Broadcast: News items

Academic update: September 2024

Posted on behalf of: Internal Communications

Last updated: Thursday, 5 September 2024

On Thursday 5 September, Michael Luck, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost emailed academic staff, you can read Michael's introduction to the Academic Update on the Staff Hub.

Academic Update highlights the key priorities for academic colleagues and recent news and updates which you and your teams may find useful.

If there is information you would like included in future Academic Updates, please submit your request to the Internal Comms mailbox.

Quick links:

Education and Students

Help give our students a warm welcome to Sussex during Welcome Week and Registration
Welcome Week is an important moment for our students and we encourage staff to get involved and support our Welcome Week and Registration activities. Students are often very grateful for the help and guidance during their first few days at the University, and a friendly face can make all the difference. Please sign up before close of play on Friday 6 September if you can support our Welcome Week and Registration activities and give our students a warm welcome to Sussex.

Research and Innovation

New Policy on Research Degrees
Following a comprehensive review of Sussex’s postgraduate researcher (PGR) regulations and policies, new documentation came into effect on Thursday 1 August. Regulation 23 Degrees of Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy, has been significantly streamlined, while the new Policy on Research Degrees brings together previously dispersed policies into a single, comprehensive document covering the full Postgraduate Researcher (PGR) academic journey. Policy gaps and opportunities to adopt sector practice have also been addressed.

The new policy contains a new Framework for Collaborative Research Degrees (see Appendix 5), which outlines the considerations and processes involved in developing new collaborative arrangements leading to a research degree, including partnerships between Sussex and overseas universities. Colleagues considering any form of collaboration involving postgraduate researchers should consult the Sussex Researcher School at the earliest opportunity, and the Global Engagement team if an international partner is proposed.

Processes and guidance (including the former Research Student Administration Office web pages) are currently under review, to take into account policy updates, and changes will be rolled out in the coming weeks and months. In the meantime, colleagues should refer directly to the new documentation linked above.

Global and Civic Engagement

Sussex Holocaust Memorial Day events awarded CASE Best of Europe Region Award
Sussex has won the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Best of Europe Region Award in the Special Events category for our Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) event, organised in collaboration with our colleagues in the Sussex Weidenfeld Institute of Jewish Studies and the Centre for German-Jewish Studies. This award celebrates our excellence in events planning and the important educational as well as community engagement role that the HMD event plays at Sussex. It is testament to the hard work and dedication of colleagues involved in conceptualising and delivering this flagship event at Sussex, and reinforces our Events team’s position as a leader in the sector.

Summer at Sussex: students join our Summer School programme
141 students have attended our Summer School programme, including four Ukrainian students from our Ukrainian twinning university, Oles Honchar Dnipro National University (DNU), who joined us on a summer course to study English, supported by the Sussex Fund. We have also received 16 International Junior Research Associate students from nine overseas institutional partners this year, who have just completed their projects supervised by Sussex academics. In addition, 113 Sussex students have been supported to join 15 of our overseas institutional partners during this summer.

Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Global and Civic Engagement) visits partners in Nigeria
Robin Banerjee, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Global and Civic Engagement, and Alice McCallum, Senior International Officer for Africa and the Middle East, joined Louis Adekola, in-country International Officer in Nigeria, for a series of events and meetings in Lagos, Nigeria during July. They met senior leadership teams at the University of Lagos and Lagos Business School, Pan-Atlantic University to discuss education and research partnerships. They also attended a number of events with agents, prospective students, and alumni.

International Office update
The International Office has been driving conversion initiatives in the run up to the September intake, focusing on targeted communication and engagement strategies across key markets to improve offer holder conversion rates amidst the challenging recruitment environment this year. Initiatives include student ambassador call campaigns, webinars, in-country events, and new forms of digital outreach to offer holders through WhatsApp groups and Unibuddy Communities. The International Office is also now scaling up strategy, planning and early activity for the 2025 intake.

About you

Paperless parking
The University is introducing paperless parking from 1 October 2024.

To make the transition to paperless parking easier, we will not be charging staff to park on campus until the new system is active from 1 October. This is effective from today (5 September), for both annual permit holders and daily permit holders.
Daily permit holders: continue to display your permit in your car, but you do not need to display a daily scratchcard or pay for parking via any other method. If you have any scratchcards left, please hold onto these – a refund system will be in place once the paperless parking system is active.
Annual permit holders: continue to display your permit in your car. If you pay via salary deduction, a deduction will not be taken for September.

Complete your Achievement and Development Review by 30 September
Achievement and Development Reviews (ADRs) are an opportunity to explore the range of development options available and talk about your career progression. Development options to discuss can include a number of free online qualifications to help develop and enhance your skills, and apprenticeships which can support training and skills needs.

All staff must complete an ADR conversation with their manager by Monday 30 September 2024. The ADR form should be used to record agreed actions and objectives, and kept as a live document for regular review throughout the year.

If you haven’t taken part in one of the face-to-face ADR training sessions, you can access a recorded version of the training on LearnUpon. Created by the Organisational Development team, the training supports both reviewers and reviewees in preparing for an ADR. For further guidance and forms, please visit the ADR pages.

