The University has always been committed to working across all protected characteristics and promoting a culture of diversity and inclusivity for all. Recent global events have pushed issues related to race and ethnicity to the fore, prompting Kent to seek to better understand and tackle racism at the University.

The University is leading the way in the sector by launching its “Challenging Racism” campaign, which includes a blended programme of learning and development for staff. The programme will be delivered by Inclusive Employers over a period of six months. It aims to open channels of discussion and reflection around racism, as well as awareness and understanding of challenges associated with ethnicity and race.

Tuesday 2 February 2021 sees the first of three 90-minute Live Webinars on the topic of “The history of race in the UK”. The University will be partnering with Liverpool John Moores University and City, University of London, to deliver a series of live webinars, followed by an Inclusive Allyship programme for a cohort of 40 people across all 3 institutions.  Staff at Kent will also be invited to participate in two closed Inclusion Circles designed to enable BAME staff to share their experiences on the topics of ‘BAME wellbeing’ and ‘Taking action on race inequality and inclusion’.

Race & Racism  Webinar Series

Webinar 1: The History of Race in the UK – Tuesday 2 February 2021 at 10.00

 Join us for this webinar looking at the history of race in the UK, including the UKs role in enslavement, the British Empire, and the impact this legacy has had on the present day.  

We will be looking at:

• A brief history of how and when Black people came to the UK, their experiences, and rights
• The effect of Britain’s history on today’s inequality
• Why it’s important to understand Black British history

The guest speaker at the first webinar is Chantelle Lunt, a final-year student at Liverpool John Moore’s University (LJMU) studying Criminology and Sociology. During lockdown Chantelle founded the Facebook group Merseyside BLM Alliance which was formed with the goal to address the issue of racism and to create a space where people can safely channel their passion for fighting racial injustices. You can find out more about the group from this LJMU news article. 

Chantelle Lunt

Here’s two other webinars to look out for:

Webinar 2: White Privilege – What is it and how does it affect society?  – 18 March 2021 at 12.00

Webinar 3: Let’s Talk About Race  –  19 April 2021 at 13.00

Look out for more info on upcoming events!

Please scan the QR code

or click this Eventbrite link to register.

When did you join the University and why?

I joined Kent in 2005 as an IT Technician in the Department of Electronics (now the School of Engineering and Digital Arts). This was an exciting opportunity to support staff and students in a very technically demanding department, which was actively pushing boundaries in its research and teaching. I worked alongside some excellent IT colleagues, as well as subject technicians, who were experts in their fields. I later took up the role of IT Team Manager, before becoming IT and Technical Services Manager and then Director of IT and Technical Services. After a 15-year career providing technical support to students and staff, I am thrilled to be taking up the role of Head of Technical Services leading the profession here at Kent.

What did you do before joining Kent?

I completed my undergraduate degree in 2001 and worked for a large pharmaceutical company supporting their IT systems and staff across the UK. After two years, I made the switch to higher education, becoming an IT user support specialist at Imperial College London. I had always remembered how technical staff had been pivotal in supporting myself and other students during university. They were the unsung heroes who were always on hand when you needed help.

Why has your new role been created and what’s its remit?

My new role has come about following the University’s pledge to support the national Technician Commitment, a sector-wide initiative led by the Science Council to help address key challenges facing technical staff working in higher education. Universities and institutions who sign-up to the commitment agree to improve and safeguard vital technical skills. The commitment ensures greater visibility, recognition, career development and sustainability for technicians across all disciplines. My role will lead this work and ensure these principles remain embedded here at Kent. My vision is to build on the already exceptional work undertaken by technical colleagues throughout the University. Our aim is to deliver a truly customer-focused, innovative and professional technical service by highly skilled, diverse technical experts, utilising leading technology, equipment and facilities, to provide the very best experience to our students and staff.

Tell us more about who’s who within your team?

