Campus News
International Women’s Day: Celebrating Nottingham Women civic event
March 3rd, 2020
Working closely with Nottingham City Council and Nottingham Trent University, the University of Nottingham will be joint-hosting a civic event in the middle of Old Market Square to celebrate International Women’s Day 2020.
A number of activities are planned to showcase some of the amazing work that happens across our campuses in a fun and interactive way.
They aim to show, in particular, some of the fabulous women of our university community in order to inspire the young women of Nottingham to ignore preconceptions and prejudice about gender roles and limitations.
The civic ceremony starts on Sunday 8 March and runs from 10.30am – 2.30pm, with events including:
Women into STEM
Enjoy some interactive activities exploring the world of STEM and the career opportunities open to young women in the science, technology, engineering and maths industries. Learn about computer programing using Ozobots, identify what makes your finger print unique, and learn how to solve a murder mystery using forensic science techniques.
The science and medicine behind great female sporting achievements
Come find out how your body works when you exercise and why physical activity is great for your health and wellbeing. We will show you the science and medicine behind what it takes to be a great female sporting star.
Women in Law
In 1919, the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 allowed women to qualify as lawyers in England and Wales for the first time. This display and discussion will look at some of the ways in which women – now half the solicitors’ profession – work in and with the law.
Margaret Cavendish – Sci-Fi in 1666
Discover the story of the world’s first Sci-Fi novel, written by a woman in 1666, as a way to share her ideas in a time when female thinkers and researchers were excluded from universities and public debate. Explore a world of talking polar bears, submarines and worms with engineering tech.
On Monday 9 March, there will also be a networking event for all staff, students, and alumni showcasing a diverse panel of inspirational women. The “Who are the modern women” roundtable discussion and networking event will feature inspiring stories from staff, students and alumni who have all taken unusual paths, are in unusual roles or who have fantastic stories to share on what it means to be a modern woman. Sign up to the roundtable event here.
Find a list of events taking place in celebration of International Women’s Day 2020.
Tags: International Women's Day 2020, IWD, IWD2020, modern women
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Support for menopause and infertility treatment
March 3rd, 2020
The SPHERE programme is funding two new projects following an application from the Women’s Staff Network to provide support for anyone experiencing menopausal symptoms at work or who is combining work with infertility treatment.
The projects will run separately from each other, but both aim to develop and provide support for anyone facing these challenges – as well as providing guidance for line managers.
Both projects involve working closely with male and female members of staff on a range of activities such as awareness-raising sessions and the collation of current experiences.
These are followed by specific focus groups that aim to develop practical guidance for use across the University and to introduce safe spaces for colleagues to meet for support and self-help.
Your views and feedback could lead to improved working conditions for many colleagues. If you have had any experience with menopausal symptoms at work or infertility treatment while working, please get in touch – whether you’d like to be involved in a focus group or just want to talk about your experiences as a member of staff.
If you’d like to contribute, please follow the links below:
Menopause symptoms support (O365 log in required)
Infertility treatment support (O365 log in required)
Tags: have your say, infertility, Menopause, Sphere
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Coronavirus Covid-19: Information and advice
March 3rd, 2020
The University is following the latest advice for the UK government as well as from the Chinese health authorities for our Ningbo campus.
The health and safety of our staff and students is our priority and if you are concerned, we ask you to remain calm and follow this webpage for advice and simple precautions.
Tags: health advice, Ningbo Campus, Public Health England, travel advice, Wuhan Novel Coronavirus
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Bye Z: Hi OneDrive
March 2nd, 2020
Work started at the end of January 2020 to make your personal Z:drive “read only” and is scheduled to be completed by Wednesday 18 March 2020.
Chief Digital Officer, David Hill said: “Our existing storage technologies have certainly served us well but are now in need of costly upgrades and replacements.
“Maintaining the existing drives carries risk, and this provides us with the perfect opportunity to bring about a new way of storing our data.”
Read only means you will no longer be able to save new data or make changes to existing data on your Z: Drive. You will only be able to access your data, copy and paste it elsewhere. This will be temporary and all access will be removed later this year.
Migrate your Z: drive data now – for more information click here or contact your local Campus IT Support. If you are and EndNote user please see this additional guide.
