KEELE UNIVERSITY SUSTAINABILITY HUB OPENS

The Keele University Sustainability Hub opened its doors this week and will provide a focus for the institution's widespread activities around the sustainability agenda.

Providing information and a full programme of projects for the community and students alike, the Sustainability Hub will be both a focus and catalyst for environmentally responsible behaviours.

The £4-million refurbishment of Home Farm began in 2009 and now houses meeting facilities, a lecture theatre, exhibition space, study areas and a fair trade coffee lounge where members of the public can drop in to find out more information. The new Hub is a living example of sustainability in action, with solar PV, solar thermal, ground source heat pumps, biomass heating and rainwater recycling, all contributing to make the building as green as possible.

Joan Walley, MP for Stoke North, who gave the keynote lecture at an inaugural symposium at the Hub, titled "Collaborations in Sustainability", said it was absolutely essential for universities to be at the heart of the environmental agenda and described the Hub as a really important facility for North Staffordshire.

The picture shows Joan Walley, with the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Nick Foskett, who gave the closing address, Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of Natural Sciences, Professor Pat Bailey and Dr Sharon George, Hub Manager.

• Just one day after its official opening the Sustainability Hub hosted a meeting of the Environmental Audit Committee, a Parliamentary Select Committee. The meeting, chaired by Joan Walley, included experts on environmental issues from a range of organisations, including Defra and Nesta and leading academics from 10 different UK universities, including Professors Andrew Dobson, Pat Bailey and Peter Styles, from Keele.

• The Chief Executive of the Higher Education Academy, Craig Mahoney gave the keynote address at a seminar on Education and the Student Experience held at the Hub last week.

He was welcomed by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost, Rama Thirunamachandran, and heard presentations from Dr Sally Sargeant, School of Psychology;  Dr Richard Waller, School of Physical & Geographical Sciences, and Dr Dave McGarvey, Faculty of Natural Sciences Learning & Teaching Director, before a closing address by Professor Marilyn Andrews, Pro Vice-Chancellor Learning & Student Experience.

• Members of the prestigious Staffordshire Business & Environment Network (SBEN) also had a sneak preview of the Hub last week. The visit formed part of SBEN's wide ranging series of training sessions, conferences and networking opportunities open to members.

CHINA JILIANG UNIVERSITY VISIT

The University yesterday played host to a delegation from China Jiliang University. 

The delegation had a tour of campus before visiting the Schools of Life Sciences and Computing and Mathematics and Keele Management School, as well as attending a lunch hosted by the Secretary and Registrar, Simon Morris. 

The Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost, Rama Thirunamachandran, chaired an afternoon meeting where possible collaboration opportunities were discussed.  The purpose of the visit was to promote discussions regarding potential co-operation between the two universities which share similarities of provision in some areas.  China Jiliang is interested in strengthening links with overseas institutions in particular in the UK.  At the end of the meeting a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between both parties to establish grounds for future collaboration.

The delegation was headed by Professor Yongming Yu, Chairman of the University Affairs Committee who was accompanied by Mr Jianbo Chen, Deputy Director of the President's Office; Professor Dongsheng Li, Dean of the College of Metrology and Measurement Engineering; Professor Wei Le, Deputy Dean of the College of Economics and Management; Professor Lingling Jiang, Deputy Dean of Liangxin College, and Mrs Ya Zhang, Deputy Director of Auditing Division.

China Jiliang University is situated in Hangzhou, a popular tourist resort and historic city in the province of Zhejiang.  The University has around 12,500 undergraduate students, recruited from over 30 provinces in China, and 1,500 academic and support staff on a campus of around 260 acres.  The University specialises in engineering courses, but also offers subjects in computing, life sciences, economics and management.

KMS PROMOTIONS

Keele Management School has announced the following the promotions:

Dr Elizabeth Parsons has been promoted to Reader in Marketing and Consumer Research. Liz's promotion recognises her contributions in the areas of consumer culture; critical marketing; and identity at work. Her most significant publications include the edited collections: Branded Lives: The Production and Consumption of Meaning at Work (with Matthew Brannan and Vincenza Priola, 2011) and Contemporary Issues in Marketing and Consumer Behaviour (with Pauline Maclaran, 2009). Selected journal articles include 'Markets, Identities and the Discourses of Antique Dealing' (Marketing Theory), and, with colleagues from Keele and Royal Holloway, 'Praxis or Performance: Does Critical Marketing Have a Gender Blind-spot?'(Journal of Marketing Management). Liz is joint editor of the journal Marketing Theory, which promotes critical and alternative approaches to theorising marketing and markets.