I am fortunate to work with some exceptionally talented colleagues at Kent. Technical service staff operate across almost all our subject areas, from science and laboratories to arts and theatres. I will be working closely with divisional and departmental Technical Managers to deliver that positive change and to support the University’s strategic ambitions. I am also working closely with colleagues in other professional service departments, including IS, Estates and the Safety, Health and Environment Unit. By continuing the collaboration of technical staff and professional service teams, we can create a consistent experience for our students and colleagues.

What are your immediate plans for the new team?

Over the next 12 months, I will be working with colleagues to produce the first technical service strategy. This will include our Technician Commitment action plan and a three-year roadmap that delivers against the principles of technician visibility, recognition, career development and sustainability. I will also be working closely with technical managers and divisional management teams to support the transition to the new divisional structure, and wider collaboration of technical services within and across divisions.

Covid-19 permitting(!), what are your interests away from work?

I love spending time at the beach with my wife and our two children. I also enjoy cycling and keeping active. When the weather’s not great, you’ll find me doing some form of DIY. My latest project is using my Amazon Alexa to automate the lighting in my house – much to my wife’s frustration who, rightfully so, doesn’t see the problem with a traditional light switch! I guess once a technician always a technician…

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

The best advice I have been given was from my Dad (which he borrowed from someone more famous): “The harder you work, the luckier you become.”

The Talent and Organisational Development Team are happy to share details of our upcoming Pathways Career Development Programme.

Next cohort is starting in March 2021

Pathways provides colleagues within professional services departments the opportunity to increase their self-awareness, learn and develop new skills and create knowledge so that they can define their career pathways. The next session of the Pathways programme will be delivered through a blended approach using staff training Moodle for the eLearning modules and MS Teams sessions for face to face sessions.

Programme aims & benefits

The programme aims to prepare individuals who wish to define their career aspirations by helping them to:

Identify strengths and development opportunities Understand what they want from their career Identify opportunities to assist in achieving the identified career pathway Provide practical skills in CV writing, applying for roles and attending interviews The programme will also bring benefit to the wider university by providing attendees greater connections from other areas.

The programme will run from Mid March to early June

More information can be found on our blog

Next Steps

If you feel this programme would support your current career situation, please send an email to ldev@kent.ac.uk outlining the reasons why this would benefit you, please ensure that your line manager supports your request to join the next cohort.

Closing date for applications is Friday 19 February 2021

Oli Prior, Head of Physical Activities at Kent Sport gives us his top 10 tips on how to stay active during lockdown…

1. Start Lightly

Whilst it is always tempting to start the new year with high intensity activity this is a sure fire way of making it unsustainable as you will likely give up in a few weeks or worse – injure yourself.  Whatever you start doing, start lightly, if you’re doing Joe Wicks’ morning PE for the first time, just do half of it or take the low intensity options, don’t go straight out for a run, start with a fast walk or walk up-hill.

2. Find an Exercise Buddy

Training on your own is hard, stay motivated by finding a like-minded friend or colleague who can train at the same level as you. Current government guidelines permit you to exercise with either other members of your household or support bubble or one other person (so long as you keep your distance and stay local) so rope in your partner or children or your like-mined neighbour or colleague in your new exercise routine

3. Lounge ‘Hi Lo’

Since the first lockdown there’s been plenty of online content available bringing the gym studio to the nations’ living rooms, with so much choice where do you start? Why not ease yourself in with a familiar face on screen and check out Kent Sports ‘Stay Well at Home’

4. Walk This Way!

Walking is one of the most accessible forms of physical activity and has great wellbeing benefits as well as the obvious physical ones. Just getting up from your desk and doing a lap of the office/house once every hour will aid circulation and engage muscles. We are permitted to go out once a day so make sure you are walking, getting some fresh air and enjoying local surroundings.

5. I want to Ride my Bicycle

This is the last music pun I promise! If you prefer to get out on two wheels instead of two feet then cycling offers many training benefits. If you’re already a regular cyclist then virtual platforms like Peloton or Zwift bring the pro-cycling world to your living room but if you’re not quite ready for the Lycra, you can follow online workouts at home with any stationary bike or invest in a turbo trainer (device that attaches to your real bikes back wheel).

