Staff Newsletter 1 December 2023
- Annabel Jackson (Deactivated)
Good morning everyone ❄️ Our Making the Difference Award winners are listed below - a big congratulations to all the winners and nominees for this round!
And exciting information about our Departmental Festive Potluck/Moving Feast can be found below 
Please note that the deadline for sending across items for the newsletter has changed to 12:00 on Thursdays. Thank you for your cooperation
Annabel Jackson - PA / Admin to EGLT
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📧 Use the University of York's Directory (login required) to find a staff member/student's email address or User ID 🙂
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🎄 DEG Festive Potluck/Moving Feast! Thursday 14th December, 13:00 - 16:00 🎄
Please join us for a couple of hours on Thursday 14th December between 13:00 and 16:00 to celebrate the festive season and eat some wonderful food!
Find out what part of the 'menu' (drinks / starters / main courses / desserts) your floor has been allocated below
We hope to see you all there
 | The Festive Potluck / Moving Feast is BACK! Starting on the Third Floor with Drinks, each floor has been allocated a particular part of the Feast as follows:
We would love to see as many dishes as possible but if providing a dish/drink is an obstacle for you, please still feel free to attend - we would love to see everyone there! There will be Christmas tunes and we actively encourage Christmas jumpers/festive attire! Please note that it is super important that you place a sign/label in front of your dish/drink on the day stating the following:
We ask that everyone tries to be as environmentally friendly as possible by bringing along your own cups/plates etc if you can. Even if you are only able to come to a small part of the Feast, we hope to see you all there! Happy cooking/baking! 🥄 |
Department Staff Monthly Meeting (Nov) - Links and Recording
Thank you all for joining our last Dept Staff Monthly Meeting of the calendar year on Thursday. Nic chaired valiantly in Roland's place, and a big thank you to Smriti and Sarah for their presentations. Below are highlights, useful links and the recording from this month's meeting:
- Three winners were announced for our November round of MTD Awards - see dedicated section below.
- Smriti Safaya encouraged dept staff to get involved in the York City Nature Challenge.
- Sarah West provided an overview of the planned change for SEI to become a Research Entity.
- There was a brief discussion on the implications of the upcoming building closure.
Click here to watch the full recording of the Dept Staff Monthly Meeting (Nov).
The next meeting will be held in January. If you have an item you would like to present, please email environment-pa@york.ac.uk.
➡️ Updated Student Academic Engagement and Wellbeing Procedure
A important message from Central Student and Academic Services:
The Student Welfare and Wellbeing Project Board at its meeting on 16 November 2023 agreed to change the minimum engagement levels due to the number of students being identified as requiring welfare and wellbeing support . We have also made additional changes to the Student Academic Engagement and Wellbeing Procedure due to feedback received from a number of departments and the Students’ Unions. The overarching Student Academic Engagement and Wellbeing Policy remains the same.
The changes are:
The criteria for monitoring engagement has changed: the University now expects all students to engage with their course of study via at least two face-to-face on-campus contact points (on separate days) each teaching week for Semesters 1 and 2 or to engage with over 50% of all timetabled teaching sessions.
We have made changes to the Taught students undertaking study off campus section to align engagement data with current processes.
We have made changes to the section on Postgraduate Research (PGR) Students to align with current processes. Supervision meetings for Student Visa holders should be in person.
We have removed the requirement for supervision meetings to take place during the revision/assessment period. We will now capture engagement with assessments and will provide further details in a future email.
We would like to thank all staff and students for their support and engagement with the Check-In initiative during this first semester. We will be inviting feedback via a survey at the end of the semester; in the meantime, please send any comments or questions that you have to the Project Team (email: check-in-support@york.ac.uk) or directly to us.
-Dr Wayne Campbell, Academic Registrar and Tom Banham, Director of Student Administration and Academic Affairs
Student and Academic Services
🏆 Making the Difference Award Winners! 🏆.jpg?version=1&modificationDate=1701356055000&cacheVersion=1&api=v2&width=375&height=250)
Many Congratulations to our November 2023 Making the Difference Award Winners, announced in this month's Dept Staff Meeting by Nic:
⭐Linda Elvin⭐
⭐Ciaran Ogilvie ⭐
⭐Jess Roberts ⭐
Congratulations to all the other 8 nominees for this round.
