XIAOZHUANG DELEGATION VISITS KEELE
Representatives of Nanjing Xiaozhuang University, including the
President, Professor Li Hongtian, visited Keele last week to further
cement the co-operation reached with the Faculty of Natural Sciences for
a 3+1 arrangement for students.
Xiaozhuang University has received Ministry of Education approval in
China for 40 students to progress on to the final year of Keele's BSc in
Environment and Sustainability, after undertaking three years of their
degree at Xiaozhuang. The first cohort of students has already
started in China and will come to Keele in September 2013.
After a meeting with the Dean of Natural Sciences, Professor Pat
Bailey, and then lunch with the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Nick Foskett,
and other colleagues, where further opportunities were discussed, the
five delegates toured the Faculty to view the facilities, including the
new MULTY laboratory in the Lennard-Jones Building. |
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KEELE INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL
 Keele
International Festival, which runs until 4 March, was launched by the
Vice-Chancellor, Professor Nick Foskett, last night.
The festival aims:
• to help staff and students to be more internationally aware, and
• to enhance the educational experience at Keele to make learning and teaching more internationally oriented.
Activities have been organised for staff and students to help achieve
these aims. Next week's programme includes guest speaker, Professor
Elspeth Jones, from Leeds Metropolitan University, on Wednesday, 2 Feb,
and a Chinese Society hosted event at the Students' Union on Saturday, 5
February, to celebrate Chinese New Year.
Throughout the Festival, Comus Restaurant, the Students' Union and
KPA Bar will be offering an 'internationally' themed option on their
menus.
The Vice-Chancellor opened the festival with a welcome back
reception for more than 70 returning study abroad students and 50
exchange students, who have started their semester at Keele.
He encouraged everyone to take part in the various international
activities over the next month and said studying abroad was one of the
life-changing activities that any student should undertake.
The evening culminated with the presentation of prizes for the best
photo and best film produced by the students who had been abroad.
Further details about the festival can be found here. |
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NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR HEALTH RESEARCH FUNDING FOR KEELE
 Professor
Elaine Hay, Research Institute for Primary Care and Health Sciences,
pictured, with Dr Christian Mallen, has been awarded National
Institute for Health Research funding worth a total of £305,000 for a
National School of Primary Care Studentship and a National School of
Primary Care Fellowship.
The grants have been awarded as part of the Primary Care Sciences
Research Centre's membership of the National School of Primary Care
Research.
The Centre is one of only eight primary care departments in England
invited to become a member of the NSPCR as a result of their RAE
performance.
Milisa Blagojevic has been awarded a three-year NSPCR Post-doctoral
fellowship to develop statistical approaches to assess outcome of
primary care management of joint pain, using observational data.
Mehluli Ndlovu has been awarded a three year PhD student fellowship
to use general practice and self-report survey data to statistically
model patterns of long term pain medication prescribing in primary care,
assess variation in medication management, and model the effect changes
in pain medication may have on long term outcome. Both
fellowships are supervised by Dr Kelvin Jordan, Reader in Statistics at
the Centre.
Dr John Edwards has been awarded a two year National Institute of
Health Research In-Practice Fellowship, worth £115,682, to develop and
test the use of quality indicators to support the management of
Osteoarthritis in general practice.
The In-Practice Fellowships are a competitive scheme which enables
established GPs to be based within academic centres and undertake an
intensive period of research, with a view to developing a project for
on-going PhD study. |
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KEELE AT ROYAL SOCIETY OF MEDICINE INTERCALATION FAIR
 Professor
Richard Ward, Centre for Applied Entomology and Parasitology, pictured,
and third year medical student, Ann Nainan, represented Keele at the
first Royal Society of Medicine Intercalation Fair in London.
An intercalated degree (ICD) offers medical students the opportunity
to suspend their studies for a year to obtain an additional
qualification (Bachelor's or Master's degree).
The School of Medicine has focused intensively on the development of
its Masters based, medical ICD programme in the past year and has seen a
rise in the numbers of internal and external medical students
expressing interest in Keele ICDs.
 Dr
Divya Chari, Coordinator for Medical Intercalated Degrees at the School
of Medicine, pictured right, stressed that intercalation has key
academic and career benefits and the medical school is keen to develop a
high quality programme to attract medical students from Keele, as well
as recruit students from other UK medical schools.
Events such as the RSM fair are key to raising the visibility of the Keele ICD programme.
The MSc in Blood Science and the MRes in European Scientific training
have recently been added to the ICD portfolio, to increase the range of
options available and the medical school is committed to expanding and
evolving the programme. |
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RESEARCH FOR PATIENT BENEFIT
The Department of Health has called for NHS clinical services to
gather data related to the quality of care they provide. However, at
present a simple core-set of standardised outcome measures for patients
with musculoskeletal problems is not available, which limits the routine
evaluation of clinical outcomes for these patients. Recent research
suggests that in addition to clinical audit feedback about the quality
of care provided, substantial patient benefits are achieved if
individual patient factors are monitored for their progress over the
course of treatment.
A team of researchers from the Keele-based Arthritis Research UK
Primary Care Centre, led by Dr Jonathan Hill, has received funding of
£173,623 for a two-year project by the Research for Patient Benefit
programme of the National Institute for Health Research, which aims to
involve patients, clinicians, experts and NHS managers to develop and
validate a new clinical tool that can perform both of these tasks,
monitor patient progress and provide routine clinical outcome data to
enable service quality evaluation. |
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THE HIDDEN BLITZ
Dr Peter Adey, Cultural Geography, pictured below, and Professor
Barry Godfrey, Criminology, held a workshop in the Claus Moser Centre
last week on the Hidden Blitz. Funded by a grant from the Leverhulme
Trust, the workshop featured a fascinating array of perspectives on the
Blitz, from crime to literature and from film to psychiatric diagnosis.
Social Historian, Juliet Gardiner, delivered an after dinner speech to conference delegates on the Gore of War,
from the balcony of the Old Library in Keele Hall. The event also
attracted visitors from the National Archives and the Potteries Museum
and Art Gallery, with whom further projects are being discussed.
SCIENCE LEARNING CENTRE IMPACT
The impact and quality of the Science Learning Centre network's CPD
provision has been recognised in reports from Ofsted and The National
Audit Office:
Successful Science (Ofsted) reported 'Secondary teachers in particular benefited from attending courses at the network of Science Learning Centres' and that this was 'high-quality provision.'
Educating the next generation of scientists (The National Audit Office)records 'There
is evidence that participation by teachers in SLC programmes is
associated with improved teaching and learning, and higher take-up and
achievement in science in their schools'.
FROM THE ARCHIVES
Twenty-five years ago this week –
Former employees at the Stoke National Garden Festival, held in 1986,
are to be interviewed by researchers in Keele's Economics Department,
to investigate their work experience since the Festival ended. 27 January 1989. |
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