Campus News
VC staff surgeries: Tuesday 19 July, 2pm–3pm
July 8th, 2022
The next set of ‘staff surgery’ sessions are now available for colleagues to discuss any issue with Vice-Chancellor Professor Shearer West, on Tuesday 19 July 2022, from 2pm – 3pm.
Booking your session
To register for a session, please email BA-VC-Surgery@exmail.nottingham.ac.uk with your preferred date from the list below and a brief agenda for the meeting.
Places are offered on a first-come, first-served basis, so colleagues are encouraged to book early. You will be contacted within two working days of your request confirming the date and time.
Further surgery sessions are available on:
Tuesday 13 September, 9am – 10am
Wednesday 19 October, 10am – 11am
Tuesday 15 November, 2pm – 3pm
Tuesday 13 December, 11am -12 noon
Further information is available at VC Staff Surgery. Conversations will usually be held in-person, although can be arranged via Teams if preferred.
Tags: VC staff surgery, VC Surgeries, VC surgery, Vice-Chancellor Surgeries
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Women working and well in research survey and events
July 8th, 2022
As part of the university’s commitment to improving research culture, the Women’s Staff Network is inviting people to take part in a number of interactive events and a feedback-gathering survey all based around exploring gender equality in research.
Funded by Research England, the workshops will be taking place across the university throughout July. You can find more details below:
Workshop 1 – Women Academics: Thriving and Flourishing in Research?
Organised by Isobel O’Neil & Anne Touboulic in Nottingham University Business School on behalf of the Faculty of Social Sciences
When: Monday 18 July 2022: 11am – 1pm
Where: E07, Monica Partridge Building, University Park (Option to join on Microsoft Teams)
About the Workshop
Join us for a workshop to hear from Dr Maria do Mar Pereira on Gender, Academic Work and Wellbeing During and After Covid-19: Critical Questions. The session is designed to be highly interactive, with discussion groups and lots of opportunity to share experiences and ideas for tackling the questions posed.
We hope the session will generate some recommendations to support success and wellbeing for research active women* academics across UoN. The session will end with a networking lunch (12.15pm onwards) for those attending in person.
How to Register
To sign up, please complete the below registration form by end of the day on Monday 11 July 2022 at the latest.
Register for the Event
For further information please contact isobel.oneil@nottingham.ac.uk
*This is designed to be an inclusive all who identify as women (cis and trans) or who identify differently, for example, as gender fluid or non-binary. We recognise that aspects of our identities intersect to make research work experiences feel different.
Workshop 2: Future solutions to an ongoing problem: A Working Lunch – Women’s wellbeing in Research
Organised by Abigail Blyth in Politics and International Relations
When: Thursday 21 July 2022: 12 noon – 1.30pm
Where: A4, Law and Social Sciences Building, University Park
About the Workshop
As part of the Women Working and Well in Research, which is funded by Research England, events are taking place throughout July. Specifically designed for early career researchers, ‘Future solutions to an ongoing problem: A working lunch‘ looks to discover what challenges early career researchers have experienced, as well as what recommendations they have to overcome these in the future.
How to Register
To register, please complete the below registration form by Wednesday 13 July 2o22 if you wish to attend, for catering purposes.
Register for this event
For further information, please contact: abigail.blyth@nottingham.ac.uk
Further workshops are also being planned. Please see the initial information below, with more details to follow.
- Thursday 21 July 2022: Women in Space
Organised by Chantal Cappelletti in Aerospace & Engineering
- Monday 25 July 2022: Women with Family as PhD Researcher
Organised by Hasidah Abdul Hamid in Medicine
- Wednesday 27 July 2022: Women in Research – Lets Thrive together!
Organised by Sweta Munshi in Engineering
Women’s Staff Network: Survey
The Women’s Staff Network is carrying out a 10-minute online survey about Women working & well in research. Please take part if you can by using the survey link below.
Women working & Well in Research- Complete the Survey
Tags: well in research, Women in research, women working, Women’s Staff Network
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Update on Digital Engagement: July 2022
July 8th, 2022
It’s been a busy few months for the Digital Engagement programme, and the Digital Engagement team wanted to provide everyone with an update.
Below is a summary of what the team has been working on, what the focus is for the next few months and some of the changes that Digital Engagement will introduce.
What have the team been working on?
