Kent Sport is launching a brand-new suite of virtual instructor classes (VIC), starting on 30 January 2023. Les Mills classes bring you virtual instruction in a physical setting, based in the fitness and dance studio at Kent Sport.

Classes are scientifically designed to get results and improve physical agility and resilience. Hailed as one of the best fitness programmes, Les Mills offers a diverse range of virtual instructor classes for all abilities, in an exciting and cinematic environment.  Streaming throughout the day, VIC will run in conjunction with in-person classes, right here on-site. So, no more working out in your home gym, aka the lounge!

Upcoming classes include:

• BODYPUMP™
• BODYCOMBAT™
• BODYBALANCE™
• BODYATTACK™
• CORE™
• RPM™
• SH’BAM™
• GRIT™
• THE TRIP™
• BARRE™
• SPRINT™

Read our blog to find out more about Les Mills, the classes on offer, and how you can take part. Book all virtual and in-person instructor classes through your booking account as normal.

Not a Kent Sport member? You can still access classes with our range of membership options, including our Pay to Play option. Or join now and receive 20% off until 28 February 2023!

ICCI and Kent School of Architecture & Design are partnering with The Design Museum in a new series of conversations with eminent and inspirational designers.

The first event will feature Yinka Ilora on Tuesday 24 January, 18:30 – 19:40, livestream in Marlowe Lecture Theatre 1. This event is free and all you need to do is turn up – no need to register.

Yinka Ilori’s bold visual aesthetic draws on his British-Nigerian heritage and injects vivid colour and dynamic geometries into projects as diverse as architecture, furniture, and fashion.
Ilori’s work represents a commitment to design that promotes joyful optimism and advocates for the next generation.

Reflecting on works in Parable for Happiness, currently on display at the Design Museum, London, Ilori and the curator Priya Khanchandani unpack his distinctive visual identity.
Discussing the relationship between form and function, art and design, the pair explore methods for inspiring creativity and hope.

What are Progress Profiles?

A Progress Profile is a web app that graphically displays a student’s academic progress. Every Kent undergraduate student will have a Progress Profile. They display attendance and marks in an easy to evaluate format to quickly identify strengths, areas for focus and patterns that might otherwise be obscured. The reports now access KentVision data and have been enhanced to show even more detail such as resit and repeat information.

Why are they important?

Students have told us that sometimes it’s hard to know how well their studies are going. We created Progress Profiles to give a clear picture of your performance across every stage of the degree journey. If you are an Academic Adviser or Senior Tutor you will be able to see the reports of all your advisees. We all know how important it is for students to have regular conversations about their studies with an Academic Adviser and Progress Profiles can help focus and augment these conversations.

Progress Profiles can be accessed directly from the top banner of the Student Guide.

For any queries relating to access to, or content of, Progress Profiles, please contact the Information Services Helpdesk: helpdesk@kent.ac.uk

For further information or to provide feedback on Progress Profiles please contact the Student Success Team studentsuccessproject@kent.ac.uk.

Are you a volunteer or are you interested in volunteering? If so, help us shape the Kent Staff Volunteering Scheme by coming along to a workshop and sharing your ideas with us!

Canterbury   11.00-12.30    Senate Committee Room 1             26^th January 2023

Medway       10.30-12.00    Rochester Board Room R2-09 (TBC)      2^nd February 2023

Even if you can only pop in for 5 minutes please come along and give us your suggestions. If you can’t make it, share what you do and any ideas that you have at Kent Volunteers.

The Kent Staff Volunteering scheme gives each staff member 25 hours of paid leave for volunteering each year (pro-rata for part-time or fixed-term contracts). Volunteering is an excellent way to give something back to the community, enhance your CV and broaden your life skills, as well as the opportunity to meet new people and have fun.

To bring the scheme to life, we want your ideas to shape the scheme and help identify voluntary activities that benefit staff, the University and our communities.

January is often a tough month, with expectations high for the year. The days are dark, the weather is cold and it can be hard to get motivated. We’re here to help you crack those January blues and feel more energised and positive. That’s why we’ve reduced all our membership fees by 20% when you join between 16 January – 28 February 2023.