6. Get a ‘Virtual Pet’

This is not an invitation to go online and buy a Tamagotchi, but rather imagine you have a dog to walk every day. It’s easy to look at the drizzle on the window and stay inside, but by donning your rain-mac and going out regardless of rain or shine to walk that ‘Virtual Pet’ you will establish that habit mentioned previously and reap the benefits of daily activity.

7. Create a Power Playlist

We all have our own taste in music, but my next tip is to use this, as it is proven that music makes a difference when you exercise. Nowadays, you can build by voice command on your smart speaker or explore one of the many digital radio stations available on your smart phone.

8. Chill

For low intensity or holistic workouts a podcast can help provide structure to a training session or great company on a brisk walk – again it is so easy to download these to your device – many sports stars have turned their hand to these in lockdown with fresh episodes every week.

9. Park & Ramble

While many of you remain working from home, if you are still commuting to campus I challenge you to ‘Park & Ramble’ as you did before the pandemic. Why not allow an extra 15-20 minutes on your morning commute and park as far away as possible on campus and walk to your desk. Our campuses are great for walking all year round so explore a new route each day if you can.

 10. Stay Well at Home

The final tip is a reminder to access Kent Sports Stay Well @ Home platform, there is a breadth of content to help you stay active and engaged whilst facilities are closed or you are working from home. We look forward to seeing you all again soon, but for now from all at Kent Sport, stay well and stay active.

Congratulations to Iain Fraser, a Professor in the School of Economics, who has been appointed as the inaugural editor in chief of a new journal called Q Open.

Published by the Oxford University Press (OUP), this economic journal covers agriculture, environment, food, development and climate, and in many aspects covers one of the newly identified university research themes.

This joint venture between OUP and the European Association of Agricultural Economics is an open access journal, with Iain recruiting a high-profile team of journal editors and associate editors to run it.

To take a look at it’s first issue, published on Thursday 14 January and to discover more about the journal, please take a look at the Q Open webpage.

More information about the editorial content included in the first issue can also be found on this Issues webpage.

Canterbury City Council is currently consulting on its draft Climate Change Action Plan.  We are aware many colleges and universities are not seeing students in person at the moment, but we’d be grateful if you could please share this opportunity to comment with your students and staff who may be interested in responding.

The draft Climate Change Action Plan explains the importance of climate action as part of the council’s work, as well as why we need to act and our planned approach over the next five years.

It shows the scale of activity needed to achieve carbon reduction goals and explains the council will seek money from outside organisations to help pay for any work it needs to, as well as take the opportunity to learn from others.

The draft plan sets out our climate change vision, aims, goals, actions, targets and timescales.

You can read the full draft action plan and respond to the consultation on the Canterbury Council website, consultation is open until 5pm on Thursday 4 March 2021.

An update for all staff, including latest information on academic progression, working on campus and rent reductions for our students.

Academic progression 2020-21

As you will be aware, we have currently suspended face-to-face teaching for most of our study programmes. This means that a large proportion of our students are being taught via online methods and the vast majority of them are studying from their permanent homes. We are planning for the lockdown restrictions to last until 1 March 2021; however, this date is provisional and linked to whether rates of infection start to decline across our country.

Understandably, many students are questioning how the coronavirus pandemic will affect their academic progression and ultimate degree classification. Staff are working incredibly hard to ensure no students are disadvantaged because of the pandemic and that academic standards can be maintained across the University.

We are currently updating our no detriment policy for the 2020-21 academic year. This includes offering greater flexibility for mitigation applications and making processes easier for students to follow. We will also be extending deadlines where feasible, including offering an additional week’s extension for deadlines due between now and the end of the second week of term (29 January).

It’s hard to believe that it is just over a week since the University reopened after the Christmas vacation. During this time, lockdown has meant that, once again, we have had to change how we work, and a tremendous amount of work continues to take place across University to enable us to comply with Government legislation, as well as delivering our day-to-day activities.

I am grateful for all that you continue to do and know that many of you are facing increasing workloads. I would like to reassure you that this is something the Executive Group is taking seriously, and we are looking at how we might reduce the pressure and seeking to provide additional support at this time.