Find Your Nottingham
Find Your Nottingham is our new online prospectus and digital experience that will surface relevant and exciting content to prospects. Over the last few months, we’ve been building out the new experience making sure it’s accessible and displays content in the best way. As we prepare for a September launch we’re finalising the build, getting ready for testing, and starting to support staff who will need to use Find Your Nottingham as part of their role.
Campaign Design, Delivery and Management
We believe that by delivering personalised and meaningful campaigns, we can help our prospects feel more connected throughout each step of the recruitment journey and encourage them that the University of Nottingham is the right place for them. Over the last few months, we’ve being laying a lot of the groundwork to identify the most suitable campaigns for prospects and building out the technical capabilities to enable us to deliver campaigns across multiple channels. We are now preparing for our first campaign, which will be released alongside Find Your Nottingham in September.
Content
Our aim is to produce content from Digital Engagement for the right person, with the right message, at the right time, and on the right channel. Using the content strategy which we set out at the beginning of the programme, we’ve started to plan out the content ideas and themes we will deliver across multiple channels as part of the Digital Engagement programme. Next on the horizon is ensuring that we have all the content in the right place, in the right format and with the right message for the launch of Find Your Nottingham and our Find Your Nottingham onboarding campaign.
DAM (Digital Asset Management)
The DAM will provide an online platform for us to store, organise and protect all the University’s digital assets, such as photos, videos, and copy. Earlier this year, we successfully built the first version of the DAM and we’ve been testing this with key team members to ensure it works as intended. We’re now turning our focus to developing the training materials for teams across the University to use the DAM, as well as engaging with our Malaysia and China campuses to establish the best approach to rolling the DAM out to these campuses.
Our new CRM – Dynamics 365
Our new CRM will collect all our prospect data in one place, meaning our staff can deliver a more competitive and efficient service. We’ve been planning and agreeing some key features for our D365 prospect records, such as how we display the interactions that we’ve had with a prospect so that people handling enquiries have the full timeline, and how we can surface articles and guides to help staff support prospects with the right information. We’re also working closely with the Student Recruitment Support Hub as the first team to begin using this product. With their input, we’re exploring how we can build D365 to meet their needs, and how we can build the teams skill to use D365 as effectively as possible.
Help and Support: Front End Experience
The Help and Support (front end experience) will give prospects the tools to easily self-serve information and answer on our website. Accessible FAQs and articles, a newly designed ChatBot and a live chat function to give prospects another, easier way to contact our teams will mean they can find the right answers quickly. As we have now designed what we imagine this online experience will be, we will now be looking towards building and testing.
Events
The next new product that the Digital Engagement team will be looking at is Events. This will include both a front-end digital experience for prospects on our website, as well as a back-end Dynamics 365 capability to support events bookings. Our team will be working closely with the Events team over the next few weeks to explore the right things to deliver for both applicants and staff.
Survey – we’d love to hear your thoughts
We’d like to get a sense of how well informed and involved people feel about the Digital Engagement programme, so we’ve created a short form that anyone at the university can complete.
The form is anonymous, so your name and email address won’t be shared with us, though we do ask what team you are in as this will help us to tailor our activities to different groups.
You can complete the survey here.
How do I find out more?
To understand more about what the programme is working on now and in future, visit our SharePoint to view our latest update, or join our MS Teams channel to get regular updates. You can also email us on digitalengagement@nottingham.ac.uk.
A more detailed update is available on the Digital Engagement Sharepoint site.
Tags: CRM, DAM, digital engagement, Digital Engagement Programme
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Diversity Festival recap: Acknowledging racism: towards inclusivity and change
July 8th, 2022
In June, the university celebrated its second annual Diversity Festival, bringing staff, students, alumni and visitors together for a variety of keynote events as well as live music and dance performances showcasing the diversity of our university community.
For the next few weeks, we will be highlighting one keynote event a week for those who missed out on the live sessions. This week, we’re recapping the Acknowledging Racism towards inclusivity and change event.
The keynote session on acknowledging racism created a space for us as a university community to come together and have some really interesting and challenging conversations.
Early on we acknowledged that not everyone feels comfortable when talking about race and racism and our panellists discussed how to deal with discomfort and how to encourage genuine allyship.
There were examples shared of practical and structural changes that have been made and how to move past the ways in which we’ve always done things. At the same time, the panel acknowledged that there is a lot more to do when it comes to sharing the work that the university has been doing on the Race Equality Charter.