You can read more about the fantastic achievements of the winners on the Wiki
Seminars taking place next week
DEG Seminar - In personDate / Time: Tuesday 5th December at 12:05 Location: ENV/005 (with the option to join via Zoom - click here to join) Speaker name: Ross Anderson Title: The rise of complex life: Environmental controls on the early fossil record
Blurb Ross Anderson is a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford. His research uses exceptionally preserved fossils to chart the early evolution of eukaryotes (biologically complex life) through the Proterozoic Eon in concert with environmental change, investigating the origins of multicellularity, cellular differentiation, and animals. In his talk, he will explore early fossils of eukaryotes and discuss the discovery of several new forms. He will also show how studying the preservation of early fossils can impact our understanding of when animals first evolved. Click here to watch the recording of this week’s DEG Seminar entitled ‘Crevasse-based controls on the hydrology and dynamics of the Greenland Ice Sheet’ Passcode: x@k+zn.1 | Sustainability SeminarDate / Time: Wednesday 6 December at 12:05 Location: Zoom - click here to join Speaker: Martin Parker Title: Shut Down the Business School: What's wrong with Management Education
Blurb Business schools are institutions which, a decade and a half after the financial crash, continue to act as loudspeakers for neoliberal capitalism with all its injustices and planetary consequences. In this talk I will offer a simple message: shut down the business school. I argue that business schools are 'cash cows' for the contemporary university that have produced a generation of unreflective managers, primarily interested in their own personal rewards. If we see universities as institutions with responsibilities to the societies they inhabit, then we must challenge the common notion that 'the market' should be the primary determinant of the education they provide. I argue for a radical alternative in the form of a 'School for Organising'. This replacement would develop and teach different forms of organising, such as coops, local money and community ownership. Instead of reproducing the dominant corporate model, it would help individuals to discover alternative responses to the pressing issues of inequality and sustainability faced by all of us today. |
Wentworth College Fellow Recruitment Event for Staffs and Postdocs - Thursday 7th Dec.
Wentworth Graduate College is looking to recruit volunteer College and Senior College Fellows. These roles are opportunities to engage in college life at the University and shape the postgraduate community. Those involved find it rewarding, and it is a learning opportunity for those interested in how community development in higher education can support students to succeed.
We are holding a Wine & Cheese on 7th December 2023 at 5.30 PM in the SCR for any academics, staff, and postdocs (strictly no students) interested to find out more about being a College Fellow.
Dissertation survey
A third-year undergraduate student, Barney Lee, studying Environmental Geography, is completing his dissertation exploring the challenges in using green space to improve well-being.
He seeks your insights for a project that is close to his heart and has far-reaching implications for our community's well-being. Green spaces, such as parks, gardens, and woodlands, are vital for our mental and physical health. However, accessing and fully benefiting from these spaces can sometimes be a challenge.
This is where your experience and perspectives become crucial. By participating in a short, 10-minute anonymous questionnaire, you can contribute to a better understanding of these challenges. Your responses could play a pivotal role in guiding future policies, enhancing green space designs, and, most importantly, improving the quality of life for individuals in our community.
To participate please click here to complete his google form.
Your input will be incredibly valuable and could genuinely make a difference in how we approach and enhance our green spaces. Thank you for considering his request.
PS. As a token of appreciation, if you're interested in the findings of his research, he would be delighted to share a summary of his dissertation. You can express your interest by emailing blockedpathsdissertation@gmail.com
Our wonderful Director for Students, Samarthia Thankappan is back with her weekly audio messages for students. Click the links below to listen to Samarthia's messages:
Gary Haq co-authored a report from HelpAge International, "Climate Justice in an Ageing World". Ahead of COP28, the paper identifies and explores actions for policymakers and the international community to support older people through the climate crisis.
Rob Mills' Snaizeholme treeplanting and impact study was reported by various media outlets including the Darlington and Stockton Times, the BBC, BBC Sounds, Envirotec magazine and the Yorkshire Post.