As we begin 2021, I wanted to say a word about our finances. As you know, thanks to the efforts of all staff, considerable progress has been made towards our underlying savings targets. We have also now reached a further long-term agreement with our lenders, which provides us with a platform to complete our Financial Improvement Programme and return our finances to a sustainable footing. Covid, however, continues to present short-term challenges, which we will have to continue to address in the face of ongoing uncertainty. We are now having to manage the impact of the six-week rent refund we have given to students unable to access their campus accommodation. We need to continue to limit expenditure to essential spend only so that we can protect the critical spend needed on income generation through, for example, supporting student recruitment and our research and innovation activities. Given the ongoing national situation we are also conscious that the return to campus remains very unclear and we are going to have to plan for further income losses.

I am pleased, however, to say that last week’s virtual open day attracted nearly 3,000 visitors, including prospective students from more than 100 countries as well as from the UK. While applications across the sector are lower than normal at this point, predominantly as a result of Covid, and we still have a lot of work to do to increase student numbers at this time, this response was really heartening.

Despite the challenges we face, we continue to make a major contribution to our communities and the region. Kent Business School’s fourth business summit on Friday will bring together business leaders, politicians, local government representatives and academics with the aim of developing an economic recovery roadmap for the region. At the same, through our Knowledge Exchange and Innovation department, we have launched a Recovery Innovation Fund which aims to support businesses to innovate and grow following the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Kent and Medway Medical School has got off to a great start with over 108 students and continues to receive unwavering support from across the region, not just from healthcare professionals but from the general public. You can read more about its achievements in the Leadership Blog by Professor Chris Holland, the Dean of KMMS.

I was also delighted to learn of Professor Stephen Peckham’s appointment to a new expert panel as a policy advisor by the House of Commons’ cross-party Health and Social Care Select Committee. Stephen, who is Director of the Centre for Health Services Studies, is one of the country’s leading experts in this field.

Finally, at 15.30 today, we will be holding the first of our weekly staff web chats. Chaired by Professor Richard Reece, Deputy Vice-Chancellor – Education and Student Experience, who is leading on our Covid response, these meetings will give all staff the chance to get the latest updates and to ask questions of the senior management team. If you have yet to sign-up, please do so and I look forward to seeing many of you at today’s meeting.

With my very best wishes to you and your family,

Karen

Professor Karen Cox | Vice-Chancellor and President

From Brenda Brunsdon, Occupational Health and Wellbeing Team Manager

One of the biggest pressures arising out of the lockdown phases is that on parents to organise home schooling for their children. This is even greater where one or both parents are working from home. It is a difficult balancing act, giving your offspring the time they need with school work assistance and fulfilling your own work commitments. There is additional pressure from sharing the internet for computer usage and for Teams/Zoom meetings. On top of that there is a need to undertake preparation, for example, printing off work sheets, and producing feedback to the school on the work your child/children have completed.

Colleagues and friends have voiced how they are finding this element of the lockdown experience very difficult. Below is information on what is available to help, and articles by experts advocating different tips and approaches in relation to this area.

A lot of the influencers recommend building a structure to the home-schooling day. This is because it provides the children with an expectation of what is going to happen and that is supposed to help. However, there is an opposite viewpoint, perhaps rooted in an approach called ‘unschooling’. This recommends a more grassroots way of doing things. The belief is that children will gain the knowledge that they need from any activity; instructional, creative, or leisure.

However, there is a general consensus that parents who are home-schooling need to cut themselves some slack. ‘Be patient and don’t be too hard on yourself’. Perhaps read the article by Jan Barton Packer, below; her experiences will resonate with many: ‘I felt wretched, like a failure in every role I was meant to be doing.’ Her resolution for Lockdown 3 is to do it differently: ‘More detrimental than missing out on some worksheets would be for my kids to see their mother, anxious and irritable, at the end of her tether, unable to be there to support them through a very stressful time. ‘

Resources are available to support home-schooling. Many experts recommend utilising the BBC resources available for Learning at Home. Many recommend the benefits of getting your children to watch other TV based material like documentaries or crafts-based programmes. The Joe Wicks PE classes have been reinstated. The Employee Assistance Programme has a webinar scheduled for Friday, 22 January: ‘Tips for Home Schooling & Keeping Children Occupied at Home’; 12:00-12:30; follow the link to register to attend. If you can’t attend on the day, the webinars are available later on the Care first website and on the University’s Staff Health and Wellbeing webpages.

