Author: Sophie Belcher

Blackboard will be upgraded week commencing 8th July 2019. Throughout the upgrade there will be a read-only version of Blackboard available from 6^th July 2019. Staff and students will be able to access Blackboard in the usual way, however any changes made to sites or content on the read-only version will not be retained when the upgraded version of Blackboard is made available. The upgrade will be completed within the working week and will become available following successful internal testing.

What to expect from the upgrade?

The new version comes with ‘under-the-hood’ improvements and a simplified login process.

Please note, from July Blackboard will no longer support the IE11 browser. This does not mean it will stop working completely, but it cannot be relied upon to work exactly as expected. Any identified issues with IE11, will be made available on the ‘Known Issues’ tab within Blackboard. As the University will be upgrading University PCs to the Windows 10 operating system for the end of the year, the IE11 browser will subsequently disappear from all University PCs. As a result, we recommend moving to Chrome as the default browser for Blackboard.

Whilst not an issue on Windows 10, Chrome will currently prevent users opening the browser on two different PCs; such as an office and a lecture theatre. As a result, when using Chrome, please remember to close your browser if you wish to open it in another location.  If this issue does occur before the Windows 10 upgrade is completed, IE11 will still be available, but of course cannot be relied upon to work exactly as expected.

If you have any questions about the upgrade, please email digitaleducation@lincoln.ac.uk.

Organised by a team at the University of Lincoln, ‘Representing Homelessness’ is a multi-disciplinary conference exploring how homelessness and the lived experience of being homeless is represented across a range of outlets from newspapers and television through to government policy and the law.

Bringing together academics, activists, journalists, artists and people who have personally experienced homelessness, the conference will examine how these representations have an impact not only on the public perception of homelessness but also how they are used by homeless people to represent their situation to others and themselves.

The two day conference will take place from Thursday 18^th – Friday 19^th July 2019 on the University’s Brayford Pool campus and will feature a programme of workshops, guest speakers and roundtable discussions. Alongside academics from the Schools of English and Journalism, Health and Social Care and Social and Political Science, speakers will include Lord John Bird MBE, the founder of The Big Issue, Jon Kuhrt, Specialist Rough Sleeping Advisor at HHCLG and Alex Andreou, formerly homeless actor, writer and theatre director.

The conference is open to staff and students as well as the general public. The University’s School of Health and Social Care are offering 20 paid places for registered students of the University of Lincoln. These places will be available on a first come, first served basis. To enquire about one of these places, email Nigel Horner – nhorner@lincoln.ac.uk

There are also a limited number of free tickets available on application for anyone who isn’t in full time, permanent employment. If you would like to apply for one of these places, please contact the organising committee at rhconference@lincoln.ac.uk with a brief description of why you would like to attend the conference. Please note that this is subject to availability.

To find out more or to book your place, visit: https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/representing-homelessness

The University of Lincoln has risen to 42nd place out of more than 130 UK universities featured in the Complete University Guide 2020, published today (‪Wednesday 1st May 2019).

The Complete University Guide 2020 features 131 universities and is the first major UK university guide published this year. Lincoln, which rose one place in the main table, also features in the top ten of two subject tables, including a first place position for our courses in the Hospitality, Leisure, Recreation & Tourism subject category.

The rise follows success in the last National Student Survey, in which Lincoln ranked 7^th in the UK for overall student satisfaction. This latest league table accompanies similar successes over the last year, including being placed 22^nd in the Guardian University Guide 2019

Following the success of the 2019 Student Edition of IMPact we have taken the decision to accept papers from undergraduates year round. Submissions may be adaptations of final year independent study (dissertations) made collaboratively with supervisors or reflections on experiences of participating in Student as Producer initiatives such as the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Scheme (UROS) or other aspects of higher education.

For more information please visit impact.lincoln.ac.uk or email impact@lincoln.ac.uk

The College of Social Science will welcome GB Paralympian Rachel Morris MBE to campus next month to share insights from her sporting career.

Rachel has competed in three Paralympic games, winning gold as a hand cyclist at the 2008 Beijing games, gold in the women’s single sculls rowing in Rio in 2016 and bronze at London 2012.

