LSE’s Excellence in Education Awards are made to staff who have demonstrated outstanding teaching and educational leadership. In our ongoing series, we talk to some of the winners to find out more about their excellent teaching and the different approaches they take to working with students.
This week, Dr Jo Braithwaite from LSE’s Law Department tells us how research-led teaching is not just about teaching what you love, why teachers aren’t expected to know all the answers, and the reason she asked the School’s admissions team to come and watch her teach.
Don't forget....Professor Julia Black, Interim Director, will be hosting a Brexit-related Town Hall event on Friday 18 November from 12 noon until 1.30pm in the Old Theatre, Old Building. All LSE staff members (both academic staff and professional services) are invited to attend.
Dr Brian Klass What's the best part of Dr Klass' job at LSE? "Teaching. I love the moment when you see the proverbial light bulb go off in someone’s head, when a new way of thinking about a problem suddenly makes sense."
Half a million pounds spent on upgrading equipment in LSE teaching spaces
Did you know that LSE's Information Management and Technology (IMT) AV team spent over half a million pounds this summer to enhance the audio-visual facilities available in 40 teaching spaces across LSE in response to student feedback?
Improvements in 20 Kingsway, the Old Building and Towers 1 and 2 include new HD projectors and visualizers, new Internet Protocol cameras for lecture live streaming and remote support as well as infra-red hearing loops to support students and staff with assistive listening devices.
In response to student feedback, the equipment in the Hong Kong Theatre has also been upgraded. Three HD, high brightness projectors and screens have been installed to ensure a comfortable view from all seats, including from balcony level.
To learn more about this summer’s AV improvements, please see here.
Congratulations Research Festival winners
A huge thank you and congratulations to everyone who exhibited their work at this year’s Research Festival, it was a truly amazing and inspirational event.
The School will be conducting teaching surveys in weeks 8 and 9 of this term (14 Nov-25 Nov). Students will be asked to complete questionnaires in classes/seminars/lectures for half-unit courses, and for any other courses on which teachers teach only this term: teaching by permanent teachers on full-unit courses will be surveyed mainly in the Lent term.
The class/seminar survey asks for student views on the course as a whole; it also asks for opinions of their class teacher’s performance. The survey covers permanent faculty, GTAs and LSE Fellows. Teachers should conduct surveys during classes/seminars: it should take no more than ten minutes to complete. Some teachers will also conduct a separate survey about lectures.
On Monday 31 October Ashish Patel, BSc in Mathematics and Economics 2016, won the the Under 25’s category for Mentoring and Coaching in the Team London volunteering awards at City Hall for his work with IntoUniversity.
Ashish has volunteered over 200 hours at IntoUniversity’s education centre in East Ham since 2014 and during this time he has gone above and beyond to support their young people. He volunteered first as an intern and now as an Academic Support Tutor in an after-school club. He also set up his own maths club called Marvellous Maths - for students who struggle with numeracy, and engages beyond the classroom, helping out with family events and providing suggestions for future community. He is now a member of City Year UK.
Lent term 2017 will mark the launch of LSE’s employee self-service (ESS) system MyView, a new online portal which will ultimately provide LSE employees with secure access to a range of payroll and HR functions, such as viewing pay slips and booking annual leave.
The new system will offer an attractive, intuitive and easy-to-use interface for employees, managers and administrators, with an enhanced user experience and modernisation of LSE’s online workspace.
Employees will be able to maintain their personal details such as home address, personal contact details and emergency contacts, as well as being able to view and print payslips.
Brexit - the options available to EEA national workers
The School will be running a number of short group seminar sessions designed for non UK EU staff in late November/early December, entitled ‘Brexit - the options available to EEA national workers’, focused around legal issues, including:
The current legal position
The latest Brexit position - possible work permit regime/extension or alternatively separate rights for existing EEA nationals already working in the UK
The options available to EEA nationals, including the option of permanent residency after five years
Q&A
The sessions will take place on:
Friday 18 November 12.30-1.30pm, 32L.LG.04 Wednesday 23 November 1.30-2.30pm Tuesday 29 November 2-3pm, CLM.7.02 Legal Session - Tuesday 13 December 12.30-1.30pm, 32L.G.17
For any staff who feel their circumstances mean that they need ‘one-to-one’ advice on the options available to them (depending on levels of interest), HR will either arrange a drop-in session or a direct phone conversation with the lawyer. Please email HR.Visas@lse.ac.uk to express an interest.
