Campus News

New stationery supplier roadshows

January 25th, 2018

The University will be introducing Office Depot as the new stationery supplier in February 2018. In preparation for this launch, Office Depot will be holding roadshows across the University campuses, where staff can meet the new supplier and ask questions.

Staff can drop in on the following dates:

Monday 29 January, 11:30am-1:30pm

  • Foyer in The Exchange Building, Jubilee Campus
  • Central Foyer Area, Kings Meadow Campus

Thursday 1 February, 11:30am-1:30pm

  • Foyer in The Barn Building, Sutton Bonington Campus
  • Foyer in The Humanities Building, University Park Campus

Find out more on the Procurement Workspace.

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Introducing the LMA Leadership Toolkit

January 24th, 2018

The University of Nottingham’s Leadership and Management Academy (LMA) has announced a new addition to the LMA Hub — the Leadership Toolkit.

If you’re looking for a quick reminder of a technique or a model to help you with a conversation, or just want to get some new ideas to help you with your leadership, the Toolkit is full of quick, simple and easily downloadable resources that are ready for you to use.

The Leadership Toolkit is a practical bank of resources to help leaders and managers across the University in critical areas of leadership practice. There’s a range of topics to choose from, including change management, emotional intelligence, performance management and many more. It’s all about giving you quick and easy access to the tools you need to lead at the University.

The Leadership Toolkit is available to all staff to access on the Learning and Resources page on the LMA Hub.

To find out more, and to request a login to access the Leadership and Management Academy Hub, visit the Leadership and Management Academy website.

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Cascade: funding round open until 19 February

January 23rd, 2018

Thanks to donations from alumni and friends, current staff and students can apply for up to £10,000 to fund projects which benefit the student experience.

Previous Cascade grants have supported student-led projects such as Community First Responders, Liter of Light, Foodprint, Night Owls, Global Buddy Scheme and Vets in the Community.

Cascade runs in tandem with the University’s bespoke crowdfunding platform, Jumpstart – another useful channel to source funding for extra-curricular projects.

The current round of Cascade funding is open for applications until Monday 19 February.

Contact cascade@nottingham.ac.uk or visit the Cascade webpage for details.

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Recruitment opens for Deputy Vice-Chancellor role

January 22nd, 2018

The University has commenced recruitment to the Deputy Vice-Chancellor vacancy.

The role will support strategic planning and lead on operational planning and academic resources, within the University and in delivering the institutional strategy.

Further details of this vacancy, along with a copy of the recruitment pack, are available on our jobs webpage.

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Pay Award 2017 – update for staff represented by UNISON/UNITE

January 22nd, 2018

Following further pay discussions with UNISON and UNITE the University is pleased to advise that we will be implementing the 2017 pay award for UNISON (Operations & Facilities (O&F) job family, levels 1 to 3 of the Administrative, Professional & Managerial (APM) job family and Childcare Services) and UNITE (Technical Services) represented staff groups in January.

The University presented a revised offer to UNITE and UNISON in November 2017 which the unions put to their members. Both UNISON and UNITE members voted to accept the revised offer.

The pay award will take effect in January 2018, with backdated pay to 1 August 2017.

Pay award: An increase of 1.7% will apply with effect from 1 August 2017 for points 17 and above on the 57-point scale, and all points on the Level 7 scale. There are enhancements to points 1 to 16 of the 57-point scale, including an additional enhancement that applies to staff at pay points 3, 4 and 5 effective from 6 November 2017.

For details of the enhancements applicable for staff at points 1-16 please visit the HR webpages.

The enhancement for staff at pay points 3, 4 and 5 means that the University will meet the new Voluntary Living Wage level (£8.75) from the date of its announcement (6 November 2017). The University position on the Voluntary Living Wage can be found on the HR website.

The 2017 Pay Award was implemented for UCU-represented staff in August 2017.

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Purchase card review — update

January 22nd, 2018

Following a recent review into purchase card use and policy, amendments will shortly be made to card limits and merchant categories.

The amendments will see all UoN purchase card limits reset to £500 maximum for individual transactions and £2500 overall monthly spend. The number of merchant categories will also be reduced. In scenarios where cards are not regularly used, they may be removed.

The changes will be completed by the end of January 2018. Over the next few weeks, colleagues will have the opportunity to attend roadshows to discuss the review and outcomes in more detail.

Review findings

The review into the policy and use of purchase cards was conducted by Financial Control and Procurement at the end of 2017 following the launch of the new Purchasing Policy. Its aim was to help ensure that the use of purchase cards at the University of Nottingham is consistently appropriate and justifiable.

Findings of the review showed a clear and widespread requirement for purchase card use at the university to be aligned more closely with policy. In particular, we observed that there were widespread instances of purchase card use where other channels, such as Agresso, would be more appropriate. The UoN purchasing policy, itself recently reviewed, specifies that the use of purchase cards should be a last resort.