Dr Matthew Brannan has been promoted to Senior Lecturer in Management in recognition of excellence in Learning and Teaching and Professional, Organisational and Management Activity. Matthew has played a leading role in the development of KMS's successful partnership with KDU in Malaysia, which this year yielded its first cohort of graduates. Within KMS he has led on other collaborative projects, notably working closely with the International Study Centre. Matthew's teaching is informed by his research, where he has an international profile in the field of organizational ethnography as co-founder of the Journal of Organizational Ethnography and co-chair of a major international conference. The recent book Branded Lives (2011), co-edited with Elizabeth Parsons and Vincenza Priola, continues in the tradition of ethnographic studies of work and employment. Matthew has delivered lectures in Princeton, and has secured funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, the Higher Education Academy, and the Advanced Institute of Management Research.

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE SCHOLARSHIP FOR KEELE NURSING LECTURER

Nursing lecturer Claire Rushton has been successful in gaining a prestigious Florence Nightingale Research Scholarship. The Florence Nightingale Foundation provides nurses and midwives with scholarships for research, leadership and travel. 

The Research Scholarships provide up to £5,000 for study at home or overseas to promote and disseminate innovation in practice and extend knowledge and skills to meet changing healthcare needs and improve patient care. She will be using the funding award for her PhD programme. It will enable her to attend the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to receive training in advanced epidemiological analysis and to undertake a training project on heart failure polypharmacy supported by the Health Services Research Unit.

Since joining Keele in 2002 she has maintained an honorary contract with the University Hospital of North Staffordshire and currently spends clinical time in a nurse-led congestive heart failure clinic. Through the time spent in the heart failure clinic she has developed a keen research interest in comorbidity and polypharmacy as experienced by patients. With the supervision and support of Dr Umesh Kadam (Senior Clinical Epidemiologist) at the Health Services Research Unit at Keele, she has developed a research protocol for a PhD study on the topic of comorbidity in heart failure patients.

AHRC RESEARCH NETWORK SUCCESS

Professor David Amigoni (English, RI Humanities) has been successful in AHRC's Research Network competition. The network, 'Late-life creativity and the 'new old age': arts & humanities and gerontology in critical dialogue', will be developed and hosted in partnership with Professor Gordon McMullan (King's College, London), and will build strategically on the expertise in arts and social/critical gerontology possessed by both institutions.

The network will be organised around four workshops (March-November 2012, between Keele and King's) designed to explore critically the place of diverse creative activities and disciplines in the ageing process, and to develop a common language for evaluating such activies. Those participating in the workshops will include internationally renowned academics from the humanities and social sciences, practitioners, policy makers, and above all older people who continue to engage in creative activity. The third workshop is timed coincide with Keele's hosting of the British Society for Gerontology's annual international conference in July 2012. Professor Amigoni is a co-investigator on the 'Ages and Stages' NDA-funded project (http://www.keele.ac.uk/agesandstages/), looking at the relationship between representations and recollections of ageing in the Victoria Theatre's documentary output.

MAKING MUSIC

Professor Rajmil Fischman, Research Institute for the Humanities, has been awarded £71,432 by the AHRC for work that aims to enable music performance by using natural hand actions (e.g. throwing objects, sowing seeds, etc.) – furthering the possibilities afforded by game controllers. It will implement a self-contained 'Manual Actions Expressive System' (MAES) consisting of a digital glove controlled by specialised software for the creation of musical gestures. MAES will not require formal musical training, producing sophisticated sound that is a believable result of the performer's natural actions and providing intimate control of the sound.

MAES will complete the first stage of an overarching strategy for the realisation of 'Structured interactive immersive Musical experiences' (SiiMe), in which users advance at their own pace in a virtual environment stimulating all the senses and choose their own trajectory through a musical work, but have to act within its interactive rules and constraints towards a final goal - the realisation of the music.

CELEBRATING SUCCESS

The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Nick Foskett, presented the awards at a special ceremony this week celebrating the achievements of staff from the CFM directorate and marking the beginning of the formation of the two new directorates – Commercial & Business Engagement and Estates and Development.

The event, "Celebrating Success", brought together more than 250 members of staff from across the directorate. Marcus Wilson, CFM Head of Communications and Marketing, hosted the event at which a raft of awards were presented, including industry awards, diplomas, NVQs and a BA (Hons) Early Childhood Studies for Wendy Foster (Nursery Manager).

Long service awards were presented to Bob Mander, 25 years; Steve Davies, 25 years, and Dave Boote, 35 years. The Vice-chancellor is pictured presenting an award to Keele Hall chef Ruby Rainey.

ARTS AND HEALTH SHOWCASE

Staff from the School of Psychology were actively involved in organising, and participating in, a very successful Arts and Health showcase event at the Mitchell Arts Centre in Stoke-on-Trent. 

