Campus News
Nottingham student is ‘Future Chief Financial Officer of the Year’
April 27th, 2016
Nottingham University Business School student Molly Ashton (BSc Hons Finance, Accounting and Management) has scooped the prestigious ‘Future Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the Year‘ award at the national TARGETjobs Undergraduate of the Year event recently held at Canary Wharf.
The prize, sponsored by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), is a trip to Europe visiting some of ACCA’s key offices and meeting CFOs of major organisations. Molly was one of 120 undergraduates who were invited to the final in Canary Wharf where the winner was announced.
No stranger to Europe, Molly travelled across the continent and worked with Boots to gain a pharmaceutical qualification during her gap year. She currently writes a blog, which has enabled her to interact with various companies and has gained over 12,000 views in the last year alone. This summer she will join PwC as one of their Assurance Interns in the East Midlands office. In her spare time Molly works part-time providing maths tuition. She also enjoys riding as part of the Nottingham University Equestrian society and has recently been appointed the treasurer for the massage society.
Molly came through a series of online tests, application forms, interviews and assessment exercises to emerge as the winner of the award beating off competition from a very strong field of excellent students from top universities including York, Birmingham, University College London, Durham, Cardiff, Warwick and Imperial College.
The Future CFO of the Year award was one of twelve presented on the day with each award sponsored by a top graduate recruiter i.e: Mars, Laing O’Rourke, E.ON, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Gazprom, Rolls-Royce, L’Oreal, ACCA, Mayer Brown, The Bank of England, Expedia and Civil Service Fast Stream. Molly collected her award from event host Fiona Bruce and Mark Cornell, Market Director for Western Europe and North America at ACCA.
Reacting to Molly’s achievement, Alistair Bruce, Dean of Nottingham University Business School said: “This is a fantastic news story for Nottingham and the Business School. It is a clear demonstration of our ability to nurture both academically gifted students and rounded individuals with the personal skills that recruiters want.”
To keep up to date with news from Nottingham University Business School, visit their website. You can also find them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.
Mark Cornell, Market Director for Western Europe and North America at ACCA, Molly Ashton and Fiona Bruce, awards host.
Tags: Alistair Bruce, awards, finance, Nottingham University Business School, student, TARGETjobs
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Positive changes to Karnival’s processes and governance
April 26th, 2016
Message from Angharad Smith, Chair of Trustees and Students’ Union President.
In response to the new Charities Act 2016 and fundraising legislation the Students’ Union and Karnival are taking proactive action to review and improve Karnival’s processes and governance. To enable improvements to happen, it has been agreed by the Students’ Union Board of Trustees that Karnival’s fundraising activities will temporarily suspend for a period of time, which will predominately fall over the summer period when there is minimal activity.
The Karnival Director and Karnival Executive Committee are supporting the changes and will be working with the Students’ Union Officers and staff to review Karnival’s processes and governance. This work will build on the success of Karnival and offer inspiring and expanded opportunities for the future.
Karnival continues to make a huge contribution to many charities through its fundraising activities and to the local Nottingham community through its volunteering activities, as well as being a significant part of a great student experience for those taking part. We look forward to Karnival returning with an improved working model and series of events. We’d like to thank the charities who we partner with and we look forward to continuing our relationships.
The volunteering activities that Karnival support and lead on, such as Kontact, will continue with the support of the Student Volunteer Centre, whilst Karnival is developing and improving processes. This process will also not affect the status of any challenge trips currently booked through Karnival and its associated tour operators.
We are really looking forward to the future, and to taking Karnival’s fundraising and volunteering opportunities onto the next level.
Please visit the Students’ Union FAQs for more information.
Angharad Smith
Chair of Trustees and Students’ Union President
Tags: Angharad Smith, Karni, Karnival, Student Volunteer Centre, Students' Union, Students' Union President
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SB Fest 2016
April 25th, 2016
Summer is on its way and SB Fest is back!
Join the Sutton Bonington Guild and SB Music Society on Saturday 7 May from 3pm to 11pm for a day of live music, art, fairground attractions, Farmers’ Market and Beer Festival, and so much more! The event showcases the talent and societies of the University of Nottingham’s Sutton Bonington Campus with various ensembles performing throughout the day, including the SB Symphony Orchestra and SB Singers concert performance from 7-9pm.