In addition to these sessions, a Brexit-related Town Hall event, hosted by Julia Black, will also be running on Friday 18 November from 12 noon to 1.30pm in the Old Theatre, Old Building, covering the impact of Brexit across a number of issues. All staff from across the School are invited to attend. Click here for more information.
Britain and Europe: Towards Brexit
Thursday 8 December, Renaissance Hotel, Brussels
As part of our wider response to the EU referendum decision, the School is developing a series of lectures, seminars and events on the implications of Brexit across a range of issues.
‘Britain and Europe: Towards Brexit’ is day of EU and UK focused expert panel sessions and networking activities whichwill take place at the Renaissance Hotel in Brussels’ EU Quarter on Thursday 8 December. We are asking colleagues across the School if they have any contacts within EU institutions, organisations, government and business who may be interested in attending such an event.
If you have any contacts you feel should be invited, which would be of great benefit to you, your department or the School as a whole, please do email any suggestions through to comms.brussels@lse.ac.uk.
The call for applications to the Pro-Director Education Vision Fund is now open.
LSE’s new Pro-Director Education Vision Fund has been established to support the delivery of the School’s Education Strategy 2015-2020, and is designed to contribute to the enhancement of the educational experiences of LSE’s undergraduate and taught master’s students.
Funds of £100,000 will available annually, from October 2016, for three academic years.
The Executive Summer School is broadening its offering and will now be known as LSE Executive Education Courses.
From 2017, the programme will offer its widest ever range of executive short courses and sessions will run in Autumn as well as the Summer.
Summer Session: 5-9 and 12-16 June
Autumn Session: 30 Oct - 3 Nov
The programme will now be able to offer professionals even wider opportunities to access LSE teaching and research in key areas of business and social sciences.
Applications for 2017 are now open and discounts are available for LSE alumni and groups. Other programmes within the Unit (LSE Summer School, Summer Methods Programme and UoLIP) retain their names.
"There are few opportunities to really tangibly thank people for their hard work, so this year I’ll definitely be thinking about who deserves to be nominated and making sure I get a submission in." Hayley Reed, Co-chair of Spectrum and 2015 VIP Award winner
Nominations for this year's Values in Practice Awards (VIP) for Professional Services Staff are now open.
You can make a nomination by completing the nomination form found here and submitting it to hr.vip-awards@lse.ac.uk by Friday 25 November.
All individuals and teams shortlisted will be invited to a VIP Awards afternoon, where we will celebrate everyone’s achievements and the winners will be presented with their awards.
Did you know, in order to continue to improve the School’s IT infrastructure, IMT has scheduled regular maintenance periods where upgrades, equipment replacement and other essential work can take place?
Our schedule for 2016-17 is as follows:
Weekly: Every Tuesday morning (6am-8am)
Monthly: Last Thursday of each month (11.59pm-6am)
Termly: One whole Sunday per term:
Michaelmas - 11 December 2016
Lent - 2 April 2017
Summer - 6 August 2017
Any disruptive or emergency works will continue to be communicated through our usual channels, e.g. LSE IT News, @lseitnews, Staff and Student Newsletters and LSEmail where appropriate.
Professional Services Seminar Series
The new Professional Services Seminar Series was launched on Friday 28 October with an interesting session on 'The place of Professional Services Staff at LSE' run by Chief Operating Officer, Andrew Young, and Professor Conor Gearty.
The session explored the key role that professional services staff play at LSE and how some of the challenges in the near future may mean that role will need to adapt. A video of the session can be found here.
Future session will cover hints and tips on getting the ideal job at LSE, and beyond and the meaning of inclusion in the university setting and how this informs and can be impacted by the work of professional services staff. Details of these and upcoming session can be found here.
Do you know of a student who may need special arrangements for their Lent Term exams?
The Disability and Wellbeing Service and the Exams Office have introduced a new deadline for student submissions of Individual Exam Adjustments (IEAs) of Friday 11 November for Lent Term exams.
If you know of a student who may need special examination arrangements, please advise them to meet with the Disability and Wellbeing Service as soon as possible. For more information, visit www.lse.ac.uk/IEA.
Please note, this deadline does not apply to students who have ‘Duration of Studies‘ IEAs in place already.
LSE Catering is delighted to announce the dates for our Winter Food Festival this November.
Based at the John Watkins Plaza, outside the Library, LSE Catering will be serving up a hearty range of street-food including Cajun chicken, chipotle smoked beef, Vietnamese noodles and a variety of refreshments and deals.
Serving between 12-2.30pm on the 15, 17, 22 and 24 November, pop down to our street food festival and try our delicious and diverse cuisines for yourself.
