NATIONAL TEACHING FELLOWSHIP FOR ZOE ROBINSON

Dr Zoe Robinson has been awarded one of the prestigious National Teaching Fellowships, for her contribution to Education for Sustainability, and other teaching innovations around Open Educational Resources and employability. 

The awards are made to individuals who have had an outstanding impact on teaching in Higher Education, both within their institution and nationally.

Since starting lecturing in Physical Geography in 2004, Zoe's teaching interests have become increasingly focused towards environmental and sustainability education.  Her educational developments in these areas led to a Teaching Excellence Award from Keele in 2008, and numerous external grants, publications and lecture invitations. 

Of particular note has been the design of the innovative interdisciplinary 'Environment & Sustainability' undergraduate degree, developed with Sherilyn MacGregor, which has been shortlisted for a prestigious Green Gown award later this year.

The undergraduate 'Greening Business' module, which aims to provide students with the capability to make sustainability improvements in their future workplaces, has also proved popular, and provided the template for 'Project Green' in which over 200 graduates have undertaken sustainability-related internship projects with a range of organizations in the region. 

Zoe led Keele's 'Green Academy' team, in which eight universities were supported by the Higher Education Academy to develop strategies to embed sustainability within their institutions.  For Keele, this led to 'sustainability' being a core theme in the Distinctive Keele Curriculum, and to Zoe taking on the role of Director of Education for Sustainable Development, as part of a team of colleagues committed to helping Keele University become recognized as one of the top 'green' universities in the UK.
 
Beyond her influence on sustainability education in higher education, in 2006, Zoe and Mark Ormerod set up an environmental education group, Science for Sustainability, which has been shortlisted for numerous national awards.  The group delivers tailored sustainability-focused workshops for schoolchildren and schoolteachers, and events for the public.

NAMING THE DAVID WEATHERALL BUILDING

Keele's former Chancellor, Professor Sir David Weatherall, returned to the University this week for a special ceremony to name the Medical School building after him.

Unveiling a plaque to mark the naming of the David Weatherall Building, he said: "It gives me enormous pleasure to have this building named after me. It has been one of my greatest pleasures to see the development of a medical school at Keele."

The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Nick Foskett, said Sir David's contribution to medical science was unequalled and he had also been a "true friend to Keele"; while the Dean of Health, Professor Andy Garner, described him as "one of the true giants of academic medicine".

Following the unveiling, a special lecture in honour of the former Chancellor was delivered by Professor Sir Alex Markham.
In the lecture, "Making Medicine Molecular: learning from Sir David Weatherall", Sir Alex, Professor of Medicine at the University of Leeds, said: "The awesome scale of Sir David's output makes it difficult to do him full justice in a single address. His influence has extended across the spectrum from clinical practice at the highest levels to laboratory science sustained at the absolute forefront of international research efforts, for over 50 years. His leadership contributions in academic medicine have been immense and extend worldwide."

KEELE'S PROFILE GROWS IN MALAYSIA

Pro Vice-Chancellor, Professor David Shepherd, and Dr Matthew Brannan, Senior Lecturer and Co-ordinator of International Programmes for the School of Management, recently visited Malaysia for the award of Keele degrees at the Convocations of KDU University College (near Kuala Lumpur) and KDU College (Penang). The KDU programme in a range of management degrees has grown in scale and attainment each year and the 2012-2013 intake is at a record level of 120 students.

John McCarthy, Director of Marketing and Communications, and John Easom, Alumni and Development Manager, joined the party to meet Malaysian alumni and to introduce them to our newest Keelites from KDU. Many Keele alumni who had progressed significantly in their careers got together eagerly and a new "Keele in Malaysia" alumni network was launched as part of a growing family of new "Keele in the World" alumni networks.

Mr Adrain Jerome Jayasainan (International Relations, 1994) agreed to become the network's first alumni ambassador. The network aims to support recruitment, employability and business networking and it will enhance further the strong reputation and presence of Keele University in Malaysia.

