Key Skills Strategy launched
During October the Vice-Chancellor,
Professor Ivor Crewe, officially launched the University’s ProFile Project and Essex
Skills Award. As reported in the last edition of Wyvern, the University has developed a
key skills strategy to address the changing nature of the graduate job market. The two
main features are the Essex Skills Award which will involve employers and the University
in helping students to develop key skills and ProFile, a progress file which will help
students monitor, plan and record their skills development. Professor Crewe described the
two schemes as being ‘a new stage and major advance’ in the development of the
University’s Careers Advisory Service.
(left to right)
Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Professor Geoffrey Crossick, the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ivor
Crewe, Key Skills Officer, Terry Barry and Ian Dyer, Manager of Graduate Recruitment at
British Telecom at the launch
Terry Barry, the Key Skills Officer,
commented on the development of the two schemes, ‘ProFile and the Essex Skills Award
are examples of the shifting focus of the Careers Advisory Service. This shift is in
response to the changing needs of students and to developments outside the University. In
April this year the Key Skills Office, a new part of the Careers Advisory Service, was
established. Our role is to co-ordinate the introduction of ProFile and the Essex Skills
Award and to work with academic departments to raise the visibility of key skills.’
Ian Dyer, the Graduate Recruitment
Manager from British Telecom, also helped launch the new schemes and highlighted how
important they were from an employers point of view. He explained how both the Essex
Skills Award and Pro File will help students understand what they can offer employers so
that they can promote these aspects to them in application forms and at interviews.
The Essex Skills Award
What is it?
A skills development programme, designed
to help students acquire the skills.
Why are these skills important?
Employers expect graduates to have
skills and qualities that will enable them to make a rapid contribution to the
organisation and provide evidence of these skills.
What does ESA involve?
A series of courses run by employers,
including topics such as managing your time, making presentations and team working. The
University will also run courses on IT and numeracy skills along with regular workshops to
help students compile evidence of their skills and plan future development.
ProFile
What is it?
ProFile is an interactive system available on the
University’s web pages which helps students recognise the skills they need to develop
during their time here but also identify the gaps in their skills. It helps students
record evidence of their skills.
Why is ProFile important?
Employers want evidence that demonstrates the
skills they are looking for in an employee. Many students find they get to their final
year and have this vital evidence missing. ProFile is designed to overcome this.
What does ProFile involve?
It focuses on six broad skills: communication,
working with others, problem solving, IT, numeracy and improving learning and performance.
It helps students to develop the skill of learning from experience by focusing on
experience gained on academic courses, in part-time and vacation work and in
extra-curricula activities.
New legal guide for parents
A new legal guide book for parents, co-authored
by The Children’s Legal Centre, was launched by Cherie Booth QC at the start of the
first national parents week during October. The guide, entitled ‘Is it Legal? - A
Parents’ Guide to the Law’, was jointly written by the University based
centre and the National Family and Parenting Institute (NFPI). It provides parents with a
reference guide to the relevant law and covers issues including the age at which children
can work, babysitting and the legal position of fathers not married to their
children’s mothers.
Launching the
guide, Cherie Booth (pictured right) said, ‘As a barrister as well as a parent,
I’m pleased that the week starts with a parents’ guide to the law. The law
affects all parents in one way or another and the guide answers many questions, from
everyday things like Saturday jobs through to serious issues like criminal responsibility.
Information about the law should be accessible to everyone and I hope this free legal
guide helps to explain what the law says, and what it doesn’t say, about being a
parent’.
Carolyn Hamilton, Director of the Children’s
Legal Centre, also commented on the new guide, ‘We are delighted to be supporting
Parent’s Week and to have been so closely involved in the production of this legal
guide for parents. The Children’s Legal Centre takes around 6,500 calls a year from
people asking for legal advice, the majority of them parents. They are concerned about
everything from the arrangements made for children following divorce to bullying at school
to the law on employment. Clearly, many parents do not know what the law says about their
rights or those of their children. This free legal guide addresses many of the questions
and concerns that our advice lines are dealing with on a daily basis.’
‘Is it Legal - A Parents’ Guide to
the Law’ is available free from the NFPI website at www.nfpi.org ‘Is it Legal - A Parents’ Guide to
the Law’ is available free from the NFPI website at www.nfpi.org
The History of Wivenhoe Park:
Bays, Betrothals, Bubbles and
Bankruptcy
A new exhibition charting the history of Wivenhoe
Park and the Rebow family who lived there has just gone on permanent display at Wivenhoe
House. The exhibition, intriguingly titled The History of Wivenhoe Park: Bays,
Betrothals, Bubbles and Bankruptcy, has been compiled by Professor Tim Gray from the
Department of Biological Sciences. As Professor Gray explained, the exhibition adds a
further dimension to the history behind John Constable’s painting of Wivenhoe Park,
charting its development from the eighteenth century to the present day.