LSE 2017-18 Calendars now available!
The School’s two-year leave planner/calendar is now available to order.
It comes in two parts: January-June and July-December, and is double sided. Side one is for 2017 and side two for 2018. At the end of 2017, you simply turn it over to display 2018.
Planner/calendar features include:
Laminated which means you can use highlighters on it allowing for text to be easily erased if necessary
School closure dates indicated
Comes in A5, A4 or A3 sizes, for either team use or individual use
Each of the two parts is either A5, A4 or A3 depending on your preference
Term periods shaded so you can immediately differentiate between term time and non-term time
To place your order, click here, scroll down to Year Planners, and just follow the instructions provided. Please note that you will need to provide a valid budget code in order to place your order, and remember that each of the two parts for the planner/calendar is sized as A3, A4 or A5.
Office move
On Friday 18 November, the Communications Division will be relocating from the fourth floor of Tower Three to the ground floor of Queens House, 55-56 Lincoln's Inn Fields, and will be in situ from Monday 21 November.
The Events Office and the Digital Team of the Communications Division are already based in Queens House.
Please contact Annette Haas on ext 7064 or at a.haas@lse.ac.uk for any queries prior to the move.
Nine Dots Prize: new social science prize launched
The Nine Dots Prize - a new prize for creative thinking in the social sciences - has just been launched. Sponsored by the Kadas Prize Foundation, Nine Dots is supported by CRASSH (the Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences) at the University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Press.
The Prize will be awarded to the best response to its inaugural question: "Are digital technologies making politics impossible?"
Applicants are asked to respond in 3,000 words. The prize will be judged anonymously by its board of 12 distinguished academics, journalists, authors and thinkers, and the winner will receive $100,000 to support them in writing up a short book based on their response. They will also have the opportunity to spend a term as Visiting Fellow at CRASSH at the University of Cambridge and the book will be published by Cambridge University Press in an open access format.
Come and remember all who have lost their lives in war and particularly alumni of LSE. Join us on Friday 11 November at 10.50am in the Shaw Library, Old Building.
Highlights from LSE's public events
LSE Choir and Orchestra Christmas Concert Have you bought your tickets yet for this year’s Christmas Concert at St Clement Danes Church hosted by LSE Arts and the LSESU Music Society? Taking place on Tuesday 6 December at 7pm, the concert will include the LSE Choir performing a selection of Christmas carols and Te Deum Laudamus by Haydn and the LSE Orchestra performing Milhaud Le Boeuf Sur La Toit, Haydn Trumpet Concerto and Beethoven Symphony No.8. Tickets are £7 and can be purchased from the LSE online store.
Thursday 17 November, 5.30-7pm, Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building Speaker:Nathalie Tocci, Deputy Director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome. Discussants: Sven Biscop, Director of the Europe in the World Programme at Egmont; and Professor Ben Tonra, Jean Monnet Professor of European Foreign, Security and Defence Policy at University College Dublin.
Undoubtedly Brexit has dealt a major blow, both to the UK's role in the world and that of the EU. As one, if not the, Member State with the most global outlook, the damage done both in terms of material capacities and reputation cannot be underestimated. At the same time some argue that the UK's exit from the EU would facilitate integration in the security and defence field. What are the prospects for the implementation of the EU Global Strategy following the UK referendum?
Keep up-to-date with what Brexit means for the UK and the wider world at LSE Brexit blog.
Friday 25 November, 9am-2pm, Saw Swee Hock Student Centre
How can we make ourselves and our communities more resilient against exploitative polarisation? How do we move beyond just tolerating each other to actively seeking out diversity in all its hues? How do we rise above false binaries and better engage in constructive conflict so that we do not succumb to the more destructive kind? How do we ensure that research results and other evidence play a greater role in the public debate and have stronger impact on policy decisions? Join us for a celebration of diversity and an exploration of the drivers of resilience in our society.
We will discuss the role of education with Hanan Al Hroub, winner of the 2016 Global Teacher Prize, and will hear about creative approaches to identity from the creator of the Islamic Superheroes ‘99’, Dr Naif Al Mutawa.
Allyson Stewart-Allen will highlight cultural differences in deal making, Julia Karmo will bring her perspective as a reporter in Cologne to the challenge of addressing fear in migration matters, while Professors Erik Berglof and Christine Chinkin will highlight the role of universities.
Furthermore, we will announce the much-anticipated winners of IGA’s migration video competition and winners of the student ‘Hackathon’ from the prior evening.
This will be a fast-paced, interactive, illuminating and energising morning. If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact Lutfey Siddiqi or Sophie Wise.
