding to the challenge of the Researcher Development Concordat at Kent, on 15 February 2022, 14.00-15.00.

As a signatory of the Researcher Development Concordat since June 2020, the University supports its principles as part of our commitment to create the very best culture for our researchers.

Join us to learn about the wide-ranging work which is being undertaken to realise these aims. Contribute to the debate about how best to implement the Concordat principles across Kent.

The session will consist of a short overview of the context, progress to date and our current plans, followed by a discussion and Q&A about how we might implement the Concordat principles, including 10 days’ professional development pro rata per year for staff who research.

All academic and research staff and professional services staff who support them are very welcome.

There is no need to book – access the Microsoft Teams link via SharePoint (Kent staff login required.)

This webinar will be recorded and available to watch on demand with a Kent staff login.

Are you a Postdoctoral Research Associate (PDRA), Research Assistant (RA) or Research Associate interested in developing your project and people management skills? Did you know you can apply to run your own independent project and win funding worth up to £2500 to work with an undergraduate intern for 4-7 weeks on your research?

The Summer Vacation Research Competition will run for the fifth time in 2022 with funding available for 9 different summer vacation research projects, each of which could be associated with a particular Division and/or Signature Research Theme.

The competition models grant writing and application processes, allowing you to design an independent research project, gain a mentor, receive training and be involved with shortlisting, interviewing and managing a RA, project and budget.

Feedback from postdoc participants is extremely positive with one commenting: “This experience has been invaluable and has made a massive contribution to my development as an early career researcher. I feel more confident in writing funding applications, recruitment, supervision, and leading research independently.” Learn more about the competition and hear from other winners by viewing the recording of our recent ‘Valuing, supporting and developing our postdocs’ event – please access the link via SharePoint (Kent staff login required) and scroll down – the SVRC element begins at 00:25.

Reflecting on the benefits of participation, Dr Jennifer Leigh, the event’s co-founder with Dr Helen Leech, said: “The positive impact on successful applicants is self-evident and can include increased productivity and outputs, non-research skills acquisition and kick-started career planning.

One PDRA told us “I got more work done on this project in 6 weeks than I would have done in a year of working in my own time” and many others have credited the competition with the opportunity, practice and support to make successful applications for funding and fellowships, and to apply for permanent roles.”

Details of how to apply, including the application form, are available via SharePoint (Kent staff login required). The closing date for applications is 11 February 2022. An informal virtual Q&A session about the competition will take place on 3 February, 2022 from 13.00-14.00 (further details in this blogpost) or please email svrc@kent.ac.uk with any queries in the meantime.

Good luck with your application!

** Submissions have now closed.**

Are you a hobby artist? Do you love to paint and draw? Are you a photographer or a digital artist?

Be part of our LGBTQ+: Politics in Art exhibition

As part of LGBT History Month (February 2022), we are looking to commission seven pieces of art by LGBTQ+ student and staff artists about their experiences in lockdown; the emotions, the feelings, the positives and the negatives. These can be any format, for example a painting, photograph, digital image, collage, poem or piece of writing.

All pieces will form part of the LGBTQ+: Politics in Art exhibition, which will be displayed in the Keynes College Atrium throughout February 2022. 

Student Services will be offering £300 for each piece, plus £50 towards the cost of materials.

Submission requirements

• Each piece must be able to be wall hung (unfortunately we cannot support video or sound projection submissions).
• Each piece must reflect either your personal, or the LGBTQ+ community experience of being in lockdown – be that positive or negative.
• Each piece must be completed by the end of January 2022 and with us, ready for installation on the 31 January 2022.
• The artists should identify within the LGBTQ+ community.

If you have an existing work of art that you feel meets the brief then you are able to submit that.

The seven available spaces will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.

Get in touch

If you are interested in submitting a piece for the exhibition, please contact Becky Lamyman, Student EDI Officer on rsl7@kent.ac.uk ASAP or by 21 January 2022.

For more information, or if you have any queries, please get in contact with Becky.

From Frank Richardson, Director of Finance

The University’s Annual Report for 2020/21 has now been published and provides an overview of the financial performance for the year ended 31 July 2021 accompanied by the audited financial statements. Ahead of a Staff Webchat on this, where Jane Higham and I will talk through the statements in a bit more detail and answer any questions you may have, I thought it would be helpful to give a quick summary. 

Last year presented truly unprecedented financial challenges due in part to the unique and unpredictable spending patterns we saw as a result of the impact of the pandemic. Thanks to an enormous effort by colleagues across the University, we were able to manage this uncertainty and generate a small one-off surplus. This has provided a contingency buffer in the event of further financial impacts from Covid-19.

