Campus News
Lord Dearing Awards nominations live
November 6th, 2019
Nominations for the annual Lord Dearing Awards are now live and can be submitted.
The Lord Dearing Awards recognise excellence in teaching and learning across the University and celebrate outstanding achievements.
Nominations from staff and students are considered in late winter with winners picking up their awards in spring 2020.
Find out more about the Lord Dearing Awards or nominate someone here.
Nominations should be submitted by Friday 15 November 2019.
Tags: awards, Lord Dearing Awards, nominations
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UCU Industrial Action Ballot [Updated 5th November 2019]
November 5th, 2019
Following a nationwide ballot of members, the University and College Union (UCU) has secured a mandate for industrial action at the University of Nottingham and 60 other UK universities in a dispute over the Universities Superannuation Scheme pension scheme and national pay award for 2019/20.
UCU’s Higher Education Committee has now confirmed that the union will call eight days of strike action, starting on Monday 25 November and finishing on Wednesday 4 December, followed by a period of action short of a strike (ASOS).
The University will remain open and is committed to doing everything possible to minimise disruption to teaching and learning while UCU members exercise their democratic rights.
Further information to support students and staff during the period of industrial action will be published in due course.
University Registrar Dr Paul Greatrix said:
“We are disappointed at the potential for national industrial action at Nottingham alongside 60 universities across the country. Our priority is providing education for our students and during any industrial action the University will remain open and do everything possible to minimise disruption to teaching and learning.
“Universities UK has worked hard to secure the pension as a defined benefit scheme, avoiding much higher mandatory increases and allowing time for an independent panel to recommend longer-term reforms to the scheme. This has meant asking staff and universities to pay more in pension contributions, but limited to a further 0.8% for staff while the University will contribute a further 1.6%.
“The University continues to support the work of the independent joint expert panel agreed by UUK and UCU in securing the pension scheme’s sustainability for the long-term.”
Universities UK has issued the following statement.
Tags: pension, UCU
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Mindful movement and breathing for anxiety
November 5th, 2019
There is still time to book onto a 90 minute interactive session for staff led by professional pianist Dr. Xenia Pestova, Director of Performance, Department of Music, taking place on Tuesday 26 November in Room E44 (Yoga Studio) of the Portland Building at 3.30pm.
Anxiety can manifest in many different areas of our working lives. Whether you are giving a presentation, preparing for a meeting, facing a difficult conversation or simply dealing with the day-to-day challenges of life, there are more proven methods that can help you feel more grounded and supported.
Dr. Xenia Pestova is a performer and music coach with international experience. She can guide people through simple breathing techniques, focus exercises and gentle stretches incorporating yoga and Qi Gong influences to help understand anxiety.
Please email to book. Places are limited – once fully booked, a waiting list will be held.
If you have booked a place but can no longer attend, please cancel your booking to allow other colleagues the opportunity to attend.
Tags: anxiety, support, wellbeing
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Browser home page changes – Staff Room
November 5th, 2019
Changes to the default homepage of Microsoft Edge will be taking effect soon.
From Monday 11 November, all University and postgraduate research staff who use Microsoft Edge on a Windows PC (desktops, laptops and surfaces) will be changing to Staff Room.
Once the change takes effect, users will not be able to change homepages.
Staff Room was launched in May 2019 as a one-stop-shop for staff to find out about key news and events, colleague and student successes and updates to systems and services affecting our campuses around the UK.
It was launched following feedback from staff and has been developed with staff consultation.
To share your news and events on Staff Room, or our other internal communications channels for staff and students, contact the Internal Communications Team.
You can also get in touch with any ideas or suggestions about Staff Room news content and links so we can make ongoing improvements to the channel.
Tags: computer systems, homepage, staff room
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Act of Remembrance, Monday 11 November
November 5th, 2019
Staff and students across the University are invited to participate in the Act of Remembrance by observing a Two Minute Silence at 11:00 on Monday 11 November in memory of all those who have died in armed conflict.
The Act of Remembrance unites people of all faiths and none, cultures, and backgrounds but it is also deeply personal and members of our University community are invited to pause and reflect in their own way.
The East Midlands Officers’ Training Corps (OTC) will lead an Act of Remembrance and wreath laying ceremony in the foyer of the Trent Building, University Park from 10:30 – 11:30 on Monday 11 November. Staff and students are welcome to attend, although space is limited, so please rsvp to helen.mcginnis@nottingham.ac.uk
The names of staff and students who lost their lives during the First World War are recorded on a memorial plaque in the Trent Building foyer. You can find out more about the roles played by the University, its staff and students in our World War I centenary webpages published in 2018 to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the conflict.