Wristbands are £5 (under 12s free) giving you all-day access. Buy on the door, or pick up tickets in advance from SB Primary School, SB Post Office, and Picture This in Kegworth, and exchange for a wristband on the day.
This year there’ll be even more entertainment, including magicians and balloon modelling, a free-standing climbing wall, rodeo bull, obstacle course, village fete games and horseball spacehopper challenge, as well as music until 11pm. Fun for all the family with local produce available from SB Farmers’ Market stalls and a little tipple to wash it all down from Wicked Hathern Brewery!
All profits and collections throughout the day will be donated to LOROS.
For more information, view the event on the Sutton Bonington Guild Facebook page, or visit the SB Music Society website.
Tags: community, family, Farmers' Market, Festival, local, SB Fest, SB Guild, Sutton Bonington, Sutton Bonington Guild
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It’s seriously funny business – academia and comedy come together to debate the big issues
April 25th, 2016
Academics from The University of Nottingham are joining together with some of the UK’s most popular stand-up comedians to debate society’s topical issues in a series of shows at Nottingham Lakeside Arts, organised by Nottingham graduate Kirstie MacDonald.
Laughter is the best medicine
The shows will be introduced and moderated by professional comedians Simon Evans and Lucy Porter, who both regularly appear on Radio 4 and TV panel shows. The two events will include Professors Laurie Cohen and Jim Devlin from Nottingham University Business School, Professor Tom Dening from the Institute of Mental Health, Professor Gary Winship from the School of Education and Assistant Pro Vice Chancellor Marion Walker MBE.
Starting the ball rolling on Tuesday 3 May (7.30pm – 9.30pm) are Professors Devlin and Cohen who will be discussing trust, gender and innovation in the world of finance.
Professor Cohen said: “The real value of an event like ‘Seriously Funny Business’ is that it will provide a forum for discussing issues in an open way, for taking a critical look at what we do, why we do it this way and how we might do it differently. My expectation is that there will be some pretty lively disagreement on some of the issues raised and where we might go from here (not least amongst the panel members). This is what I’m hoping, anyway. If I come away from the evening with some new ways of thinking about things, I will consider it a success!”
Developing future research
Academics from the School of Education and the Institute of Mental health will look at the arts and mental health in the next event on Thursday 5 May.
Professor Dening from the Institute of Mental Health said: “Our research in the Centre for Dementia at the Institute of Mental Health focuses on psychological interventions and social activities of various kinds that involve people with dementia. This includes the interface between dementia and the arts.
“Humour is an important coping strategy for people during tough times in their lives but it is also an important way of depicting serious issues that affect us all. It is also mixed up with sadness – expressions like “laugh, I could have cried” and “the tears of a clown” are commonplace. I think the event will encourage people to look at new potential ways of exploring mental health, perhaps helping people on their personal journeys to recovery, or else making people think about how sharing a laugh is really good medicine.”
Tickets
Devised in conjunction with Nottingham’s very own ‘Just the Tonic’ comedy club, all profits will support a series of comedy based workshops to develop confidence and communication skills run by The Comedy Trust.
For more information or to register for an event visit the website.
Tags: comedy, mental health, seriously funny business, stand-up
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Phishing – don’t get caught out
April 22nd, 2016
There has recently been an increased amount of phishing attacks and compromised email accounts affecting staff and students.
Please be vigilant against suspicious email activity all year round, and especially at the moment. You may receive an email asking for your personal credentials or for you to visit a website and fill in details. This may even come from a University compromised account.
Anyone who has, or thinks they may have mistakenly fallen victim to this phishing attack and given out their username and password should change their password immediately by visiting IT accounts.
Visit the IT Network blog for tips on how to avoid these attacks.
Tags: computer, email, Information Services, IT, IT Network, IT Services, laptop, phishing
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Celebrity boost for Life Cycle 6
April 22nd, 2016
Eddie Izzard, who recently completed 27 marathons in 27 days, will be performing at Nottingham Lakeside Arts with his show Force Majeure 333.
Not only will he be delivering his stand up show in three languages (German, French and English) but 25 per cent of ticket sales will be donated to Life Cycle 6 – the University’s annual fundraising campaign, raising funds for breast cancer research in Nottingham and Derby.
The campaign has a £1 million fundraising target and to help achieve this, the University is asking as many people as possible to join in fundraising activity – holding bake sales, charity events, sponsored walks and joining our community bike ride this September.