There were many powerful moments and we hope that everyone walked away feeling empowered to take action to help us progress towards race equality.
Watch the full recording below.
Catch up with other events on the Diversity Festival hub.
Tags: anti racism, Diversity Festival, Diversity Festival 2022, Keynote events, racism
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Positive Covid test – reporting no longer required
July 8th, 2022
This article has been updated to confirm university policy is for staff to isolate at home where they feel unwell or are displaying Covid-19 symptoms.
Updated 8 July 2022
Staff and students are no longer required to report a positive Covid-19 test to the university.
Staff should use the central sickness reporting mechanism and alert their line managers, as determined by their departmental process.
Students should report sickness using the process described in their school handbook.
The extensive Covid-19 vaccination programme, alongside development of anti-viral and other treatments which better treat those who do experience more severe symptoms, mean that we no longer need to monitor and manage outbreaks of the virus in the same way.
The end of the academic year brings a natural transmission break on our campuses, and allows us to move to a lower level of infection management, which is appropriate to the current stage of the pandemic.
We would encourage people to continue to follow government advice on living safely with Covid, which emphasises the importance of being vaccinated and continuing to use a mask in enclosed spaces. If you have symptoms of a respiratory infection, such as Covid-19, and you have a high temperature or do not feel well enough to go to work or carry out normal activities, try to stay at home and avoid contact with other people.
The university expects and strongly recommends that staff and students who test positive for Covid-19 continue to isolate at home for at least five days or, if you are continuing to test, for as long as you test positive. For more detailed information, please refer to our Safety on campus webpages.
Tags: covid reporting, COVID testing, COVID-19, covid-19 reporting, COVID-19 testing, Testing Service
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National Student Survey 2022 results
July 7th, 2022
The 2022 National Student Survey (NSS) results for the University of Nottingham and the wider sector have now been published.
Results are available to view online via tableau – with analysis of the sector to be made available soon. At an institutional level satisfaction dropped 1.0% from 75.8% to 74.8%. This puts us slightly below the sector average which currently sits at 75.9%. However, Nottingham’s rank within the Russell Group has remained stable at 13 out of 22.
Our strongest performing areas are in questions related to teaching on the course (80%). We also performed well in questions related to Learning Resources (81%), where our responses improved in all questions. Additionally, our average score in all questions related to Learning Community have increased slightly.
Veterinary Medicine achieved a 99.2% overall satisfaction rate for the school, an increase on last year’s 99.0%. The School of Pharmacy also scored over 90% achieving 91%.
Earlier in the year we shared how students should engage with the NSS, the annual survey consists of 27 questions covering teaching, learning, assessment and feedback, academic support, organisation and management, resources, community, student voice and Students’ Union. At the end of the survey students are asked to give their university an overall satisfaction score.
The University thanks our community for engaging with the NSS as well as every student who took the time to complete the survey.
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Professor Dame Jessica Corner appointed Executive Chair of Research England
July 6th, 2022
Professor Dame Jessica Corner has been chosen as the preferred candidate for the role of Executive Chair of Research England, taking up appointment in October subject to ratification by the House of Commons Science & Technology Committee.
As Executive Chair, Professor Corner will be responsible for leading Research England in its critical role in providing more than £2 billion annually in grant funding to English universities for research.
She will also support knowledge exchange activity and oversee other major funding programmes, as well as the sustainability of the higher education research base in England.
Vice-Chancellor Professor Shearer West congratulated Professor Corner on her selection, saying:
“I wish Jessica every success in this role, which is critical to the success of research excellence across the higher education sector in England. She has made an immense contribution to the University of Nottingham and leaves research at the University in a much stronger position, with a significantly larger research portfolio, currently valued at more than £900 million, and improvements across all REF2021 measures. With a new five-year research strategy and a motivated research leadership team in place, I have every confidence that she has laid the foundations for further success in the future.”
During her six-year tenure at the University of Nottingham, Professor Corner has led the University’s transformational five-year research strategy 2017-22 which included such sector-leading initiatives as the research fellowship programme.
This highly successful scheme attracted more than 100 talented academics to Nottingham to provide the research leadership pipeline of the future. The programme has focused on exceptional research and innovation and prioritised support for underrepresented groups with 50% of the fellowships awarded to women and 16% to those who identify as BAME.