We are also able to make some repayments to our lenders ahead of schedule, ensuring their continued confidence in us and supporting us on the path to being free of these obligations as quickly as possible.  This includes being clear on the need to continue to balance this with reinvestment in Kent’s future. 

Financial Improvement Plan 

Work to deliver the Financial Improvement Plan continues with a focus on ensuring Kent attracts  and delivers rewarding education experiences to sufficient numbers of high quality students in order to ensure our ongoing financial resilience in the face of any future uncertainty. This includes focusing on keeping Divisions on track with sustainability targets, while working together to identify areas which are best suited to growth and further investment 

For the current year, we are on track to achieve our student income targets although some areas have had a more challenging time than others. We are also on track to achieve the budgeted outcome and have been further boosted by the recent award of £1.2m of capital investment from the Office for Students, which is being used to improve facilities for Image Rendering, High Performance Computing and improvements to Computing, Engineering and Natural Science Laboratories. 

Staff Webchat  

You can find out more about our finances for last year and plans for the year ahead at our Staff Webchat on Friday 28 January from 12.00-13.00.  

Sign up now for the webchat via this Forms link.

The Talent and Organisational Development (T&OD) team are happy to share the following upcoming training opportunities, all of which are bookable via Staff Connect:

Note Taking Sessions available:

• Thursday 27 January, 9.30 – 12.30
• Thursday 27 January, 13.30 – 15.30

Mental Health Training – there’s a number of mental health training sessions available:

•  Intro to Mental Health and Wellbeing on the 19 January
• Mental Health Awareness on the 9 February
• Managing Mental Health on the 10 February

  Crucial Conversations Refresher:

• Wednesday 2 February, 14.30 – 16.30

For further information, please visit Staff Connect, or contact the Team: ldev@kebt.ac.uk

To ensure that all staff are aware of the opportunities available to them the T&OD team have launched their SharePoint to all staff which is populated with useful information, templates and course outlines.  

Obituary written by Professor Alan Chadwick

The University was very sorry to hear of the death of Dick Jones, Emeritus Professor of Polymer Science, who was an active member of the University’s academic community for 50 years and an internationally respected chemist.

Richard Glyn Jones was born on 27 September 1939 in England and whilst he was still a young boy his family emigrated to New Zealand. He graduated with a MSc in Chemistry from the University of Wellington in 1962 and returned to England to study for a PhD at the University of Leeds. His supervisor was Fred Dainton, later Lord Dainton, who led a world-leading research group in radiation and polymer science.

He obtained his PhD in 1966 with a thesis entitled “The ferric chloride photosensitised polymerisation of acrylonitrile in dimethylformamide”, after which he was appointed Lecturer in Applied Chemistry at Lanchester Polytechnic, latterly Coventry University. In 1970 he was appointed a Lecturer in Chemistry at Kent and given special responsibility to develop a new course, Applied Chemistry with Control engineering (ACCE), in liaison with the School of Electronics.

Dick’s research into mechanisms of polymerisation has ranged from fundamental studies of charge-transfer interactions of monomers and radical initiators through to the mechanisms underlying the functioning of photo- and electron beam resists. This interest led to 10-year collaboration with the Japanese Government Agency, NEDO, during the 1990s for research into the mechanisms of the synthesis of polysilanes and their derivatives and a world leading reputation for Kent in resists.

His research activities involved the award of numerous grants with a total value well in excess of £1 million, the publication of over 120 papers, numerous invited lectures, and he supervised the research of some 30 chemists, mostly to higher degrees. Within the University Dick very successfully took on many positions. For many years, he was the deputy master of Keynes College. In 1997, the Schools of Chemistry and Physics merged to form the School of Physical Sciences under Professor Bob Newport as Head of School. Dick took on this role for four years from 2000 and continued the work of amalgamating the two cultures and maintaining the courses. He founded the Functional Materials Research Group, which encouraged collaboration between chemists and physicists.

It was Dick’s initiative to introduce the Forensic Science course that is now very popular with applicants and is consistently in the top 10 of league tables. He continued to support the course by funding the Richard Jones Prizes for the best undergraduate prizes. Dick was a very energetic member of the national and international chemistry community. Nationally he was a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Society of Chemical Industries committees for polymers and materials, and was a member of the EPSRC Peer Review College. Internationally he had collaborative projects with groups in Europe, North America and Japan.