Professor Sir David Greenaway, the University’s Vice-Chancellor, is also leading a team of 13, taking on the challenge of a 1,400 sponsored bike ride to the four compass points of the UK.
Eddie first performed his 333 shows in Caen, Normandy, on the 70th anniversary of D-Day. He will be performing in Nottingham on Friday 20 May at 7pm in German, 8pm in French and 9pm in English.
Tickets are still available from Lakeside Arts for the French and German shows but have sold out for the English hour.
Lisa Johnson, one of four inspirational women with breast cancer supporting The University of Nottingham’s campaign, said: “To have Eddie Izzard offer his support through ticket sales is a huge boost. It’s such an important cause that affects so many women, so it’s great to receive this contribution to the campaign.
“Every day 140 women in the UK are told they have breast cancer. All funds raised in the campaign will go directly into laboratories to support world-leading breast cancer research at centres in Nottingham and Derby.”
Professors at the University, which has a long standing pedigree in breast cancer research, are working on innovative research to detect breast cancer early, stop it spreading and to develop targeted treatments that will help save lives.
Research includes developing the world’s first blood test to detect breast cancer early, stopping cancer from spreading around the body and developing targeted treatments – for both hormone sensitive cancers and triple negative breast cancer.
Tags: breast cancer, celebrity, Eddie Izzard, Life Cycle, Life Cycle 6, Nottingham Lakeside Arts
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Chernobyl 30 years on – the long term behaviour of radioactive isotopes in soils
April 22nd, 2016
A team from The University of Nottingham have been collecting samples from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone to investigate the long term behaviour of radioactive isotopes in soils.
Thirty years after the catastrophic nuclear disaster on 26 April 1986, at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the town of Pripyat in Ukraine, experts from the School of Biosciences have been collecting samples to verify the results of laboratory measurements being made back home in the School of Biosciences on the University’s Sutton Bonington campus.
George Shaw, Professor of Environmental Science, said: “The radioactive isotope which received most attention after the emergency phase of the Chernobyl accident was caesium-137. This has a 30-year half-life and is readily absorbed by plants and animals, so can contaminate our agriculture and food supply. It can still be measured in soils across Europe but its impact has diminished significantly over the last 30 years.”
This research – ‘Biogeochemical processes and radionuclide behaviour in soil-plant systems‘ – is part of a broader study being conducted into the long-term environmental impacts of the Chernobyl accident. The ‘TREE’ project, funded by NERC under its RATE programme, is examining the transfer, exposure and effects of long-term radioactive contamination from Chernobyl, with the aim of integrating the science needed to underpin assessments of environmental radioactivity effects on humans and wildlife.
The TREE project is led by Brenda Howard MBE, who is based at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, is also an Honorary Professor in the School of Biosciences at Nottingham.
The University of Nottingham team visited the site last year. The main precautions were to avoid contamination of skin and clothes while working in the field and to minimise any inhalation of dust by wearing face masks during sampling. External exposures are monitored by personal dosimeters worn at all times in the field; these doses are minimised by continuously monitoring the ambient radiation dose at each field site and spending as little time as possible in sites with higher dose rates. The team also had expert local guidance from Dr Sergey Gaschak of the Chernobyl Centre for Nuclear Safety, Radioactive Waste and Radioecology.
Close to the Chernobyl Power Plant, where much higher levels of radioactivity still persist, numerous other radioactive isotopes can be found, some with extremely long half-lives. The research at Nottingham is focussing on some of these, including technetium-99 (half-life 210,000 years), iodine-129 (half-life 16 million years) and uranium-238 (half-life 4.5 billion years).
The aim of this research is to develop predictive computer models for these radioisotopes which can be tested using data from analysis of samples taken from the most highly contaminated parts of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
The Exclusion Zone surrounding Chernobyl, which has remained largely unpopulated by people, can be seen as a unique outdoor laboratory in which the long-term behaviour and effects of large-scale radioactive contamination can be studied.
Professor Shaw said: “Our current understanding is hampered by a lack of measurements on the long-term behaviour of radioisotopes under natural conditions. The results of our studies will help us understand the implications of disposing of long-lived radioactive wastes underground.”
Studies conducted by the TREE project will also contribute to the development of policy which regulates radiation exposure and protects both humans and wildlife from radioactive contamination of our environment. Furthermore, we are training a cohort of post-doctoral researchers and PhD students who took part in a summer school in the Chernobyl area in September 2015. These will be the UK’s environmental radioactivity experts of the future.