Aside from her remarkable sporting achievements, Rachel is an accomplished public speaker and will deliver her talk ‘From an Olympic to a Paralympic Dream’ with the aim of inspiring the next generation of sportspeople.

The talk will take place on Monday 20^th May at 5:30pm in the Jackson Lecture Theatre. The talk is free to attend, but booking is recommended. To book your place, visit: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/from-an-olympic-to-a-paralympic-dream-tickets-60520123318

To coincide with LGBT+ History Month, there will be a free screening of the landmark German silent film Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others, 1919).

Made 100 years ago, this collaboration between the filmmaker Richard Oswald and the sexologist and human rights campaigner Magnus Hirschfeld was the first film to advocate for homosexual law reform. Quickly banned after its release and suppressed under the Nazis, the film was long believed to be lost. Since its rediscovery, this important piece of queer history has been pieced back together by archivists, using surviving film fragments, still photographs and censorship documents.

The screening will be followed by a brief panel discussion with lecturers from the University of Lincoln Schools of History & Heritage and Film & Media, including Dr Chiara Beccalossi, Dr Gábor Gergely, Dr Christine Grandy and Dr Chris O’Rourke.

The screening will take place on 20th February, from 4:30pm to 6:30pm in the Cargill Lecture Theatre in the Minerva Building.

Detailed plans have been submitted for a state-of-the-art new medical school building at the University of Lincoln, UK, in another significant step forward for medical education in the region.

Documents and drawings which bring to life the vision for a purpose-built teaching facility for future generations of medical students have been submitted in a planning application to City of Lincoln Council.

If approved, the £21 million building would be created next to existing science laboratories, the Janet Lane-Claypon Building, and opposite the University’s iconic Isaac Newton Building on the southern edge of the main Brayford Pool Campus. The site already has outline planning permission under an existing masterplan with the first artist’s impressions of the planned building revealed last summer.

The five-storey building will comprise lecture theatres, laboratories, clinical and prosection anatomy suites equipped with cutting-edge diagnostic tools, and a dedicated science library. Facilities will include a clinical skills suite with mock consultation rooms (simulating hospital wards or a GP surgery) with the latest technologies to provide high quality teaching. These will enable medical students to explore the latest technology developments in healthcare.

Scheduled for completion in spring 2021, the building has been designed to meet the BREEAM Excellent environmental standard and features photovoltaic panels generating electricity for its laboratories, as part of the aspiration to be a carbon neutral scheme. This new facility will be the most sustainable on our campus.

University of Lincoln Vice Chancellor Mary Stuart said: “This is an exciting step forward for everyone with an interest in this project to produce future generations of healthcare professionals. It represents more than just a building – it is a commitment to current and future communities in Lincolnshire to develop sustainable healthcare for the region.

“Soon we will be training our own doctors right here in the heart of Lincoln, creating more opportunities for local young people to aspire to a medical career, providing new routes for experienced clinicians to develop their teaching and research practice, and increasing the likelihood that newly-trained doctors will remain in the region once they qualify.”

The University of Lincoln and University of Nottingham confirmed in March 2018 they had been successful in their joint bid to establish a new medical school for Lincolnshire. It followed an announcement in 2017 by the Government of an additional 1,500 medical school training places across England to ease staffing shortages in the NHS.

As the second largest county in England, Lincolnshire has particular healthcare challenges with its rural geography and ageing population and has traditionally struggled to recruit and retain doctors and other healthcare professionals.

Lincoln Medical School will welcome its first 95 students in September 2019. Within a few years, the School will be delivering first class medical training to around 400 students.

Students will study for the University of Nottingham’s renowned BMBS medical degree at the University of Lincoln’s campus. The first undergraduates will initially be taught in Lincoln’s new £19 million Sarah Swift Building, equipped with specialist clinical skills suites, and other modern science facilities and laboratories on campus, including the £28 million Isaac Newton Building.

Prospective medical students can apply through UCAS for the five-year University of Nottingham BMBS medical degree (A100) at Lincoln or the six-year degree with Foundation Year (A108).

Local people and businesses can help create the cutting-edge Lincoln Medical School facility where tomorrow’s doctors will train by contributing to an ongoing fund-raising campaign for the new building.

For more information, see www.lincoln.ac.uk/home/medicalschool/