The Legacy of Peace Speaker: Juan Manuel Santos Calderón Recorded: Wednesday 2 November, approx. 61 minutes
What Next for Growth in the UK? Speaker: Vince Cable, Lord Darling, Stephanie Flanders, and George Osborne Recorded: Wednesday 2 November, approx. 64 minutes
Training
RISe, the Research Division’s Development Programme
Research Administration Network Tuesday 15 November, 12-2pm, LRB.R.505 You are invited to the join us for the first meeting of the Research Administration Network. Meet and discuss emerging (and current) issues related to externally funded research activity and exchange best practices on supporting research grants and awards. The network is aimed at all professional services staff in centres, departments and institutes involved in any aspect of research administration. A light sandwich lunch will be provided. Please feel free to extend the invitation to colleagues who might be interested in joining. Book now - booking closes 11 November.
KEI toolkit: introduction to working with commercial organisations Wednesday 16 November, 12-2pm, LRB.R.505 Understand how to engage audiences beyond LSE with your work and the benefits of doing so. This workshop will consider the drivers for academic-commercial collaboration and draw on current and recent examples of such collaborations to illustrate their benefits to both academic and commercial partners. The session will include information about practical support available at LSE for those interested in exploring these shorts of partnership activities. Book now - booking closes on 14 November.
Research Division clinics Tuesday 22 November, 11.30am-2pm, 32L.B.07 Improve your grant writing skills by acting as a colleague’s critical friend on grant proposal, get advice about developing, writing and implementing an effective ‘pathway to impact’ plan and bring your questions about managing your award to a round table discussion. Book now - booking closes 21 November.
Part of LSE
Knitting Group
With the winter nights drawing, it is a good time to learn a new skill or develop an old one. The Knitting Group welcomes knitters and crocheters of all levels, whether you have just bought your first set of needles or have been knitting for years.
We meet for an hour of creativity and skill sharing every Wednesday at 12.30pm in the Senior Common Room, fifth floor of the Old Building. To find out more, email Sue Donnelly.
Are you a poet, comedian or budding musician?
LSE Chill is a free performance night hosted by LSE Arts at Café 54, New Academic Building. Whether you’re interested in performing or just looking for a feel good atmosphere with some great talent, please come along.
The next Chill will be on Friday 25 November from 6-8pm, and we are looking for performers.
If you are interested in performing, please email arts@lse.ac.uk or click here for more information.
Academic abroad
Professor Robin Mansell (pictured) of the Department of Media and Communications was keynote speaker at the EuroMedia Research Group ECREA Pre-Conference on 8-9 November in Prague.
Professor Mansell spoke on ‘Inequality and Digitally Mediated Communication: Divides, Contradictions and Consequences’.
LSE IDEAS holds first meeting of new 'Innovation Lab on Drugs and Development' in Rome
LSE IDEAS International Drug policy Project and German Development body GIZ convened experts from the United Nations, government delegates from Colombia, Mexico, Portugal, Myanmar and Britain with experts from Brazil, Thailand, the US, the Netherlands and other countries to begin to plan pilot innovations beyond the 'war on drugs'.
The group of 35 met at LUISS University in Rome for three days of intense roundtables, group discussions and policy presentations. The next meeting of the group will take place at LSE in early 2017.
This week's 'Star of the Week' goes to the Maintenance Team from LSE Estates.
Martin Reid, LSE Library, said: "Nicola Wright (Director, LSE Library) and I would like to nominate the Maintenance Team for the great work they did recently dealing with water supply problems to the Lionel Robbins Building. It was only due to their swift and efficient response on multiple occasions, that we were able to keep the Library open when problems with the mains water supply threatened to force us to close. All of them are stars!: Alan Beacon, Paul Franklin, Malcolm Callender, Danny Smith, Mo Miah, Sam Venables, Ross Ruscoe, and Steve Jessup".
If you have some news, an achievement, or an aspect of LSE life that you would like to share, we would love to hear from you - get in touch at communications.internal@lse.ac.uk or on ext 7582.
The next edition of Staff News is on Thursday 17 November. Articles for this should be emailed to us by Tuesday 15 November.
Microsoft prevents automatic downloading of images. You can set your Microsoft Outlook to download all pictures in emails from LSEmail. Please find guidance here.
Upcoming events for next week include the Fred Halliday Memorial Lecture by 
LSE Chill is a free performance night hosted by LSE Arts at Café 54, New Academic Building. Whether you’re interested in performing or just looking for a feel good atmosphere with some great talent, please come along.