Professor Corner led the University’s preparations and submission for REF2021, ensuring comprehensive support for academics to develop their scholarly work and to ensure evidence of its impact, whilst research strategy initiatives significantly strengthened the University’s research environment. The results delivered improvements across all measures and, according to analysis by THE, secured the University seventh position in the UK for research power.
A strong advocate, role model and champion for equality and diversity, Professor Corner provided personal mentoring and coaching to many colleagues to develop their careers and their personal effectiveness. This contributed to significantly increased participation among women and colleagues from BAME backgrounds in REF2021.
The Vice-Chancellor will confirm interim UEB leadership arrangements for the Research & Knowledge Exchange portfolio shortly. A recruitment consultancy has been engaged to run an external competition to identify Professor Corner’s permanent successor.
Looking forward to her appointment, Professor Corner paid tribute to the many colleagues with whom she has worked at Nottingham:
“I am delighted to have been chosen as the preferred candidate for the Executive Chair of Research England, although it will be a wrench to leave Nottingham and the many colleagues and friends that I have made here.
In my view, our national research base has never been stronger, although there are clearly some challenges ahead, and I look forward to supporting research excellence across the country in the same way that I have enjoyed growing our research excellence here at Nottingham.
“There is always more to do in the role of Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research & Knowledge Exchange, however, this feels like the right time to move onto my new role when Nottingham has recently secured improvements across all the headline measures of REF2021 and secured seventh position for research power in the UK.
I want to thank every colleague in the research community whose hard work has contributed to delivering this achievement and so many more in the University’s research outputs.”
For further information, this article continues here…
Tags: professor dame jessica corner, research, Research and Knowledge Exchange, Research England
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National Insurance threshold set to change
July 5th, 2022
From Wednesday 6 July 2022 the threshold for National Insurance is changing.
The change will see the Primary Threshold increasing to fall in line with the emergency tax code of 1257L.
Therefore the threshold will be changing from £823 to £1,048 per month.
National Insurance is calculated at a percentage over the Primary Threshold. Anything earned above that threshold is NI deductible.
The change in threshold means that an employee at the university can earn up to £1,048 a month without paying National Insurance.
As the previous threshold was £823, this change means that anyone earning above £823 a month will see a reduction in their National Insurance Contributions.
Tags: National Insurance, National Insurance increase
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UoN authors win Best Achievement in People’s Book Prize 21/22
July 5th, 2022
Professor Paul Crawford, Professor Anna Greenwood and Dr Richard Bates from The University of Nottingham and Dr Jonathan Memel from Bishop Grosseteste University have won The Best Achievement award in The People’s Book Prize 2021/2022 for their book, Florence Nightingale at Home.
The Best Achievement award is given each year to the author(s) whose book advances the human condition, benefitting their community, or the world at large in some way.
Their book reveals how the concept and material reality of home profoundly influenced the life and work of the great Victorian pioneer.
Professor Crawford who led the research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council commented:
“Our team is delighted to gain this prestigious award. We wrote the book as the pandemic hit during the bicentenary of Florence Nightingale’s birth.
One of the things we highlighted in our study was how she spent many years confined to her home following an infection whilst caring for wounded soldiers in the Crimean War.
It is not a stretch to claim she endured a similar affliction as those with long-Covid!”
He goes on, “Despite the pain and fatigue she endured, Nightingale became the wonder woman of her time, working from home, indeed her bed, to great effect in areas such as public health, hospital design and nursing.”
Tags: Dr Richard Bates, People's book prize, Professor Anna Greenwood, Professor Paul Crawford
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Resource Finder launched to make finding guidance easier
July 5th, 2022
Colleagues in our HR department and the Web Team have launched a new solution to make guidance for staff on our web pages easier to find.
Recent focus groups held throughout departments across the university have highlighted the need to make web pages that hold useful information and guidance easier to navigate.
While undertaking a longer term review, the teams have come up with a solution to make things easier to find on the web pages we currently have.
The HR landing page has been updated with a new ‘Resource Finder’ solution that distils and collects together information organised by process.
This will make finding information and guidance easier across all platforms that the university currently uses i.e. webpages, Sharepoint sites.
You can use the Resource Finder here.
Share your views
The teams behind the new solution are keen to understand your experience using the Resource Finder to make it as useful as possible.
If you’ve used the new tool, please provide some feedback using the Microsoft form below.
Tags: guidance for staff, HR, HR guidance, information for staff, resources, resources for staff
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