KEELE KEY FUND TELETHON PLEDGES TOP £100,000

A team of thirty student ambassadors called alumni during the 2012 Keele Key Fund telephone campaign to share experiences of the University and to invite support for the fund.

This year the callers received pledges of a further £102,144 and they found that an astonishing 36% of alumni were willing to make a pledge.

Those pledging regular gifts offered on average over £770 spread over five years, while the average one-off gift was £83. Since its inception in 2007 the Key Fund has received pledges from alumni of over £500,000.

The latest round of applications for grants is underway to identify projects. These will join over 30 separate projects already funded by the Keele Key Fund to enhance the student experience and the campus environment. A series of new heritage and campus improvements is also being considered by the Disbursement Committee, to help students and others to enjoy the campus.

Buffalo Fundraising Consultants said: "The level of participation and size of gift exceed the results achieved at all but the most prestigious or specialist higher education institutions in the United Kingdom.  These results are a testament not only to the hard work of the Development Office but also to the very high level of affinity of Keele Alumni."

TV HISTORIAN GIVES KEYNOTE AT KEELE CONFERENCE

TV historian Michael Wood gave the keynote speech at a national history conference, "Joined up teaching", at Keele. This charter event, co-hosted by the University and Stoke-on-Trent Central MP Tristram Hunt, was opened by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Nick Foskett, and brought together teachers and leading academics from many universities to develop the national debate about the future of history as an academic discipline in schools.

Tristram announced the findings from a national survey of history teachers undertaken by Keele's Centre for Successful Schools (www.keele.ac.uk/cfss), providing history teachers with the opportunity to comment upon priorities at a time when the Government is due to impose a new National Curriculum and core university training places for trainee history teachers are being slashed. The day also included a range of workshops addressing some of the more contentious topics in the history curriculum.  As delegates commented, the conference was an "Excellent opportunity to discuss vital issues" and "Very good for making connections and sharing ideas".
 
Dr Tristram Hunt MP pictured with Dr Alannah Tomkins (Senior Lecturer in History), Professor Karen Hunt (Professor of History), Dr Helen Addams (Head of the Centre for Successful Schools), and Alison Parr (Director of Partnerships and History Course Leader).

GRADUATE ATTRIBUTES, SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION AND PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING

Along with colleagues from Manchester and Staffordshire universities, four staff from Keele - Pat Bailey (PVC Environment & Sustainability), pictured, Sophie Bessant (Sustainability Project Officer), Zoe Robinson (Director of Education for Sustainability) and Mark Ormerod (PVC Research & Enterprise) - led a day-long workshop event at the Sustainability Hub. 

The workshop hosted around 30 delegates from around the UK, and focused on how university educators can develop graduate attributes and sustainability education using a 'hybrid' problem-based learning approach.  It was the first of a series around the UK, presenting results from a three-year project funded by the Higher Education Academy's National Teaching Fellowship Scheme. 

For more details about the project and workshop visit: www.keele.ac.uk/hybridpbl.

TALES FROM THE REALM OF FINANCE - INAUGURAL LECTURE

Professor David Leece, Keele Management School, this week gave the second lecture in Keele's programme of Inaugural Professorial Lectures for 2012/13.

In his lecture, 'Tales From the Realm of Finance', Pofessor Leece used the medium of three stories, one historical and two relating to Professor Leece's own experiences, accompanying research and anecdotes, to communicate some of the issues underpinning financial crises.

The focus was on complexity, not in the new scientific sense of complex systems, but in relation to the difficult things in finance such as exotic financial products that even the bankers did not understand; but in particular the difficulties of understanding human behaviour and financial decision making.

Professor Leece is pictured with the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Nick Foskett, who presented him with a commemorative plaque to mark the occasion.

RESEARCH INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL SCIENCES HOSTS JOINT BOOK LAUNCH

The Research Institute for Social Sciences hosted a joint launch last week in the Claus Moser foyer to celebrate books by three of its members. Keele Professor Emerita, Pnina Werbner, gave a brief presentation at the launch.
 
Mario Prost's The Concept of Unity in Public International Law, Hart 2012.  The Concept of Unity in Public International Law takes a critical look at the debate on the so-called 'fragmentation' of international law, a debate that has dominated international legal scholarship over the past two decades.

The book starts from the premise that there can be no meaningful discussion of fragmentation without some prior understanding of the concept of unity. Eschewing one grand theory of unity, however, the book identifies and compares five candidate conceptions of unity in international law.

The thesis on which the book is based won the 2009 Prize for best doctoral thesis from the Association of Quebec Law Professors, and the book was shortlisted for the Society of Legal Scholars' 2012 Peter Birks Book Prize. A French edition of the book will be published in 2013 by Editions Bruylant (Brussels).

Deirdre McKay's Global Filipinos: Migrants' Lives in the Virtual Village, Indiana University Press, 2012. Contract workers from the Philippines make up one of the world's largest movements of temporary labor migrants. Deirdre McKay follows Filipino migrants from one rural community to work sites overseas and then home again.

Focusing on the experiences of individuals, McKay interrogates current approaches to globalization, multi-sited research, subjectivity, and the village itself. Reviewers describe it as unique and important in its contribution to our understanding of globalization, as well as being a luminous, elegant, and well-argued multi-sited ethnographic study.