The review also highlighted some user dissatisfaction with the Agresso finance system. A review of procurement systems commenced in spring 2017 and is currently ongoing. Key stakeholders have been involved in this review and there is expected to be further communication with end users in the near future.

Next steps

All purchase card limits and merchant categories will be reset by the end of January 2018. (If, in future, a card needs to have closed merchant categories opened and/or credit limits increased then this will need to be supported by a justified business need and this will be assessed on a case by case basis).

For all future purchases, please consult the purchasing policy on the most appropriate way to make your purchase. Your finance colleagues will be able to support you in this should you require it.

You may find that purchases are declined if the specified merchant type is no longer on the system. In such cases, please contact BB-Cards@exmail.nottingham.ac.uk for further advice.

As a next step, a review of recent spend transactions will take place. This will involve contact with cardholders to discuss how the purchase card has been used.

Roadshows

A series of roadshows will take place during February to provide colleagues with the opportunity to discuss the purchase card review and details of the changes outlined above.

The roadshow dates are as follows:

  • Thursday 1 February (AM): Jubilee Campus
  • Thursday 8 February (PM): King’s Meadow Campus
  • Friday 9 February (AM): University Park Campus

For more details of times and locations, and to book a place at a roadshow event, please contact cards@nottingham.ac.uk.

You can also contact cards@nottingham.ac.uk if you would like to speak to anybody about the results of the purchase card review.

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How the temperature of your nose shows how much strain you are under

January 19th, 2018

Researchers at the University of Nottingham’s Institute for Aerospace Technology (IAT), together with academic staff from the Bioengineering and Human Factors Research Groups, have demonstrated that facial temperatures, which can be easily measured using a non-invasive thermal camera, are strongly correlated to mental workload.

It was found that the effect is most pronounced above the sinuses around the nose, and that facial temperatures were reduced as participants carried out tasks of increasing difficulty.

The results show that when people are fully focused on a task, their breathing rate changes as the autonomic nervous system takes over. There may also be a diversion of blood flow from the face to the cerebral cortex as the mental demand increases, although this is the subject of further research.

Non-invasive, non-obtrusive monitoring of cognitive workload is of vital importance in fields where excessive cognitive demands on an operator can contribute to oversights and use errors – particularly when these errors can have tragic results. This study, published in Human Factors, explores how advances in performance and resolution in thermal cameras have made this a reality.

Recent advances in digital thermography have made the cameras used light enough and small enough to be placed in an aircraft’s cockpit. In addition, improvements in resolution and computing power will allow the implementation of expert systems which can be programmed to recognise the operator and how he or she will react to varying mental demands.

Adrian Marinescu, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Early Stage Researcher who has been examining physiological responses to workload in his PhD in aerospace human factors, and the first author of the paper, said: “The preliminary results are promising. Our goal is to estimate workload using non-invasive and non-intrusive physiological monitoring. Of all the approaches we’ve tried, facial thermography is the least intrusive, and has proved to be an excellent method – it’s convenient, gives real-time data, and the cameras have been getting smaller, lighter and more affordable.”

Professor Sarah Sharples, Professor of Human Factors, and supervisor and initiator of the study, said: “The measurement of workload without needing to interrupt people to ask them to report how busy they are, has been challenging human factors specialists for many years. By bringing together our expertise in bioengineering, human factors and machine learning, we have developed a much better understanding of how physical changes associated with workloads manifest themselves as physiological symptoms, and how these symptoms translate into the parameters that we can measure.”

Dr Alastair Campbell Ritchie of the Bioengineering Research Group, said: “We expected that mental demands on an operator would result in physiological changes, but the direct correlation between the workload and the skin temperature was very impressive, and counter-intuitive – we were not expecting to see the face getting colder. With this accurate way to estimate workload, we can develop methods that will assist the operator at times of maximum stress.”

The project formed part of a larger European Union funded, Marie Curie Actions Initial Training Network (ITN) called InNovAte (the systematic Integration of Novel Aerospace Technologies), Grant agreement number 608322. This human factors project benefitted from a University-industry partnership with Airbus.

Professor Herve Morvan, Director of the IAT said: “InNovAte has seen tremendous success in combining the various strands of aerospace research and enabling our ESRs to take a more holistic approach to aircraft design and operation. Pilot fatigue has received greater exposure recently and developing an advanced system to monitor it is a significant step in a sector where safety is paramount.”

The researchers are continuing this study to allow for the broader application of the monitoring to further enhance the accuracy of workload estimation. Research continues into the estimation of operator workload in fine manual tasks requiring acute concentration as well as mental workload in situations requiring temporal and spatial awareness.

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Why did the elephant cross the road? In Malaysia they are trying to find the answer.

