KEELE AMONG THE BEST IN THE COUNTRY FOR STUDENT SATISFACTION

Students at Keele have rated the University as one of the best in the country for satisfaction with their degree courses. The annual National Student Survey placed Keele at 11th for the quality of its courses, with an overall satisfaction score of 89%, up from 88% last year. Keele is also the highest placed university in the Midlands and the north of England.

Teaching satisfaction was rated very highly by students at 88% (87% a year ago) and Keele also saw improvements in every other category: Assessment and Feedback; Academic Support; Organisation and Management; Personal Development and Learning Resources.

The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Nick Foskett, said: "The excellent performance of the University in the National Student Survey demonstrates the high quality experience which students have during their time at Keele.  It is a reflection not only of the first rate teaching and learning experience the University provides, but also of the strong Keele "community" which supports all aspects of their life as students."

Around 252,000 students at universities in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as further education colleges in England, took part in the Ipsos MORI survey. The overall response rate this year was 63.1 per cent and a total of 152 HEIs and 113 FECs from across the UK took part in the survey. At Keele there was a 65% response rate.

ASTROPHYSICS GROUP SUCCESSES AT WINNING INTERNATIONAL FACILITY TIME

Dr James Reeves, pictured right, with Keele student Jason Gofford, was awarded 400 kilo-seconds of observing time with NASA's Chandra X-ray satellite and four Earth orbits of NASA's Hubble space Telescope, to observe the radio-quiet quasar MR 2251-178. The aims are to establish the nature of the highly ionized accretion disk wind, determine the properties of soft X-ray absorption along the line of sight, as well as studying the connection between the UV and X-ray absorbers.

Members of the Astrophysics Group have also been very successful in gaining time on international observatories via the FP7-funded OPTICON trans-national access programme: Dr John Taylor won five nights on the 3.5m telescope at Calar Alto observatory in the Southern Spanish region of Andalucia, to take spectra of pulsating eclipsing binaries that were observed with the Kepler satellite. He also got nine nights on the 2.2m telescope at the same observatory to gather high-precision brightness measurements of the very bright hosts of transiting extrasolar planetary systems. He has planned to do the same on the 2.5m INT telescope on the Spanish island of La Palma, where he gained four nights through the regular telescope allocation process.

Dr Jacco van Loon (pictured left), with Keele student Mandy Bailey, was awarded four OPTICON-funded nights at the 3.9m Anglo-Australian Telescope, in New South Wales, to make maps of interstellar gas by taking spectra of many stars in the Magellanic Clouds neighbouring galaxies. He also obtained 14 hours through the FP7-funded RadioNet trans-national access programme, on the 30m IRAM radio telescope in the Sierra Nevada, in Andalucia, to map out interstellar carbon monoxide.

Further telescope time was gained by Dr Pierre Maxted, on the European Southern Observatory in Chile: nine hours on the 8m Very Large Telescope and two nights on the 3.5m New Technology Telescope, to study a disrupted giant star discovered in the WASP (planet-finding survey) archive. Professor Nye Evans was awarded three nights on ESO's NTT to perform infrared brightness measurements of classical novae to identify potential imminent recurrences of these explosions, and Dr Alex Smith won two nights on the same telescope to observe secondary eclipses of transiting planets to probe their atmospheres.

While Professor Rob Jeffries, pictured right, was awarded three nights on the 4.2m William Herschel Telescope, on La Palma, to search for material accreted from forming planetary systems around young, Sun-like stars.

Whilst there is no direct grant income to Keele as a result of these awards, the financial value assigned by the Science and Technology Facilities Council to the ground-based facility time for the purposes of RAE/REF metrics, is about £455,000.

'AGES AND STAGES' TEAM HOSTS CANADIAN COLLEAGUES

Keele's 'Ages and Stages' research team hosted a visit from Professor Janet Fast and Jacquie Eales, from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, who were here to discuss the links between the 'Ages and Stages' project at Keele and their project entitled: Health and Creative Aging: Theatre as a Pathway to Healthy Aging.
 
The Keele team is researching the role that Stoke-on-Trent's Victoria Theatre (now the New Vic Theatre) has played in the lives of people living and working in the Potteries during the last forty years. The Canadian team is carrying out research with the 'GeriActors and Friends' intergenerational theatre company in Edmonton, exploring the participation of older adults in theatrical productions and how this may enhance health and well-being. The 'Ages and Stages' project, led by Professor Miriam Bernard, Centre for Social Gerontology/Research Institute for Life Course Studies, pictured below, is funded by the multi-research council New Dynamics of Ageing (NDA) Programme.

Present at the meeting were three members of the NDA's 'Older People's Reference Group', who advise the Programme Director, help to monitor and disseminate outputs, and act as a source of advice and support for projects.

ANIMATION AND CULTURE

Keele welcomed Amecon, the largest UK convention dedicated to the celebration of Japanese animation, comics and culture, last weekend. The convention took over the campus and a number of facilities for the three-day event, which attracted 1,200 visitors.

Registration, a dealers' room and bring-and-buy sale were in the sports centre. The Students' Union was the venue for their full programme of evening events and rooms within the Dorothy Hodgkin Building were converted into gaming areas and video programming zones. Keele's conference management service dealt with 750 bed and breakfast bookings.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

20 August 1959

Sir Jacob Epstein, once known as a controversial sculptor but latterly almost a traditionalist, has died at the age of 78. One of the last works completed by the sculptor was a portrait bust in bronze of Princess Margaret, commissioned by the University.  The figure started out as a head and shoulders and grew to a half-length as Sir Jacob was fascinated by the Royal hands.