If you are finding the conflicting pressures of home working and home schooling becoming too much, do speak to your manager to discuss any adjustments that can be put in place. This is what the University’s COPE framework for staff support is for. If the stress of juggling the various responsibilities in your life becomes overwhelming, contact the Employee Assistance Programme, freephone telephone 0808 168 2143; someone is there to speak to you any time of the day or night.

‘Supporting your child’s education through coronavirus (Covid 19)’: guidance on gov.uk

How to balance working from home with childcare’ on Benenden Health website

’11 Essential Home Schooling Tips’: on mumsnet.com

‘Parents and teachers share their top tips for home schooling’ by Charlotte Dobson on Manchester Evening News website

’ Home school help: How to keep children focussed and stress down during lockdown 3’ by Liam Doyle on the Express online

‘How to Reduce the Stress of Homeschooling on Everyone’ by school psychologist Rebecca Branstetter on the Greater Good Magazine online, part of Berkeley Educational Science

‘Home schooling expert urges parents to ignore ‘outdated advice after classrooms shut across country’ by Ian Hughes on Stoke Sentinel website, (expert is Dr Harriet Pattison of Liverpool Hope University)

‘I’ve nothing left to give’: parents on home schooling in lockdown’ by Molly Blackall on the Guardian online

‘Why I won’t be homeschooling my kids this lockdown’ by Jen Barton Packer on Metro online

‘What is unschooling?’ on theschoolrun.com

‘Coronavirus and homeschooling in Great Britain: April to June 2020’: Office for National Statistics website

One of the University’s very first employees, Cynthia Hawes, died in the Kent and Canterbury Hospital just before Christmas, having suffered a stroke at her care home in Wye. Many Former Staff Association (FSA) colleagues will remember her as a diminutive but feisty lady, who was always kind and encouraging while letting people know exactly what she thought about… anything.

Cynthia’s first contact with the University was in April 1963 when she was interviewed for the post of secretary to the first Vice-Chancellor, Geoffrey Templeman, at Westgate House in St Dunstan’s Street, which was all there was of the University at that time. Having worked for the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals (as it then was), Cynthia was ideally qualified for the post, and she was duly appointed. As the Vice-Chancellor’s secretary, Cynthia was based first in Westgate House and then at Beverley Farm before moving to the Registry building when it was completed in 1970. After Geoffrey Templeman retired in 1980, Cynthia continued to work for the new Vice-Chancellor, David Ingram, until transferring to the Graduate Studies Office as an Assistant Registrar. She spent the early years of her retirement caring for her widowed father, who lived near to her in Harkness Drive.

Away from her professional duties, Cynthia was a keen rock climber in her youth and later a dedicated hill walker until arthritis curtailed these activities. She was a long-serving singer in the University Choir and the Canterbury Choral Society and a regular and devoted worshipper at the Cathedral. After retiring, she trained as a volunteer welcomer at the Cathedral and spent her Friday mornings patiently explaining to visitors – often in passable French, though she was not a linguist – what it was they were looking at. She was particularly interested in St Gabriel’s Chapel in the crypt and knew a great deal about the murals there.

Cynthia was born in North London in 1934 and spent the war years as a child in Barnet. She was a pupil at the Queen Elizabeth’s Girls’ School in Barnet before going to Exeter University where she read history. She never married, but she was very close to her father and brother, and she had a wide circle of friends. She has a richly deserved place in the collective memory of the University as one of its founder members whose job placed her at the very centre of all that was happening in those early years. May she rest in peace.

Contributors: Mary Fox, Jane Millyard, John Butler