KEELE TO HELP RECESSION HIT NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE

Keele is set to launch an £885,000 project to offer much needed support to local people and businesses hit by the recession after an award from the Economic Challenge Investment Fund.

The University, working closely with local partners, including Wardell Armstrong, Stoke-on-Trent City Council and Newcastle Borough Council, will equip 140 unemployed graduates in the North Staffordshire area with skills in environmental management. They will be trained in aspects of 'green business' and provided with the management skills and experienced support to help organisations respond to the demands of environmental change.
 
Keele is among fifty-eight universities and colleges in England which received the go-ahead for teams of higher education staff, working with local partners, to respond rapidly to the current economic situation. Keele will receive £434,000 from the fund and the rest of the money will come from the University and a range of local partners.
 
The programme at Keele will address cost savings for businesses; retraining of a cohort of graduate level unemployed/potentially unemployed individuals and carbon saving targets, by providing accredited masters level training. Keele has existing modules in 'Greening Business' and 'Introduction to Management', which for this bid are being merged to form a new certificate course in 'Environmental Management'.

Peter Hooper, Head of Research and Enterprise Services, said: "This is an important success for Keele, demonstrating our commitment to work with local partners to reduce graduate-level unemployment.  In the longer term it establishes a new masters-level qualification at Keele and it will give us a wide range of new links to local businesses, with the potential for developing wider collaborations in teaching or research."

SEISMOMETERS FOR SCHOOLS

Dr Ian Stimpson, School of Physical and Geographical Sciences, has been awarded £2,000 from the Petroleum Exploration Society of Great Britain / British Geophysical Association Geoscience Schools Outreach Fund to extend Keele's 'Seismometers for Schools' regional seismic network.

'Seismometers for Schools' is a national project coordinated through the British Geological Survey, with universities donating seismometers to local schools, providing training to teachers and then mentoring teachers in the use of seismometers in the classroom.  The seismometers can record earthquakes from all over the globe (for example last week's Italian earthquake was recorded here at Keele - see image above) and the earthquake seismograms can be exchanged between schools creating a UK-schools earthquake recording network. 

Currently seven schools in the Staffordshire / Cheshire / Shropshire region have seismometers forming the KAP-SEIS network (kapseis.ning.com) and this funding should allow the purchase of a further six seismometers.

ADVICE ON CLEAN COAL TECHNOLOGY

Dr Stefan Krause, School of Physical and Geographical Sciences, was in a group of four European scientists who travelled to Delhi, India, on the invitation of the European Commission and the Underground Coal Gasification Partnership, to advise the Indian Ministry of Coal and Indian coal companies on recent advances in underground coal gasification technologies, carbon capture and sequestration and environmental risk assessment schemes.

Dr Krause informed Indian partners on Hydro-geological Risk Assessment, Reactive Transport Modelling and remediation strategies of contamination associated with Underground Coal Gasification.

The workshop, which attracted great interest amongst Indian partners, was part of a series of activities aimed at promoting research and industry partnerships in this promising clean coal technology.

RESEARCH GRANT

Dr Stefan Krause, Research Institute for the Environment, Physical Sciences and Applied Mathematics, has been awarded an International Travel Grant by the Royal Geographical Society (£690) to attend the 8th IAHS Scientific Assembly / 37th IAH Congress in Hyderabad, India in September 2009.

NEW ACADEMIC APPOINTMENT

The following academic appointment commenced in post this week:

School of Medicine

Dr Robert Jones, a GP with Stoke PCT, has been appointed a Lecturer in Academic General Practice.

STUDENTS' UNION WINS SILVER AT NATIONAL AWARDS

Keele's Students' Union has been presented with a prestigious silver environmental award at the NUS Services Annual Dinner at the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool.

The Sound Environmental Impact Awards is an accreditation scheme to help Students' Unions do their bit for the environment. Now in its third year, over a million students have seen environmental initiatives put in place in their Unions through the awards. This year seventy-nine Students' Unions took part from across the UK.

KUSU is amongst the best performing Students' Unions in the country, gaining a Silver Standard, which required the union meeting twenty-two bronze and eleven silver essential criteria, as well as gaining an overall score of 400 points. The Silver Standard is new for this year's Awards. In recognition of their achievement they received a certificate and an exclusive Silver Standard award made out of recycled wellington boots. 

Joan Hope, of KUSU's Premises and Facilities department, said, "We are thrilled to have been accredited with a fantastically high overall score of 545. Innovative recycling initiatives such as the Ecoverter have definitely helped us achieve this raised standard."