Tags: act of remembrance, remembrance day
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University of Nottingham honours inspirational volunteers
November 4th, 2019
The University of Nottingham has recognised the outstanding voluntary efforts of a number of alumni and residents at its annual Supporter Reception this week.
From increasing awareness of the positive impact sport can have on student mental health, to raising thousands of pounds for the University’s Children’s Brain Tumour Research Centre, volunteers are at the heart of the University’s student experience and research initiatives.
Over 800 alumni and community volunteers contributed time over the last academic year, with 27 different individuals or groups recognised in the Volunteer Awards which were introduced by the University Vice-Chancellor Shearer West.
This year’s Alumni Volunteer of the Year is Emily Seto (Clinical Microbiology, 2016), one of the University’s most passionate ambassadors despite her busy job working for NASA. She inspires both students and recent graduates through her roles as a student recruitment ambassador and careers speaker.
For the first time ever, the University’s Volunteer of the Year Award was presented to two winners, both of whom have made an outstanding contribution in the area of University Sport. Martin Austin was recognised for giving over 350 hours to coach the University’s Wheelchair Basketball Club over the past three years. Sharing the honour is Stephen Hadfield, who has been volunteering as an instructor in the Sub Aqua society for many years and regularly gives up his time to personally ensure students get to complete their diving courses.
The University also continues to honour its invaluable community volunteers; the Music and Memories Choir received the first Community Volunteer Group Award for helping people with dementia and their carers to fully participate in a singing group led by professional musicians – several members also featured in the recent BBC documentary ‘Our Dementia Choir with Vicky McClure”. Valentine Nkoyo, a local anti-Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) campaigner received this year’s individual Community Volunteer Award for her ongoing support of the University’s Rights Lab and for helping provide over 20 internships for students.
This year’s Special Recognition Award goes to Emily Smith, who was named as ”one of the top 50 disabled leaders in work and education” – and regularly gives her time to teach student nurses and promote inclusion and widening participation.
With so many members of University staff playing an instrumental role in managing volunteers, the awards have been extended to recognise them as well. Dr Martha Jones received the inaugural Volunteer Co-ordinator Award for her tireless co-ordination of alumni volunteers in the Faculty of Social Sciences.
Rachael Green, University of Nottingham Head of Volunteering said: “Our volunteers are the lifeblood of so much of the University’s activity, giving their time, energy and inspiration for the benefit of others. Volunteers, including our local community and global alumni community, are incredibly generous with their time and their support helps current students, researchers and fellow alumni be the best they can.”
Other winners include:
- Yasmin Ali (Chemical Engineering, 2010), for supporting University STEM projects and Engineering students
- Ed Tarlton (Psychology, 2011) for spreading awareness of the University’s Men’s Health Active scheme
- Aymun Khan (Mechanical Engineering, 2019) for supporting UoN Disability Sport
- Jenny Ireland and Jo Horsey for their tireless efforts in the University’s Medical School
- Jan Perret MBE for continuing to support the University’s Manuscripts and Special Collections team with a variety of archival projects
- Reverend Jenny Hills for leading on the coordinator of community reading initiatives in partnership with the School of English
- David Waldram for his efforts in support of the University’s Institute of Mental Health
- Friends of Impact CBTRC – for their longstanding efforts as community fundraising group for the University’s Children’s Brain Tumour Research Centre (CBTRC)
The University of Nottingham has a number of volunteering opportunities which are open to both alumni and non-alumni. For more information, visit the University’s volunteering web pages.
Tags: awards, volunteer
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University of Nottingham Students as Change Agents receives award
November 1st, 2019
The European Consortium of Innovative Universities 2019 team award has been made to the University of Nottingham Students as Change Agents team for their inspiring work enabling Nottingham students to work in partnership with staff to make positive changes to the curriculum and to their experiences.
The European Consortium of Innovative Universities makes an annual award to a team who have successfully delivered an educational innovation that challenges contentional thinking.
Students as Change Agents (SACA) is an ongoing programme which provides structure, training, recognition and reward to enable student teams to lead projects which improve their university experience – be it on their courses, in preparation for future careers or in relation to the community. In the last five years, the SACA team have supported nearly 200 students to become ‘Change Agents’ who have run over 50 projects which have benefited over 5000 students to date.
SACA was set up in collaboration with students, academics, the Students’ Union and Professional Services colleagues and has contributed to a culture change in the University, enabling greater openness and collaboration between staff and students. By having students involved in processes of change, it ensures that they are fit for purpose to the modern student.