Already a Kent Sport member? Consider upgrading your membership to a package with even more benefits and save 20% when you do!

As a Premium Plus member, you have access to our whole fitness suite, a range of fitness classes, discounted fitness services and tennis tuition! It can’t get much better right? Well, you might be surprised to hear it can! New for 2023 and part of the Premium Plus package, you can access a suite of FREE Les Mills virtual instructor classes every week!

Our memberships are open to everyone, so the whole family can be involved. Hire a badminton court with friends, hit the classes with a colleague or explore our range of personal training sessions to help get you on your way.

What are you waiting for? Upgrade your membership at one of our sports receptions, or become a member today!

Come to the 7th Stephen Gray Lecture on the 9 March, where Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell will be the key speaker.

Many poets have written about astronomy and the night sky. Dame Jocelyn will select about half a dozen of these poems, give the scientific background and seek volunteer readers from the audience to read the poems. There will be a chance to look at the poems and discuss informally over tea an biscuits before the talk starts.

Register for the event

DATE AND TIME

9 March 2023, 15:30 for a 16.00 start.

LOCATION

University of Kent, Canterbury Campus (venue TBA)

About the Speaker

Jocelyn Bell Burnell inadvertently discovered pulsars as a graduate student in radio astronomy in Cambridge, opening up a new branch of astrophysics – work recognised by the award of a Nobel Prize to her supervisor.

She has subsequently worked in many roles in many branches of astronomy, working part-time while raising a family. She is now a Visiting Academic in Oxford, and the Chancellor of the University of Dundee, Scotland.  She has been President of the UK’s Royal Astronomical Society, in 2008 became the first female President of the Institute of Physics for the UK and Ireland, and in 2014 the first female President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She was one of the small group of women scientists that set up the Athena SWAN scheme.

She has received many honours, including a $3M Breakthrough Prize in 2018.

The public appreciation and understanding of science have always been important to her, and she is much in demand as a speaker and broadcaster.  In her spare time, she gardens, listens to choral music and is active in the Quakers. She has co-edited an anthology of poetry with an astronomical theme – ‘Dark Matter; Poems of Space’.

Collecting data through surveys

When collecting personal data we are required to supply the person providing the data with certain pieces of information explaining why we are processing their data, how we will process it, if we will share it outside of the University, what their data protection legislation rights are, and who to contact with any questions or concerns.

One of the easiest ways to collect data is by using a survey tool. Whenever you set up a survey, you should only collect the data that you definitely need to meet your purpose. And you must include a Privacy Notice at the point of collection, normally this is achieved by including a link to the Notice in the survey itself.

We have produced some Privacy Notice Guidance, which includes a checklist to use to audit existing Privacy Notices, and a Privacy Notice template to use to produce your Notice if one covering your processing doesn’t currently exist.

Collecting data in the form of photographs / video recordings

Personal data includes a person’s image so when taking photographs or recordings of events on campus we need to highlight to those whose images might be captured that we are collecting this data and to explain what we are going to use it for. You don’t necessarily need consent as the lawful basis under UK GDPR to use the photos / videos but you do need to provide clear details (ideally in advance) of how the individual can ask that their image is not used. Best practice is to obtain permission even if you are relying on another lawful basis under UK GDPR. For some purposes (such as marketing) you will need to obtain written permission in advance in any event.

If the event is by invitation only, a Privacy Notice should be included with the invitation explaining that photographs / video recordings may be taken. If the event is open to all, a Privacy Notice should still be made available and appropriate for the intended audience and one easy way of doing this is by posting QR codes in the area of the event (although a paper copy should also be on display for those without their phones).

When the events include anybody under the age of 18 years old, their parents / guardians also need to be made aware and give their permission for the use of the images.

Mailing Lists – moderated, even for moderators

The cause of many data breaches is sending an email containing personal data to the wrong recipient. If this email is sent to an unmoderated mailing list, it is potentially even worse as it will be sent to multiple wrong recipients!

One control that can be put in place is to use Sympa to manage your mailing list. Sympa gives you an option to require all emails – even those written by a moderator – to be sent to the moderators for distribution. By having this control in place, the risk of sending an email to an entire mailing list of incorrect recipients is significantly reduced.