For over 20 years, he was member of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), the body responsible for nomenclature and definitions.  In this role, he chaired the Polymer Division, led several projects and was lead author of the paper that defined the naming of macromolecular materials. The high level of respect he gained in IUPAC resulted in a special issue of the journal Polymer International on his retirement. Dick achieved two ambitions that were close to his heart.

Firstly, he aimed to create the conditions that his students could work well. Secondly, he wanted everyone to share his love for the music of Chopin. His records at Kent and with U3A are testament to his efforts. He leaves a gap in the life of SPS and will be fondly remembered by all who knew him. We express our condolences to his dedicated partner David and to his family.

From Professor Richard Reece, Deputy Vice-Chancellor – Education & Student Experience

A warm welcome back to all of you who have returned to work this week – I hope you all had a chance to unwind over the Winter Break, and that your plans were largely able to go ahead as intended. My thanks also to all of those who remained working on campus over the break to support the 500 or so students who remained with us. 

Following yesterday afternoon’s Government announcements on the ongoing Covid-19 guidance, I wanted to send a quick reminder to everyone of where things are as we head into the next term. There has been lots of attention on the rise in case numbers nationally, which I know will be concerning for many – I want to reassure you that the safety and wellbeing of our entire community has always been, and will continue to be, our key concern. We will also be holding a Staff Webchat to discuss all of this in more detail on Friday 14 January at 2pm ahead of the start of term – you can sign up for this online. 

Working from home 

The current guidance remains that everyone not involved in the delivery and support of teaching and direct student services or research should continue to work from home until 26 January where possible. Non-essential on-campus meetings or gatherings should also be avoided. 

Teaching in the Spring Term 

As you know, in the Autumn term, we held face-to-face teaching sessions for seminars, tutorials, lab classes, etc but retained the majority of our lectures in an online form. We have committed to provide students with face-to-face lectures in the Spring term, and the Government continues to stress the importance of this in their sector-specific guidance. While the situation is far from straightforward, this is still our intention – we are also taking the associated safety aspects very seriously, including undertaking risk assessments to ensure each area is safe, and reducing lecture theatre capacity in a number of cases to ensure appropriate ventilation.  

Together with the expectation for all staff and students to test regularly and to wear face masks in our buildings, and particularly during teaching sessions, I am confident that returning to in-person lectures is the right thing to do at this stage. We will, of course, continue to closely monitor case numbers locally. 

Face coverings 

Everyone on campus is still expected to wear face coverings in places where social distancing can’t be maintained such as in teaching spaces and communal areas, unless they have a medical exemption. In most cases, those teaching classes will not need to wear face coverings as they will have room to be socially distanced at the front of the class. 

Elsewhere, face coverings should also be worn in shared offices and other indoor spaces where it is not possible to maintain social distancing. 

Together with the expectation for all staff and students to test regularly and to wear face masks in our buildings, including students during teaching sessions, I am confident that returning to in-person lectures is the right thing to do at this stage. We will, of course, continue to closely monitor case numbers locally. 

Testing  

Those coming onto campus should continue to test regularly and report your results to the NHS online. Take-home lateral flow tests are currently available for those on campus from either Campus Security or Templeman Library Deliveries entrance on Library Road – they will shortly be available more widely, with a further update to follow on other locations. If you do test positive for Covid, please inform us by emailing CovidSupport@kent.ac.uk and also let your manager know as soon as possible while you isolate. 

Ongoing support 

Both the national picture and the continued uncertainty as a result is difficult for all of us and it is really important you can access support when you need it. If you are worried or need further support, please do speak with your line manager or email CovidSupport@kent.ac.uk. You can also get free, confidential advice at any time via our Employee Assistance Programme. 

Thank you once again to all of you for the huge efforts I know all are making to keep things going while keeping everyone safe. We will continue to closely monitor the situation and I will provide a further update later in the month ahead of the current restrictions ending. 

Richard 

Professor Richard Reece | DVC Education & Student Experience

As part of our statutory requirements to the Prevent Duty, Higher Education institutions are required to provide staff with Prevent awareness training.

Prevent is an aspect of the University’s Safeguarding and Duty of Care Policy, and we encourage all staff to complete this e-learning module, which can be found on Moodle. This new e-learning module will give staff an introduction to Prevent, our local risk context in Kent and Medway, and advice on what to do with a Prevent related concern. If you have any problems accessing this module, please contact ldev@kent.ac.uk .

Alongside this module, the University continues to provide Prevent Safeguarding Awareness training for student facing staff facilitated by the Centre for Child Protection using the simulation Behind Closed Doors. For more information on these training sessions, please contact Emma Soutar e.soutar@kent.ac.uk .