Projects supported by SACA includes the PASS scheme to support first year Maths students develop their interpersonal, communication and fundamental mathematical skills. In addition to this students from the Afro-Caribbean Medical Network organised and ran the Journey to Success Conference in which a panel of healthcare experts gave personal and professional insight into their insight as medical professionals to a sold out Senate Chamber of healthcare students. Another project saw students founding PsychStart, a career-based mentoring scheme providing tailored support for medical students interested in psychiatry.
University Associate Pro-Vice Chancellor for Teaching and Learning, Professor Sarah Speight, said: “It is fantastic to see the Students as Change Agents team being recognised in this way by the ECIU. The SACA programme has helped us move beyond listening to students to working with them as full partners on a range of projects that are making a real difference to many students. And I know that staff love working on these projects too. The team are now consulting students about how best to spend their 2,500 Euros prize money – that’s absolutely in the spirit of SACA.”
Prizes will be presented at an award ceremony in Barcelona on Thursday 7 November and applications will be published on the ECIU website as examples of innovation in education.
Tags: ECIU, Professor Sarah Speight, SACA, Student As Change Agents, teaching and learning, The Europeam Consortium of Innovative Universities
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Launch of RIS outputs data harvesting – add your ORCID identifier to your RIS profile
October 31st, 2019
Dear colleagues,
At 5pm on Friday 1 November we will be turning on an important function of RIS, data harvesting. This function imports our publications and other outputs from external databases such as Scopus and CrossRef into RIS. We will be taking a conservative approach to introducing data harvesting because there are more then 100,000 outputs that could be brought into RIS from external databases, so we have decided to break down the import into manageable stages. Initially we will restrict the harvesting to dates after 2013 so that we cover the REF period only. We will also only add new data sources slowly – we have five potential sources – to limit the rate of change.
Over the next four months, assuming all goes well, we will turn on harvesting from Cross Ref (Friday 1 Nov), Scopus (Friday 8 Nov), ORCID (Friday 22 Nov), Web of Science and arXiv (TBC – subject to further checks).
Colleagues need to be familiar with actions that will arise from data harvesting. For most publications brought into RIS from an external database there will already be an author generated record in RIS submitted at or before publication acceptance. In this case staff in our libraries will reconcile the ‘old’ and ‘new’ records to create a final record with all of the information required for REF compliance.
If a publication is found in an external database with no corresponding record in RIS then the RIS system will alert all potential University of Nottingham authors and ask for the record to be confirmed. The alert will be via an email from Worktribe unless you have switched off email alerts in your RIS profile.
Ideally, the RIS system will be able to assign each publication to all Nottingham authors. However, author matching is imperfect if based on text alone. Therefore, it is very helpful if all academic staff can add their ORCID unique identifier to their RIS profile and ensure that this identifier is used whenever you submit a new publication. ORCID identifiers will be the most reliable way of linking authors to outputs.
If you require any assistance with your outputs or adding ORCID numbers then guidance is available on RIS or you can email openaccess@nottingham.ac.uk. If you would like further information about the RIS system itself or the data harvesting process then please email ris-enquiries@nottingham.ac.uk.
Kevin Shakesheff
PVC Faculty of Science
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New research funding information and support site
October 30th, 2019
A website for funding news, external funding support and internal UoN funding updates has been developed by the Research Strategy and Development team.
The site aims to be a useful resource for all research-active and research support staff and includes:
- current and upcoming external funding opportunities, including the match funding process and forms
- training and resources
- internal funding, collated in one place from several sources
- support available from the Research Strategy and Development team along with contact details
- links to other central services you may need to develop a project
The site can be accessed at https://tinyurl.com/UoN-RD and requires staff log in details.
The Research Strategy and Development team welcome feedback on the site, so if you have any concerns or ideas please email Harry Moriarty at harry.moriarty1@nottingham.ac.uk.
Tags: funding, research, Research and Development
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John Bentham Memorial Service
October 30th, 2019
A University memorial service for John Bentham is due to take place 1-3pm on Thursday 7 November.
There will be a time for reflection and prayers in the Chapel Lounge, A Floor, Portland Building followed by a buffet lunch in Oasis, A29, Portland Building.
This is open to all university students and staff. All faiths are welcome.
If you plan to attend, please email Laura Hallam at laura.hallam@nottingham.ac.uk for catering purposes. Booking is not essential and those who have not had chance to confirm their attendance are still welcome to turn up.
Tags: Chaplaincy, John Bentham, memorial, University Chaplaincy
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