The aim was to showcase arts and health practice and research within the region and to explore opportunities for collaboration.  It attracted over 100 participants and included keynote presentations, discussions groups, workshops and poster displays. The event was funded by Keele and Staffordshire Universities, Stoke-on-Trent City Council and Staffordshire County Council.  Professor Michael Murray and Ms Anna Lydon were members of the organising committee. 

Professor Murray also co-ran a workshop on the Ages and Stages project with Jill Rezzano from the New Vic Theatre and Professor Mim Bernard, from the Centre for Gerontology.  There was also a poster display of arts and health work at Keele, including posters by Alex Lamont, Rachel Hallett, Michael Murray and Anna Lydon.

GEOGRAPHY STUDENT WINS BEST POSTER PRIZE

Nicola Brocklehurst (Geography Single Honours, third year undergraduate) won 'best poster prize' at the Quaternary Research Association's postgraduate conference held at the University of Durham.

Nicola presented the results of her project, entitled: "Ecological and sedimentological characteristics of kettle-hole lakes in the proglacial environment, Skeiðarársandur, south-east Iceland", which was funded by a Nuffield Undergraduate Research Bursary and supervised by Dr Zoe Robinson and Dr Katie Szkornik (EPSAM).

Nicola undertook research for the project during the summer, building on her second year undergraduate experience in Geography, where she also participated in a 10-day field course to Iceland as part of her degree programme.

CHAPEL DISCUSSION ON RELIGION AND VIOLENCE

Keele Chapel hosted a lively panel discussion on "Religion and Violence: Cause or Solution?" on Monday.

The Panel included presentations by Naveed Sheikh (Lecturer in International Relations), pictured above, and Martin Snodden (Conflict Trauma Resource Centre, Belfast), responses by Jonathan Gledhill (Bishop of Lichfield) and Kate Cushing (Reader in Medieval History) and questions from the audience.

More than 60 people participated in the event, which was part of the "Vision@Keele Chapel" week of workshops and events, sponsored by the University chaplains and student groups.

MEGA MOLS IN LIMOGES

Dr Graeme Jones, SPGS, has returned from Limoges in France where he helped celebrate the International Year of Chemistry, as part of the annual Fete de la Science. 

Working alongside Scientibus from the University of Limoges, he put on a hands-on make it molecular activity and a display of Mega Mols at Place de la Motte in the centre of the city, which was captured by French TV (video to be posted here).

This was the final event in a long summer for the Molecules Out and About team. 

Partner schools have also been very active with many now having presented to over 500 people and Science at Cwaben, our Scottish partners, have visited over 20 schools this year and set up a number of molecules trails.

Their Flikr site here has now received over 18,000 hits.

ACTIVE AGEING ON AIR

Dr Mo Ray, pictured below, was a guest on the Stuart George Show on BBC Radio Stoke to talk about Active Ageing, the thinking behind "unequal ageing" and to stress the strategic priorities at Keele in terms of ageing. 

This stimulated a lot of interest from the audience and comment on various aspects of ageing.
 
Domonique Birks, Business Development Manager for the Active Ageing Project, was on the Lamont Howie show with residents from Beaumaris Court (Anchor), a local sheltered housing scheme to celebrate 'International Older Peoples' Day'.

The event featured a food taster evening, hosted by the award winning Keele executive chef, Peter Walters.

NEXT WEEK -

Professor Anand Pandyan, Professor of Rehabilitation Technology for Health, pictured below, will give the opening lecture in the University's programme of Inaugural Lectures for 2011/12, on Tuesday (October 25th) in the Westminster Theatre.

The title of the lecture is "Defining spasticity - The (slow) walk from being a lumper to a splitter".

In his lecture he will initially focus on the fundamental research that leads to the redefinition of spasticity (the lumping).

Then he will describe the steps being taken to sub-classify the symptoms associated with the definition of spasticity (the splitting).

He will conclude by exploring whether spasticity is detrimental in patients with neurological conditions or an epiphenomenon.

Viv Bennett, Deputy Chief Nurse at DH and lead for Public Health and Commissioning in the Professional Leadership Team, will be speaking at a conference organised by Keele Clinical Leadership Academy, entitled Widening Engagement in Clinically-led Commissioning: Minimising Health Inequalities, next Tuesday in Keele Hall.

For details email: s.hunter@pmed. keele.ac.uk.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Twenty-seven years ago -

October 1984.

A grant of £71,763 has been awarded by the Multiple Sclerosis Society to Dr J. R. Heron, Consultant Neurologist at the North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary and senior lecturer in the Department of Postgraduate Medicine, and to Dr D. H. Foster, Department of Communication and Neuroscience.