TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION AWARDS SHORTLIST

Keelelink, Keele University's Schools and College Partnership Programme, has received national recognition by being shortlisted for a Times Higher Education Award.  The widening participation hub of the partnership programme has been shortlisted for Widening Participation Initiative of the year.

More than 90 higher education institutions entered at least one category in the awards. The outcome will be known at the awards ceremony which is a glitzy event in London on October 23.

Keelelink has gone from strength to strength since its conception three years ago. The programme now boasts nearly 140 school and college members. As it has grown it has been working across a number of areas in the university to deliver exciting partnership opportunities for its members. Opportunities available under the widening participation hub for which the programme has been nominated are campus-based events, access to award-winning new media materials, locally-based after school homework clubs, undergraduate subject based placements, e-mentoring and among others.

Kylie Cross, Widening Participation Manager, said: "This is an exciting and important development proving Keele can place itself amongst national competitors in the widening participation arena.  We are so pleased to have such a strong brand which is respected in so many schools and can offer our partners and ultimately young people so many opportunities."

CANNOCK CHASE GEOTRAIL

Dr Ian Stimpson and Dr Richard Waller from the School of Physical and Geographical Sciences have been awarded £20,000 for the production of a guided geotrail for Cannock Chase by the Staffordshire Aggregates Levy Grant Scheme.

The Cannock Chase Geotrail, to be produced by the Staffordshire Regionally Important Geological and Geomorphological Sites (SRIGS) Group, will highlight the geology, geomorphology and geological industrial history of the Chase. This trail follows on from the success of the Hamps and Manifold Geotrail which won the British Cartographic Society Printed Mapping Award for 2007 and the Churnet Valley Geotrail launched earlier this year. 

Previous trail leaflets can be obtained from Richard Waller
(http://system.newzapp.co.uk/GLink.asp?LID=MTU0NTY1Niw5) or can be downloaded from the SRIGS website http://system.newzapp.co.uk/GLink.asp?LID=MTU0NTY1Nyw5

FIRST "SANDPIT" FOR THE 3ME INITIATIVE

By the shore of Lake Ullswater, 20 members of Keele's "Bridging the Gap" project enjoyed two days in a Sandpit, funded by the EPSRC. A "Sandpit" in this case did not involve buckets and spades; it is a term used by research funders for a scientific discussion intended to generate new collaborative ideas that are then judged and supported at the end of the meeting to explore the idea further. The members of the Research Institutes for the Environment, Physical Sciences & Applied Mathematics and Science & Technology in Medicine were joined by two key speakers – Dr David Meredith from the National Grid Service supercomputing section of Daresbury Laboratories and Dr Andrew Curtis, Director of Edinburgh Seismic Research at Edinburgh University.

The focus of the Sandpit meeting was on two themes to enhance Keele's cross RI capability in Modelling Methods for Medical Engineering, known as the 3ME Initiative. The first was data visualisation and "data mining" covering the technical possibilities using Keele and Daresbury's supercomputing resources, and clinical needs such as knee cartilage monitoring. The second theme was wave propagation, which spanned techniques such as seismic interferometry used to study the earth, to biomedical applications in cardiovascular systems and tissue engineering. Participants then discussed ideas at the boundaries of these topics and formed into small groups to develop concrete proposals for collaboration.

On day two, the 3ME Initiative ran its own version of the BBC2 television programme "Dragons Den". Seven small teams of ISTM and EPSAM members were told "I'm in" and offered support of student project placements, researcher or facility time and a cash total of £25,000.

A second Sandpit to allocate a further £25,000 from the 3ME Initiative to another set of new interdisciplinary projects is scheduled to take place in 2009.

Recent Research Grants

Dr Jacco van Loon, Research Institute for the Environment, Physical Sciences and Applied Mathematics, has been awarded £820 by the Royal Society to attend the conference "Hot and Cool: Bridging Gaps in Stellar Evolution", in Pasadena (USA) in November 2008, to present an invited talk, serve on the scientific organising committee, and co-edit the conference proceedings.

Dr KP Lam, Research Institute for the Environment, Physical Sciences and Applied Mathematics, has been awarded £1,400 by the Nuffield Foundation for a two-month undergraduate research project titled "Flexible visual investigation of the underlying structures of high dimensional data".

New Academic Appointments

The following academic appointments commenced in post this week:

School of Public Policy and Professional Practice

Dr Michael Tomlinson has been appointed a lecturer in Education and was previously a Research Officer at Cardiff University.

School of Economic and Management Studies

Lara Spiteri Cornish has been appointed a lecturer in Marketing.

School of Economic and Management Studies

Anne Eccleston has been appointed a lecturer in Marketing and was previously a part-time lecturer at Staffordshire University.

Keele "Voluntary Sector in Criminal Sector" Conference a Success

Keele criminologists hosted the first national conference on the voluntary sector role in criminal justice on September 16th - 17th.  The 'Voluntary Sector in Criminal Justice: Prospects for Citizenship' conference attracted delegates from the academic and voluntary sectors, prison and probation services, and government to discuss the impact of cross-sectoral partnership work with offenders and victims. The keynote speakers were David Faulkner (Oxford University), Frances Flaxington (Ministry of Justice), Clive Martin (Clinks), Stephen Pryor (CAB) and Juliet Lyon (Prison Reform Trust).   

The event was organised by Dr. Mary Corcoran, Professor Susanne Karstedt, and PhD students Michelle Jaffe and Clare Jones, who are all members of the Keele Voluntary Sector Research Group.  This is the second successful public event held by the group, following their regional symposium in June 2007.

North West Costing and Pricing Group Meeting

The biannual meeting of the North West Costing & Pricing Group was hosted in the Claus Moser Building on Wednesday 25 September. The Group was set up following the introduction of the Transparent Approach to Costing in 1999 and includes all the north-west universities together with Queen's University Belfast, University of Ulster and Bangor University. The meeting discussed the developments within Full Economic Costing, particularly the recent Quality Assurance and Verification audits of UK universities by Research Councils UK and the application of Full Economic Costing for the EC's research Framework Programme 7.