Some of the exhibits
from the new exhibition
Amongst the exhibits are copies of lost family
portraits, maps and plans of the park, photographs of the park dating from the beginning
of the last century and family trees showing the connections of the Rebows to many other
East Anglian families. The Rebow family, who came to Colchester from near Ypres, were
prominent in the politics, life and culture of Colchester and for many years provided
Members of Parliament for the borough. The family acquired a considerable fortune during
the 17th and 18th centuries but during the latter part of the 19th century lost all of it.
As far as is known, the family has now died out. It was a member of the Rebow family,
Frances Slater Rebow, who commissioned John Constable to make his famous painting.
Sociology Graduate newest member of pioneering project
A former PhD student from the Department of
Sociology is the newest member of a pioneering project seeking to identify academic
research resources in Caribbean Studies and Black and Asian history in the UK. Dr Roiyah
Saltus-Blackwood took up the post of researcher for the project in May after graduating
from the University last year.
The project, known as CASBAH, has been funded by
the Research Support Library Programme and aims to provide a web accessible database
identifying relevant material to facilitate research into Caribbean Studies and the
history of Black and Asian people in Britain. It will run for two years and includes
archives, printed sources and audio-visual research resources. It is a consortial project
led by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies with fifteen partners from higher education,
academic societies and public organisations. The project has been chosen as a case study
for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport social inclusion policy document to
illustrate their partnership objective. Starting with surveys of the major collections,
the project will then extend as much as possible to record offices and relevant libraries
across the country.
For more information about the project contact
CASBAH at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 28 Russell Square, London, WC1B 5DS,
telephone 0207 8628816,
e-mail casbah@sas.ac.uk.
or visit the website at http://www.casbah.ac.uk.
Semiconductor physics and Britney Spears!
The pop star Britney Spears is being used to help brighten up physics research by a
postgraduate student at the University. Carl Hepburn, from the Department of Physics,
pictured below, has created a web page dedicated to his research into semiconductor
physics but using images of Britney Spears to illustrate it.
Carl, who is studying for a masters degree in
experimental physics, explained, ‘I developed the website to share my research with
others interested in semiconductor physics. I used Britney Spears to demonstrate that
physics can have a fun side to it as well - most of the images used of Britney relate to
physics in some way!’
The website has been in operation for the past 6-8 months and so far has attracted
world-wide attention from as far afield as America, Australia and South Africa, including
international press. More than 500,000 people have logged on to the site which has had
around 5,000 hits per day. Many of those who visit the site are looking for information
about Britney Spears, but as Carl explained he has had many physicists logging on and so
far the response has been positive. ‘There is a visitors book on the site allowing
people to e-mail their comments and so far everyone has enjoyed the site - both the
Britney side and the physics. I have even had students asking for help with their physics
homework!’.
Carl is constantly updating the site, both with Britney and physics based information
and intends to keep the website going for as long as people are reading and enjoying it.
The website can be accessed at www.britneyspears.ac
Library’s new collections
The University’s Albert Sloman Library recently benefited from the transfer of two
substantial library collections from The Essex Society for Archaeology and History and the
Royal Statistical Society. Here are details of the two collections:
Essex Society for Archaeology and History Library.
This is the largest individual special collection which has been taken in by the Albert
Sloman Library since its inception in the 1960s, and was previously housed in the
Hollytrees Museum in Colchester. It consists of some 15,000 volumes acquired by the
Society in the course of the last 150 years, and is particularly strong in the fields of
archaeology, antiquities and local history. In the years ahead, the collection of books
will continue to be added to by the Society, while its several hundred periodical titles,
many received on an exchange basis with similar county societies, will similarly be
maintained. Although mainly a resource for members of the Society, the collection is
available for consultation by scholars and students within the University. It is envisaged
that computerised cataloguing of the collection will be completed in 2003.
Royal Statistical Society Collection.
This collection consists of the significant older historical items from the library of
the Royal Statistical Society, and amounts to some 3,500 individual volumes. Like the
Essex Society for Archaeology & History collection, it has been placed on permanent
deposit with the Albert Sloman Library, and it is planned that its cataloguing will be
completed in 2003. The collection consists of around 30 periodicals, a large number of
books, and a significant collection of tracts — bound volumes of pamphlets on diverse
topics. The bulk of the collection relates to statistics and statistical history, and
contains a wealth of material relevant to the social and economic history of the 19th and
early 20th centuries.