One Drive
Staff and students already have access to 5TB of OneDrive storage through Office 365. Even more space is available when collaborating with others through Microsoft Teams.
Microsoft OneDrive offers greater flexibility, capacity and collaboration. It also provides a greater degree of security for storing our data.
David Hill continued: “I know many of our colleagues and students have already made the move to OneDrive and I’d like to thank them.
“Cloud storage provides our staff and students with the best platform for collaborative learning, accessing their secure data globally, more storage and ensuring the stability of their data.
“If you are yet to join the rest of the university in migrating your Z: Drive I urge you to set aside the small amount of time required to do so.”
Specialist teams will begin engaging with R: and S: drive data owners in spring 2020, with the aim to arrange relocation to Office 365 or dedicated and purpose built facilities in the future.
Information Services are on hand to support you in migrating research and shared data and would encourage data owners to make early contact with their local Campus IT Support.
Director of Governance and Assurance, Jason Carter said: “This is a great opportunity for us all to get our data management in good order. I strongly recommend that we all use this time to review the data we currently hold and make sure we only move what we need. This will really help the University in our GDPR compliance.
“As O365 offers a much more secure place to hold our data, it will also support researchers in meeting your funders’ terms and conditions. Remember – we shouldn’t keep data just in case it’ll be useful one day, only if we have a good reason to do so.”
IT specialists will support staff and students, especially those with complex storage needs. If you think you may need assistance in migrating data to OneDrive or have a specific issue or requirement please contact Campus IT.
To start your data move now more information can be found here.
Tags: campus it, cloud storage, data migration, data storage, migration, One Drive, Z Drive
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Committing to sustainability and tackling climate change
March 2nd, 2020
To mark Sustainability Week 2020, the University has published a new set of commitments to further promote environmental sustainability through our research, teaching, campus activity and our work with partners locally and globally.
Over the last decade and more, we have been taking action to support the environment and deliver research to secure a more sustainable planet.
Over the next decade, in partnership with our staff and student community, we will make a step-change in our efforts to support environmental sustainability and tackle climate change.
Tags: carbon reduction, environment, environmental sustainability, sustainability, Sustainability week, Sustainability Week 2020
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Get involved in Sustainability Week 2020
February 28th, 2020
The University is once again celebrating Sustainability Week – and there are a number of exciting events to mark the occasion.
Sustainability Week takes place from Monday 2 March – Sunday 8 March and is a week of activities and events across all our UK campuses to encourage staff and students to engage with environmental and social issues – empowering them to make positive change.
This year, events will be hosted by the Environment and Social Justice Network and to help in their ambition to make 2020’s week even bigger and better, the Sustainability Team will be putting on a variety of events that everyone can get involved in.
Some highlights include:
Monday 2 March
Zero Waste shop grand opening: 10am, Portland Building, University Park
The Students’ Union opens its first zero waste shop. Come along for the grand opening – opposite Spar on B Floor.
Read more about the opening here.
Tuesday 3 March
Waste workshop: 11am – 1pm, Portland Building, University Park
If you have any questions about how waste is managed at the University or are curious about what can and can’t be recycled on campus, head down to the stall in Portland and find out more.
Wednesday 4 March
‘Carbon, Campus and Me’: 5.30pm – 6.30pm, Room A41, Sir Clive Granger Building, University Park
This interactive session will focus on the University’s sustainability journey so far, exploring the new University Strategy and what priorities should look like to help deliver our sustainability goals.
Thursday 5 March
Carbon information stall: 8.30am – 10am, Medical School, University Park
Visit the stand and find out about how energy and carbon is managed at the University.
Friday 6 March
Recycling Stall: 1pm-3pm, The Exchange Building, Jubilee Campus.
Come and have a go at the recycling game – perfect for learning all about what can and can’t be recycled on campus.
These are just a few events we’ve got planned. For a full list of Sustainability Week events, visit the Sustainability webpages, check out the events page on the Student Union’s web pages or keep up on Facebook.
Find out what the University is doing about single-use plastic and disposables around our campuses with the Waste Nott campaign.
Tags: environment, sustainability, Sustainability Team, Sustainability week, Sustainability Week 2020
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Clifton Bridge delays
February 28th, 2020
Travel to and from our Nottingham campuses is likely to be affected for the foreseeable future by the works taking place at Clifton Bridge on the A52.