The Chernobyl accident was the most catastrophic nuclear accident in history. We are striving to learn valuable scientific lessons from its far-reaching impact which can be used to protect ourselves and our environment in the future.
Nottingham’s major experimental contribution to the TREE project is due to end in 2017 when the results will be published. The TREE project itself is due to run until 2018, when the full results from the consortium will be reported.
More on the press office blog.
—Ends—
More information is available from Professor George Shaw in the School of Biosciences at The University of Nottingham, on +44 (0) 115 951 3206, george.shaw@nottingham.ac.uk; or Lindsay Brooke, Media Relations Manager in the Media Relations Office at The University of Nottingham, on +44 (0)115 9515751, lindsay.brooke@nottingham.ac.uk
Our academics can now be interviewed for broadcast via our Media Hub, which offers a Globelynx fixed camera and ISDN line facilities at University Park campus. For further information please contact a member of the Communications team on +44 (0)115 951 5798, email mediahub@nottingham.ac.uk or see the Globelynx website for how to register for this service.
For up to the minute media alerts, follow us on Twitter
Notes to editors: The University of Nottingham has 43,000 students and is ‘the nearest Britain has to a truly global university, with a “distinct” approach to internationalisation, which rests on those full-scale campuses in China and Malaysia, as well as a large presence in its home city.’ (Times Good University Guide 2016). It is also one of the most popular universities in the UK among graduate employers and the winner of ‘Outstanding Support for Early Career Researchers’ at the Times Higher Education Awards 2015. It is ranked in the world’s top 75 by the QS World University Rankings 2015/16, and 8th in the UK by research power according to the Research Excellence Framework 2014. It has been voted the world’s greenest campus for three years running, according to Greenmetrics Ranking of World Universities.
Impact: The Nottingham Campaign, its biggest-ever fundraising campaign, is delivering the University’s vision to change lives, tackle global issues and shape the future. More news…
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Volunteers needed for BBC2’s Trust Me I’m a Doctor!
April 22nd, 2016
The BBC Trust Me I’m a Doctor’s Michael Mosely and his team are looking for volunteers for a study being run by the University of Nottingham.
They want to find out if there is a short cut to getting fitter – can you really improve the health of your heart in as little as 15 minutes per week? If you’re interested in taking part, you will be needed for a couple of filming days which will include baseline testing and results and in early May and again in mid-June.
Participants must:
- have a history free of cardiac problems to be eligible
- be aged 40 to 60
- live in the Derbyshire area
To register your interest to participate, please email trustme@bbc.co.uk or call Fran on 0141 422 6709.
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Whitsun Football Camp 2016
April 21st, 2016
Whitsun Football Camp is back again this year, running from Tuesday 31 May to Friday 3 June at Sutton Bonington Sports Centre.
For primary school children aged 5-11 of all abilities, the camp offers social sport supervised by FA qualified coaches. The varied activities include matches, freestyle, learning tricks and freestyling with the opportunity for children to win medals and certificates to celebrate success!
Each day runs from 9am to 4pm at the price of £20 per child per day – parents can pay a £5 per day deposit if they want to book prior to Monday 30 May.
For more information and to book, please call the Sutton Bonington Sports Centre reception on 0115 951 6444 or email lauren.barker@nottingham.ac.uk.
Tags: camp, football, primary school, Sutton Bonington, whitsun football camp
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Join us for one of our Live Revision and Exam Q&A sessions
April 21st, 2016
Your University Journey are offering TWO online live Assessment Question and Answer sessions.
Within these, you can put your questions about preparing for your exams or your coursework directly to members of the Your University Journey team. Join us from your computer, wherever you are in the world!
Live session 1:
Tuesday 26 April @ 2-3 pm (UK Time) 10-11pm (Malaysia/Ningbo Time)
Live session 2:
Tuesday 3 May @ 9-10 am (UK Time) 5pm-6pm (Malaysia/Ningbo Time)
Each event will last for 1 hour.
Panel Members:
The panel members will include:
• Professor Sarah Speight (Professor in Higher Education)
• Dr Ruth Allen (Academic Development Adviser)
• Elizabeth Newall (Senior Librarian)
To access the live event click on this link: Revision and Exams Q&A Live
Information on how to participate can be found in the document here.
Tags: Q&A, Revision, Your University Journey
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