Marie-Andree Jacob's Matching Organs with Donors: Legality and Kinship, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. Matching Organs with Donors reveals the methods and mindsets of doctors, patients, donors, and sellers in Israel's living kidney transplant bureaus.

The book describes how these actors identify and adjudicate suitable matches between donor and recipient using terms borrowed from definitions of kinship.

This look at the cultural landscapes of transplantations has broader implications. It deepens our understanding of the law and management of informed consent, decision-making among hospital professionals, and the shadowy borders between altruism and commerce.

WORLD PHILOSOPHY DAY EVENTS

World Philosophy Day marked the beginning of a very busy time for Keele Philosophy. Two Royal Institute of Philosophy lectures took place in two weeks: Professor John Hyman, University of Oxford, talking about his new work on the nature of mental causation and Dr Lilian O'Brien, University College Cork, talking about her attempt to move beyond psychologism and anti-psychologism. In addition, the programme reading group on Adrian W. Moore's The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics recommenced.

The main events were the Annual Jean-Jacques Rouseau Annual Lecture and Conference, introduced by Professors Ann Hughes (pictured) and Bülent Gökay, and given by the only surviving member of one of the two original philosophy departments that were set up by Lord Lindsay at the founding of Keele University, Professor Alan Montefiore.

Professor Montefiore, who was at Balliol College Oxford for 30 years after leaving Keele in the 1960s, fondly remembered teaching the first person to graduate from Keele, Margaret Boulds (dual honours English and Philosophy, 1954).

He gave a sharp and insightful talk on the 'Frontiers of Philosophy' before providing illuminating answers to a variety of questions from the floor.

Then there was a one-day conference on the theme of Kant and Sartre, organised by Dr Sorin, who was the first speaker in a very intensive and rewarding event which drew together leading experts on the two great philosophers.

BRITISH WOMEN OF OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT

Professor Alicia El Haj, Director of the Research Institute for Science and Technology in Medicine, was shortlisted for the 2012 Women of Outstanding Achievement Award for Leadership and Inspiration, presented by Her Royal Highness, The Princess Royal, at the Institution of Engineering and Technology.

Part of the WISE Awards, it recognises women who are leading STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) businesses, research teams, academic organisations or professional bodies creating change and transforming culture and ways of working.

TODAY PROGRAMME INTERVIEW

Professor Peter Crome, Emeritus Professor of Geriatric Medicine and Chair of the Steering Committee of the National Audit of Dementia in General Hospital, was interviewed by John Humphreys on the Today Programme on Tuesday.

In responding to the Chief Nursing Officer's call for a greater emphasis on compassion in nursing and the caring professions he stresseed the need for continued training, mentoring and support as well as adequate staffing numbers. He mentioned the stresses and pressures that staff were subject to in clinical practice and the need to ensure that the culture and environment at all levels in the hospital was conducive to compassionate care. It was also necessary that training and expertise in the appropriate skills was maintained.

MANAGING THE RISKS OF FRACCING

Professor Peter Styles, School of Physical and Geographical Sciences, gave the inaugural UCD Earth Institute Public Seminar at the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin on 'Managing the Risks of Fraccing for Shale Gas extraction'. There was a full house of legislators, academics and the public as Ireland, which lies at the end of all European supply pipelines, is particularly vulnerable to global gas market fluctuations.

It was then to Brussels for the launch of Shale Gas Europe, a European Resource Centre for Shale Gas, Tight Gas and Coalbed Methane, with a select group of European Parliament members and officials, European Commission officials and energy attachés from Member State Permanent Representations to the EU, as he is a member of their Expert Advisory Panel.

This was followed by two keynote addresses on induced seismicity associated with Shale Gas Hydrofracturing and Mitigation of induced seismicity hazard, at a European Commission expert workshop on   Geological risks & risk management in the context of unconventional hydrocarbons at DG Environment of the European Commission in Auderghem, Brussels.

The Chancellor's Autumn statement brought further interest in Shale Gas as an energy source in the UK and requests for interviews from the Financial Times, Independent and Daily Mail.

His week was rounded off by a 7.3 earthquake offshore northern Japan and the small one metre tsunami which ensued, and led to a CNBC interview on the tectonics and tsunami hazard of that part of Japan.

'NUDGE' DEBATE

Professor Andrew Dobson participated in a debate on behavioural economics - 'Nudge' - at University College, London. Other participants were Dr David Halpern, Head of the No 10 Downing Street Behavioral Insights team, and Baroness Julia Neuberger, who chaired a House of Lords Inquiry into the Nudge theory of human behaviour and its application to policy-making in 2011. 

Professor Dobson argued that Nudge is an inappropriate response to large-scale problems such as climate change, and that it underestimates the structural and normative obstacles to lasting and effective change. 

He has also visited the Universidad Autonoma (Madrid) and Sciences Po (Lille) in the past two weeks to teach environmental political theory to Masters students.

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Twenty years ago -

The Darwin building, which constitutes phase two of the University's Science Park, was officially opened by Sir Roy Griffiths. Sir Roy was born only two miles from the University and attended Wolstanton Grammar School before going on to Keble College, Oxford, and Columbia Business School, New York. 4 December 1992.