If you are a moderator of a mailing list, please select this option in Sympa. If you manage a mailing list outside of Sympa, please contact IT Helpdesk <helpdesk@kent.ac.uk> for assistance with the initial set up.

If you have any questions not answered on the Assurance and Data Protection sites, or if you need further support and guidance please do get in touch with the team by emailing dataprotection@kent.ac.uk.

Laura Pullin
Head of Data Protection / Data Protection Officer (DPO)

We are delighted to announce that Professor Iain Wilkinson has been appointed the Director of Division for the study of Law, Society and Social Justice (LSSJ).

LSSJ is a large, diverse, multidisciplinary Division comprised of the Kent Law School (KLS) and the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research (SSPSSR), plus the Centre for Journalism, the Centre for Health Service Studies (CHSS), the Personal Social Services Research Unit (PSSRU), the Tizard Centre, the Centre for Child Protection and the Centre for Philanthropy. LSSJ provides some of the largest undergraduate and graduate teaching programmes in the University. It also has a strong research culture with Kent Law School currently ranked 2nd and Social Policy and Social Work (including the submissions from Sociology and Criminology) ranked 3rd in the UK for their research quality.

Professor Wilkinson is a Sociologist by training and his research and teaching interests concern problems of social suffering, the social history and politics of humanitarianism, sociological theory, and the sociology of health and health care. He is also currently involved in developing the Kent’s civic mission to promote food justice, tackle food insecurity and become the world’s first Right to Food University.

Happy New Year to all of you and I hope everyone felt the benefit of some time off over the winter break.  

Before the new term gets going in earnest I wanted to touch on a few of our priorities for the coming months – do also join our Community Catch-Up on Teams on Tuesday 17 January from 12.00 – 13.00 where I will expand on these further, highlight other positive initiatives on the way and answer any questions you may have.  

This year’s National Student Survey is an obvious place to start, with it launching at Kent on 23 January – my thanks to all of you who will be helping encourage final-year students to complete this, it is really important we get a good response early in the year. Student experience is a major focus at the moment and it’s been great to see Nexus, our new one-stop shop for student queries in the Templeman Library, getting off to a fantastic start last term with lots of student interest; we will be promoting this further this term to build on its success. 

Before Christmas we published our annual accounts, so do read the summary of these from the Finance team which give the context for our wider financial situation. As I’ve updated previously, alongside the work this year to reduce non-pay spend to cover reduced student retention, the accounts show how the challenges of both inflation and the flat tuition fee mean we have a continued need to look at our ways of working to see how we can be more effective. With that in mind there will be a number of discussions in the weeks ahead to reflect on how Divisions have bedded in, and their interface with professional services, and see how and where we can improve our operating model. 

Executive Group has also been looking at our upcoming Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) submission, which is the result of a great deal of work across teams. This has come together well and will be another important marker in terms of what we deliver at Kent, with more updates to follow on this in due course. Employability is another area where we increasing our efforts to ensure we are doing all we can to help our graduates meet local and national need. 

Over the months ahead there are also a number of other opportunities to get together with colleagues, with events and initiatives being planned for LGBTQ+ History Month, Time to Talk Day on 2 February, and Kent Giving Week which follows at the end of March. While I know it gets busy, do watch out for communications around these and find the time to take something in outside of the day-to-day if you can – I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible and wish you the very best for the term ahead.  

Yours sincerely

Karen

Staff and students are invited to the launch of the fourth volume of Kent Review in Keynes Senior Common Room on Tuesday 17 January at 18.00.

Like its predecessors, this latest anthology will showcase some of the best work emerging from the University’s postgraduate writers in Creative Writing. The edition will also feature the winning entries to the new School of English undergraduate writing competition, and an editorial by Professor David Herd.

To celebrate the launch there will be a number of readings, as well as a drinks reception, and copies of the Review available to purchase. Everyone is welcome to help celebrate the launch.

Kent Review, Volume 4 is home to a remarkable selection of poetry, short stories, non-fiction and novel extracts. The collection demonstrates the skill and artistic ambition of the writers at the University, with pieces that are each surprising, disarming, transporting, fresh; and collectively indicative of the vibrant, diverse work emerging from the Centre for Creative Writing.