This can cause severe delays at peak travel periods across Nottingham.
It can also impact hopper bus travel between our University Park, King’s Meadow, Jubilee and Sutton Bonington campuses.
For more information and advice, please visit the Clifton Bridge web page. This includes information for Schools, Departments and Faculties to point colleagues and students towards.
Tags: A52, Clifton Bridge, travel, travel advice, travel information
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Implementing the University Strategy
February 27th, 2020
Crowd-sourcing, focus groups and local pilots across the University will be used to develop new ideas invited from staff and students to help implement the new University Strategy published in December.
Vice-Chancellor Professor West said: “Just as the University Strategy was built from the ideas of our staff and students through consultation, I would like our community to bring their ideas and energies to determining how we bring the Strategy to life in how we research, study and collaborate at Nottingham.”
Vice-Chancellor Focus Groups
Professor West has issued an open invitation to staff to join a series of focus groups chaired by her to contribute their ideas implementing the new University Strategy and bringing it to life across our institution.
To be considered for a focus group, please complete the short application at VC – Strategy Focus Groups. Colleagues who have not had the opportunity to submit their ideas through other mechanisms are particularly encouraged to apply.
Deputy Vice-Chancellor Staff Meetings
Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor Andy Long, will also co-host ‘town hall’ staff meetings across our UK campuses with Faculty Pro Vice-Chancellors and Directors of Professional Services to explore with colleagues how they want to apply the Strategy to their work and use it to guide local priorities. Further details will be published shortly.
Strategic Delivery Plans
A range of Strategic Delivery Plans will also be published to provide practical guides on how our community can help to implement the values, goals and enablers of the strategy. The first of these, focused on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), was developed alongside the University Strategy and published in September 2020.
In her latest blog, Pro Vice-Chancellor for EDI, Professor Sarah Sharples explains what the new Strategy means for her and how its values support ambitions for greater equality, diversity and inclusion across the University.
Business Planning & Personal Objectives
The University Strategy is embedded in the business planning process and faculties and professional service departments are now considering how they can reflect its goals in within their planning priorities.
A series of resources have also been published to support managers, teams and individuals in reflecting its values and goals in local planning and setting ADC objectives for the next cycle. Requests for additional information can be made to scu@nottingham.ac.uk.
Tags: new strategy, New university strategy, strategy, Strategy focus groups, University strategy
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Changes to the Contributory Retirement Savings Plan (CRSP)
February 26th, 2020
The University recently wrote to members of the Contributory Retirement Savings Plan (CRSP) pension scheme as part of a consultation over proposed changes.
As part of this, the Pensions team have arranged some face-to-face briefing sessions in March.
Background
Currently, CRSP is a Group Personal Pension (GPP) scheme provided by Legal & General (L&G). L&G advised the University last year that they would no longer be supporting GPP schemes and would be transferring the pension scheme to a provider called ReAssure.
The University took this opportunity to review the market to ensure that the CRSP pension offers the best possible provision for members. Following an extensive review, the University selected a new type of pension arrangement known as a Master Trust, which provides greater flexibility and an improved member experience, overseen by an independent board of experienced trustees.
Contribution rates remain at current levels. The successful provider selected by the University to administer this new Master Trust arrangement was L&G.
Implications
With L&G being the provider of both the current and the new scheme, member contributions will continue seamlessly into CRSP through the transition from GPP to Master Trust which is due to take effect at the beginning of April 2020.
However, the transfer of members’ assets (the benefit/accrued savings built up during their time in the current scheme) from the L&G GPP scheme to ReAssure will nonetheless take place.
Members who wish to transfer their assets back to L&G under the new Master Trust arrangement will need to give written consent for this to happen.
L&G will be writing to members once the Master Trust goes live to outline the process for transferring their assets from ReAssure to the L&G Master Trust scheme.
Briefings for staff
To help people navigate through the changes, the Pensions team will be running a series of briefing sessions in March at various locations. All staff at levels 1 to 3 are encouraged to attend a session.
Please book a place here.
Tags: pension, pension fund, pension scheme, Pensions team, retirement, savings plan
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