During the visit a Memorandum of Understanding between Keele and USM Malaysia was signed. Established as the second university in the country in 1969, University Sains Malaysia (USM) has been developing and expanding since its inception, which started with the enrolment of 57 science based students. Now, USM offers courses at undergraduate and postgraduate levels to approximately 20,000 students. USM has also become a well-known university locally and internationally. The picture shows Professor Shepherd at the signing of the agreement.

CELL-IQ ENABLES HIGH QUALITY CELL IMAGES

Members of the Research Institute for Science & Technology in Medicine (ISTM) based at the Robert Jones & Agnes Hunt Hospital in Oswestry have taken delivery of a Cell-IQ microscope with the additional capability to photograph cells over time in a controlled environment. Images can be reconstructed into a video, enabling accurate calculations of cell quantity, size and growth.

The Cell-IQ was bought using donations and legacies held by the Institute of Orthopaedics plus a contribution from the Keele University HEFCE capital fund. It is located in the Leopold Muller Arthritis Research Centre for use by all the research groups at Oswestry, including Spinal Studies, Arthritis Research UK Tissue Engineering Centre, Rheumatology and Centre for Inherited Neuromuscular Disorders, and is available for other Keele users and external collaborators too.

Its purchase arose through a collaboration between Keele's Professor of Orthopaedics, James Richardson (ISTM) and Lecturer in Computer Science Dr KP Lam (EPSAM). The collaboration was originally funded from a "Sandpit" meeting held in September 2008 through the Modelling Methods for Medical Engineering (3ME) Initiative. Professor Richardson is always interested in assessing the quality of a patient's own cells before the clinical procedure of implanting back into their knee to repair a damaged joint. 

Dr KP Lam believed he could help by developing new computational techniques applied to the cell images and so together they have carried out a series of projects, culminating in buying the Cell-IQ. The project is a very good example of the multi-disciplinary research inspired and supported by the 3ME Initiative over a four year period, funded by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council. The project has recently won a fully-funded Industrial CASE studentship from the Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council which is now being advertised.

Dr Karina Wright is pictured above (left) with the Cell-IQ and Hannah Fox (right), a medical student from Cambridge University who was one of the first users of the equipment under an eight-week Wellcome Trust Scholarship. Charges for the Cell-IQ start at £200 per day for internal users; anyone interested in using it can contact Karina on 01691 404699.

MAGNETICFUN NETWORK GETS STARTED AT KEELE

The first meeting of a new European-funded Marie Curie Training Network took place at Keele this week.  The objective of the Network is to train a group of young scientists from all over Europe in working with magnetic nanoparticles and applying them in chemistry and biomedicine. Known as "MagNETicFUN", the network will run for four years using a grant of Euro 4.4million, led by the University of Regensburg in Germany.

Keele will receive over Euro 600,000, having pioneered biomedical applications of nanomagnetics in the Hartshill laboratories of the Research Institute for Science & Technology in Medicine, under the direction of Prof Jon Dobson and, more recently, Dr Neil Telling. 

Participants in the MagNETicFUN Network at Keele will also spend about one third of their time on secondment to The University of Florida through ISTM's research partnership with that institution.

Furthermore, two spin-out companies based at the Science & Business Park – nanoTherics and MicaBiosystems – are offering training in the Network based on other novel biomedical nanomagnetic technologies developed at ISTM. Other partners are universities and companies in Switzerland, Ireland, Italy and Spain, and the first young researchers are being recruited to start in January 2013.

In the photograph above, the representatives of all the participants in the Network are pictured outside the Guy Hilton Research Centre, including Keele's Prof Alicia El Haj and and Drs Neil Telling and Neil Farrow, plus Dr Audrey Arfi from the European Commission in Brussels.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

Dr Gary Kelsall, Co-Programme Director for Media, Communications and Culture, helped Coronation Street actor Bill Roach uncover his family history on BBC1's 'Who Do You Think You Are'.

With guidance from Gary, Bill set out to learn about his grandmother who ran a cafe in Alton Towers in the 1920s. Each episode of the TV series sees a celebrity go on a journey to trace his or her family history.

