Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw (DKO) Fellowships
The advertisement for the upcoming DKO Fellowships has just been posted (https://www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/Job/JobDetail?JobId=27481) with a deadline of January 29th. The most CS-relevant areas that these fellowships will be appointed to are:
· Data Science; Machine Learning and Simulation; Robotics & AI
· Quantum; Nano-engineering; Spintronics & electronics; Low energy computing
Additionally, outstanding candidates in science and engineering who are outside of these areas will also be considered and are encouraged to apply. Please do share this opportunity as widely as possible.
A message from Andrea Schalk as our incoming DHoE
“As the incoming DHoE I would like to make some remarks: Looking back over our teaching activities over the last few years, we've been addressing several overlapping issues: teaching online, hybrid teaching, increased student numbers, Faculty and PS staff reorganization, that I know have left everybody exhausted while also generating plenty of frustration. However, we shouldn't forget that we have managed to cope with all these issues, while, on the whole, protecting our students from most of the effects, and ensuring continued student satisfaction. This is something we should all be proud of, and I think this is sometimes forgotten. This success is in no small part due to my predecessor, Sean, who often had to serve as the messenger for unwelcome news while putting a huge effort into ensuring that we remained functioning throughout all this to a standard that has certainly exceeded my expectations. Thank you, Sean!
I'm sure that I too will bear unwelcome news in the future. But let's look at my vision for the role: To begin with, I want us to get back to talking about teaching, exchanging ideas, identifying, promoting and sharing good practice, reviewing our teaching (we moved to blended learning under time pressure and we haven't really looked at it since) and providing feedback to each other. However, to explore what works and why, we need feedback from our students, and the traditional measures for obtaining that are not working very well. Arguably they are not asking the right questions or digging into the reasons for students' answers. As such, longer term, I would like us to have a student presence in our conversations about teaching and learning. If you have any ideas that allow us to move forward with these themes, I would very much like to hear from you. In January I plan to run some sessions where we think about these issues, and if you are interested in joining then please let me know which topic interests you. There are no expectations that those joining commit to anything other than contributing their ideas, although I hope that some of you will be interested in joining my efforts.”
Happy Christmas/Festivus/Holidays
Finally, I’d like to take this opportunity to wish you all a relaxing and peaceful festive season. I hope to see many of you at our departmental Christmas shindig on the afternoon of December 20th.
Andrew