January 19th, 2018

The body of an elephant calf lies on the side of a remote highway in the north of Peninsular Malaysia – the East-West Highway is flanked by two wildlife refuges, Royal Belum State Park and the Temengor Forest Reserve. It is stories like this in the Malaysian media that are of increasing concern to wildlife experts. They highlight the growing difficulty of human-elephant coexistence.

As economic development forges ahead in Peninsular Malaysia so do the dangers to the country’s wildlife.

For five years, researchers from the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus (UNMC) have been GPS tracking 17 wild Asian elephants to find out whether they cross this road, how often and where, and to model how their movements are affected by the road

This week, the research – ‘Why did the elephant cross the road? The complex response of wild elephants to a major road in Peninsular Malaysia’ – was published in the academic journal Biological Conservation.

A team of wildlife conservationists at UNMC and other partner institutions have now called to avoid any further expansion of the East-West Highway. They also want to see a reduction in and the enforcement of speed limits as well as considering a limit on traffic volumes at night.

Read more about the research on the University of Nottingham news website.

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New MOOC explores the history of the Qur’an

January 18th, 2018

This online course will illustrate how the Qur’an situates itself as part of, and as a correction to, the religious discourse of the Jewish and Christian communities of Late Antique Arabia. 

The course will use the Qur’an, as well as Jewish and Christian historical documents, to reconstruct the religious landscape to which the Muslim scripture reacts in a pointed, precise and nuanced way.

This will give you a historically more informed understanding of nascent Islam, and will allow you to reconsider many of the theological and cultural tenets of Late Antique Judaism and Christianity. 

What topics will you cover? 

  • Traditional and Western approaches to the Qur’an 
  • Arabia in Late Antiquity 
  • Judaism and Christianity from the first to the seventh century 
  • The Qur’an and the Hebrew Bible 
  • The Qur’an and the New Testament 
  • Law and ritual purity in the Bible, Judaism, Christianity, and in the Qur’an 
  • The Qur’an, Judaism and Christianity 

Sign up now 

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Help us celebrate LGBT History Month 2018 

January 17th, 2018

We’re delighted to announce our programme of events for this year’s LGBT History Month – taking place throughout February 2018.

LGBT History Month is a powerful and thought-provoking event that takes place annually. It aims to promote equality and diversity, for the benefit of everyone, by:

  • increasing the visibility of LBGT people, their history, lives and their experiences,
  • raising awareness and advancing education on matters affecting the LBGT community and,
  • working to make educational and other institutions safe spaces for all LGBT communities.

The 2018 theme for LGBT History Month is ‘Geography: Mapping the World’ which in part celebrates the progress in the world over the last year to legalise same-sex marriage.

Schedule of events

Highlights from our LGBT History Month 2018 programme will include:

  • Trans Awareness: The Basics
    12 noon-1.30pm, Wednesday 7 February
    We are delighted to welcome Gendered Intelligence — a not-for-profit Community Interest Company — to the University of Nottingham to present ‘Trans Awareness: The Basics’. This talk will set the wider context for trans identities, explore key terms and use of language, offer a basic ground in the legislation and begin to explore how organisations can ensure they are being trans-inclusive. The talk will finish with a Q&A session. This event is open to UoN staff only.
  • LGBTQ+: The Nottingham Experience
    6pm-7:30pm, Wednesday 21 February
    In line with this year’s LGBT History Month theme (‘Geography: Mapping the World’), this event — open to all — aims to put Nottingham on the map and focus on the experience of LGBTQ people in our city. A panel discussion will bring together representatives from the University of Nottingham, Nottingham City Council, Nottingham University Hospitals, the Nottingham LGBT Network and more, to each provide a unique perspective on what it is like to be LGBTQ in Nottingham today.
  • Hooking Up: gay men, spaces and desire 1960-2018
    6:30pm-7:30pm, Wednesday 28 February
    From the outset, the notion of ‘space’ has been central to the lives of gay and other men who have sex with men as a mechanism for making contact with each other. ‘Hooking up’ not only provides an opportunity for expressing sexuality and identity, but to gain love, affirmation and a sense of connection with a community. In this interactive lecture we work with the genre of performance ethnography to use multi-media and the voices of men who experience ‘hooking up’ at three bench marks in time between 1960 and the present day. All welcome (suitable for 16+).

There will also be a number of additional events taking place at the University of Nottingham throughout the month — including:

For full listings across the month, please visit the University of Nottingham’s events pages.

Get involved

All event links are now live for you to book your place.

For updates throughout the month, subscribe to the People and Culture blog. Plus, don’t forget to join the conversation on social media using the hashtag #LGBTHM18.

We’ll be releasing more news when LGBT History Month officially commences on Thursday 1 February. You can also find out more about our LGBT History Month programme by emailing the People and Culture team.

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