Richard Friend was invited by FCDO Bangkok to present British Council funded work re. participatory processes for assessing systemic risk in food systems at the ASEAN ASSET Future of Future Foods conference, Bangkok. Richard also chaired a session on inclusion of gender and ethnic minorities in water governance as part of the Regional Seminar on Water Politics and Water Governance in the Mekong Countries, organised by Chiang Mai University. In addition, Richard had a Paper accepted in Land Use Policy - "Thailand's Policy Vacuum: Land use planning as sites of negotiation and contestation' drawing on their research under the GCRF Political Capabiities for Equitable Resilience project
Sarah Bridle took part in a workshop run by the AFN Network+ which aimed to produce a set of draft research priorities for transitioning agri-food towards net zero. The workshop included stakeholders from across the food system, NGOs and policy makers. Sarah also convened and facilitated a workshop of people working across food sustainability and climate education in the UK, to map out potential ways to improve teaching of food climate impacts in schools.
Piran White and colleague Julia Touza organised a workshop for their Connected Treescapes project with the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park Authority on 21-22 November in Abergavenny. The National Park is developing a new strategy for managing their treescapes, and the workshop explored the potential for research being undertaken by the Connected Treescapes team to inform the direction and content of this startegy. The workshop was also attended by local partners including Monmouthshire County Council, The Woodland Trust, Stump up for Trees, Welsh Water, and Natural Resources Wales.
Laura Harrison gave a talk about research with colleagues in DEG, Health Sciences and VCSE organisations to create an evidence summary about the health benefits of Nature-Based Interventions. The event was at the iCASP confluence attended by public, private and third sector organisations working on Natural Flood Management.
Nic Carslaw featured in a piece in the Daily Express on air quality.
John Wilkinson featured on BBC Panorama.
Well done everyone on your fantastic achievements 👏
2024 Keeling Curve Prize - The Global Warming Mitigation Project
The Global Warming Mitigation Project’s flagship program, the Keeling Curve Prize, awards $50,000 annually to each of 10 global projects that demonstrate the ability to reduce, replace, or remove greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and oceans. Deadlines for application is Monday, February 12, 2024 at 11:59pm IDLW (UTC−12:00). Multiple applications from the same institution are allowed, so long as each applicant has a different project or program that meets the eligibility requirements.
Categories for proposals include Carbon Sinks, Energy, Finance, Social & Cultural Pathways and Transport & Mobility. Your project may align with more than one prize category. The application form requires that you designate a primary category for your application, but also allows you to list secondary categories for consideration. However, applicants are only eligible to win in one category in any given year.
Please see the How to Apply and FAQ pages for full information and contact Helen Bradley (Social Sciences) or Sharon Godwin (Sciences) who can support applications to this funder.
Funding for Human Voice Research
YorVoice is a SPARKS-funded initiative to establish York as the world-leader in radical, interdisciplinary research into the human voice. As part of YorVoice, money is available to commission around 4 to 6 projects of around £20k each, lasting for up to 12 months (there is, however, considerable flexibility in terms of the size/ scale/ duration of the projects). Funding will be allocated via a sandpit event.
Proposals will be developed and awarded during a Sandpit event in January. The Sandpit (two half day online workshop, and one full day in-person workshop) will give researchers a chance to connect and talk with others with an interest in the human voice and explore how they might work together to make a difference in this area. From these discussions, they will develop new ideas that will need a collaborative approach bringing together different perspectives and expertise. The final stage of the sandpit will be a short pitch to present project ideas to the YorVoice steering committee at the final workshop. Funding decisions will be made on the basis of your slides and decisions communicated quickly, with projects starting as early as March 2024.
More information about the Sandpit is available on the YorVoice website or by emailing the YorVoice team (yorvoice-project@york.ac.uk).
Turing Institute PhD Enrichment Scheme Now Open
Applications for the Turing PhD Enrichment scheme are now open for entry in October 2024. These are intended for PhD students in their research phase (typically 2nd year) and allow the recipient to spend 6-9 months working with a mentor at the ATI in London and carry a small stipend. Hybrid working is also permitted. They provide fantastic networking opportunities and for collaboration. Competition is high and the ATI is interested in applications where a case can be made that the research will benefit from opportunities at the ATI. Any discipline where the data science toolkit or AI forms a component are encouraged.
The ATI is running a webinar on 1st December at 11am-12.30PM that will provide information to prospective applicants. Rules and guidance are provided in the main scheme link above.
Research Systems Downtime for Upgrade
PURE and the York Research Database (YRD) will be unavailable Wednesday 6th December 2023 (08:00 - 09:30) Upgrade of PURE to version 5.27.3. This will start at 08:00 and take between 1-2 hours.
If you have any concerns regarding this, please contact pure-support@york.ac.uk.
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