New mandatory training and reminder emails
Since July, all staff now receive automated reminder emails from LearnUpon, our eLearning platform, to flag any outstanding mandatory training or refresher training needed. Mandatory training is essential to ensure you have the knowledge and skills for your role, so please complete any outstanding training to make sure we have a safe and healthy working environment, and to enable the University to meet the legal obligations that govern our workplace.

Update equality information in MyView
Recent changes made to the categories used to record equality data mean that we hold incomplete information for a significant number of staff, particularly in relation to ethnicity which is missing for 45% of staff. We ask all staff to review and update their equalities data on MyView if they haven’t already done so.

Equalities data helps the University to monitor diversity, informing the action we take to improve policies and practices. Your data is confidential and processed in line with our data policies. We provide anonymised data to the Higher Education Statistics Agency as part of our reporting obligations but otherwise, equalities data is only available as aggregated data for reporting purposes.

You can review and update your equalities data by logging into MyView and selecting the ‘My Personal Details’ tab, followed by ‘My Equality Data’. Please also take a few minutes to ensure your personal details are up to date in MyView.

Staff survey opens on 30 September - have your say and help shape the future of Sussex
The staff survey, which offers an opportunity to make your voice heard as we work together to build a university for the future, will be open from Monday 30 September through to Sunday 20 October 2024. Your views and feedback are extremely important to us and help shape action plans across the University. As we move to a two-year cycle, the staff survey will be slightly longer to incorporate a full range of questions on all themes. All survey responses will continue to remain completely confidential and no answers or comments will be attributable to any individual. Please complete the staff survey when it opens, your views and feedback are extremely important to us and help shape action plans across the University.

Free flu vaccinations for staff from mid-October
Winter is fast approaching, and flu season will soon be with us. Flu vaccination remains a critically important public health intervention for the Government and many of you will be eligible for, or will have already had, your free flu vaccine through the NHS.

If you are not eligible for a free NHS vaccine, Sussex will be offering free flu jabs to Sussex staff from mid-October. These will be delivered by our Occupational Health provider, Heales, to help protect yourself and others.

Heales will set up a flu immunisation clinic on campus and a booking system will be in place. More information will be available on our Free Flu Vaccinations for Sussex Staff page on our Staff Wellbeing Hub in the coming weeks.

About Sussex

New Policy Framework approved by Council
The Information Management team is continuing work on the overarching University Policy Project, liaising with designated points of contact across the University to carry out a full review of all existing policies. Council approved the University’s new Policy Framework in July: this sets out the approach for the creation, approval and management of all University policies in more detail and replaces the ‘Policy on Policies’.

Any colleagues who are responsible for reviewing and updating existing policies, or drafting new policies, should familiarise themselves with the Policy Framework, as well as the required template for policies and associated guidance. If you are reviewing, updating or drafting a policy, please get in touch with Information Manager Karen Blackman as early as possible in the process, so that she can provide advice and ensure that any new policies or changes to existing policies are incorporated into the central record.

New job advert guidance and templates available
To improve accessibility standards, the University has made some significant changes to the way that we present job vacancies and related information to candidates through our website. We have now launched a new advert guidance document and template on our recruitment guidance page, replacing any previous versions. All managers are asked to follow this common approach in order to publish a vacancy on our jobs pages.

Join the Sussex Big Read
Copies of Everything is Everything by Sussex alumnus, Clive Myrie have been distributed to our incoming students as part of the Sussex Big Read, supporting our aim to help new students feel part of our University community. There are plenty more available for current students and staff and everyone is welcome to take part. Find out more about the series of one-hour online seminars which draw on themes from our shared read, and get in touch if you are interested in having a batch to distribute amongst your School, Division or team.

Sussex academics are addressing some of the greatest research challenges of our time
Watch our video series and hear from speakers Mari Martiskainen, Professor of Energy and Society, Paul Statham, Professor of Migration, Thomas Nowotny, Professor of Informatics, and Alice Eldridge, Professor of Sonic Systems. Hear their insights on the unfairness of fuel poverty, the realities of multiculturalism and migrant integration, the urgency of balancing the development of AI with sustainability, and the importance of eco-justice.

Read the latest updates from the Transforming Sussex newsletter
The latest edition of the Transforming Sussex newsletter features news from across the Capital Programme and beyond, including: information about Multi-factor Authentication; where new lighting and air conditioning is being installed, and the priorities for the Student Information System. Stay in the loop by signing up to the mailing list to receive future issues of the newsletter directly to your inbox.

A reminder

Guidance on working with charities
A number of areas have recently asked about making donations to charities. The University has charitable status itself and therefore is subject to very strict rules around donating to charities. In accordance with our Financial Regulations, we are not able to use University funds to make charitable donations, except in very limited circumstances that have been agreed as priorities by the University Executive Team. Such donations must still approved in advance by the Chief Financial Officer. The University guidance on working with charities has recently been reviewed and sets out the things to think about when engaging with charities and how we can support them.

Read the guidance for new line managers joining Sussex
Colleagues joining the University or with newly-acquired line management responsibilities, should read the guidance for new line managers joining Sussex, which covers key information about being a line manager at the University. The digital guide is part of our Welcome to Sussex onboarding pack which was launched during the last academic year, and it is a great source of information for new and current staff.