Gary has a long standing association with Alton Towers. He has helped recreate the heritage through 3d visualisation work, and has produced a documentary called The Story of Alton Towers.

He currently sits on the Heritage Committee and authors the heritage website www.altontowersheritage.com, as well as producing specialist time-lapse and video work for the Staffordshire theme park.

KEELE RESEARCH HITS NATIONAL HEADLINES

Research headed by Professor Christopher Exley, of The Birchall Centre, Lennard-Jones Laboratories, which shows that regular drinking of up to a litre a day of a silicon-rich mineral water, removes aluminium from the bodies of people with Alzheimer's disease and in some individuals offered clinically-significant protection against cognitive decline, hit the national and international headlines today. Professor Exley was also interviewed on BBC 5 Live.
 
SOCIETY OF LEGAL SCHOLARS APPOINTMENT

At its recent Annual General Meeting the Society of Legal Scholars elected Professor Tony Bradney as its Honorary Membership Secretary.

The Society is the oldest and largest association for academic lawyers in the United Kingdom and Ireland having nearly 3,000 members."

KEELE WORLD AFFAIRS - CHARTER CELEBRATION

Sir Michael Aaronson, Professorial Research Fellow, University of Surrey, this week delivered a special lecture, titled 'Rethinking International Intervention', at the Keele World Affairs group, as part of the University's charter year celebrations.

Sir Michael was introduced to a packed audience in the Westminster Theatre by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Rama Thirunamachandran.

LITERARY FESTIVAL TALK ON DICKENS

Professor David Amigoni (English, School and RI Humanities) this week gave a talk at the 16th Wellington Literary Festival in Telford, Shropshire.

The talk, entitled 'Dickens Nation, 1837-2012' was commissioned to mark the bicentenary of Charles Dickens's birth.

The talk explored Dickens's deep moral and emotional impact on the nation which grew after his first ventures into early Victorian publishing in 1837. The talk accounted for Dickens's great mid-Victorian achievements as novelist and journalist, and concluded by examining his continued impact on fiction writing today, exemplified in recent works by Lloyd Jones and Sebastian Faulks.

As preludes to the talk, David Amigoni was interviewd by Ryan Kennedy on his Saturday morning programme for BBC Radio Shropshire and Robert Green, editor the East Shropshire Talking Newspaper.

NEXT WEEK

Wednesday, October 17 -

Simon Armitage 'Walking home'; a special charity poetry reading as part of Keele's 50th Anniversary celebrations at 7.30pm in the Westminster Theatre.

The proceeds from the event will go to the Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Charity, which supports women with breast cancer. Books will be available to purchase and Simon will sign them after the reading.

Tickets cost £5 each (£2.50 concessions) and can be bought from the Chancellor's Building reception Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, or by telephone 01782 734127.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Fifty-five years ago:

Keele students helped to move 100 tons of books from Brunswick Methodist Schoolroom in Newcastle to the disused Madeley brickworks. The 125,000 books were in storage because of lack of space at the University until the building of a new Library. October 1957.

COMEDY AND CAMPAIGNING FOR VISION 2012

Environmental debates and comedy are among the events at a week of music, workshops and spirituality at Keele Chapel.
Vision 2012, which runs from Monday, October 15, to Friday, October 19, includes award-winning comedian Andy Kind, while daily workshops cover everything from meditation and mission to gospel singing and climate change.

A highlight is the panel discussion Is God Green?, on Friday, October 19, at 8pm. This free event features Keele's Chancellor and environmental campaigner Jonathon Porritt, alongside award-winning television producer Mary Colwell, independent film maker and former Dominican friar, Mark Dowd, and Keele Professor of Politics, Andrew Dobson.

Vision 2012 will also see the Chapel converted into Café Chapelle, as well as a spirituality installation and an art exhibition Spirited Arts – A Child's Perspective. There is also a Kids' Fayre, with face-painting, coconut shy, lucky dip and other traditional activities.

The full programme  can be found online at keelechapel.org.