Dear Postgraduates,
This document serves to highlight the activities, events and officer engagements over the month of September as far as the KPA is concerned. Myself, Currie, Sharon and the committee are looking forward to holding lots of exciting events over the course of the year for postgraduate students!
I firstly want to wish you a very happy New Year and best wishes for everything you do in 2020! I have a good feeling about this year!
Christmas at Keele 2019!
Here at the KPA, we have all had a fantastic festive season - spending it with our lovely postgraduate students! We held numerous events, both inside and outside the KPA Clubhouse, for all those remaining students on campus! We hosted our annual Kid's Christmas Party for all of our students and locals with children on campus, with free buffet, crafts and an extra special visit from Santa! We also held our festive Winter Wonderland with a live brass band and free canapes for all tables! As our karaoke nights have received fantastic success so far, we hosted a Christmas Karaoke evening too! As a committee, we hosted a craft afternoon to create sustainable gifts and Christmas decorations - a chance for you to do some last minute crafting for loved ones! We also made sure that there was tonnes of festive cheer during our weekly coffee mornings and Postgrads That Lunch events, where we provided free mince pies, gingerbread, Christmas coffees, teas and hot chocolates! On the 12th of December, the Clubhouse opened under an extended license to provide live footage of the UK's General Election and whilst it may have been a result which you may or may not have been happy with - we re-opened the Clubhouse doors the next day after a long awaited and exhausting night! We hosted many free nights for our postgraduate students including mince pies and mulled wine evening, a free PG buffet and cheese and wine night! We also took postgraduates for a festive meal at Bon Pan Asian! We had over 20 students join us and had a fantastic time! We have also hosted film nights at the KPA - where we have provided free popcorn and snacks to all attendees! Our Christmas has been absolutely jam packed, but we have had so much fun! We hope that you all have too!
The fun doesn't quite end there though... join us at the KPA Clubhouse tonight to see in the New Year! With a glass of prosecco on arrival!
Our KPA Ordinary General Meeting...
Our Student Union Ordinary General Meeting is coming up fast - and this year, we have made a couple of alterations for the process of submission of motions! This is so that all of our members can participate with the KPA and its policies in a democratic way! Our OGM will be held on Tuesday 28th of January at 5.00pm. If you have an ideas for motions or anything that you would like to ask, please get in touch with our KPA Secretary at kpa.secretary@keele.ac.uk. You will need to submit any motions that you have by Tuesday 14th of January. These motion proposals will then be reviewed by our board of trustees and submitted to the meeting on approval. The motions will be circulated to our postgraduates in advance of the meeting so that all members have an idea of the discussion topics and items for approval. We have also altered our call for motions document. The document highlights that any proposal must fall in line with our charitable objectives, which can be found in our constitution on our website: https://www.kpa.org.uk/governance. We also held a drop in workshop and session for any student with ideas for motion proposals to come and speak to myself and our student trustee. Here we provided thorough guidelines on how to write motion proposals and also how to submit them! We hope that this has given clarity on how to participate democratically at our general meetings.
The Fifth Keele Postgraduate Conference and the Launch of the Keele Doctoral Academy...
All postgraduate students are invited to attend the Fifth Keele Postgraduate Conference and the Launch of the Keele Doctoral Academy on April 29th, 2020. Get it into your diary now and SAVE THE DATE!
There is a current call for abstracts, with its closing date: Monday 2nd of March 2020 at 5.00pm. All postgraduate students are invited to share their work in progress and present their research, dissertation project and course-related posters to a cross disciplinary audience of peers, students and staff. Participants are expected to present their work as a poster, although artefacts or performance may also be offered! This is a different and alternative opportunity in addition to those available within the faculties and research institutes and the challenge here is for postgraduate students to communicate their work in an accessible and inspiring way to an informed, but non-specialist audience. The conference is open to all to attend and will also include the Keele Three Minute Thesis and Bake your Doctorate competitions. If you are not presenting, please do come along, support your colleagues and enjoy the day! (Lunch and refreshments will be provided!)
For further information, please get in touch with Stephen Kilner at: s.r.kilner@keele.ac.uk or visit the ILAS office next to the Keele Postgraduate Association on the top floor of Keele Hall.
Senate December 2019...
Your Keele Sabbatical Officers represented the needs of both the undergraduate and postgraduate body at Senate during the month of December! This is a chance for our team to bring to higher levels within the university the voice of our membership. We can also ask questions to your Vice Chancellor and members of the University Executive Committee. We are also required to deliver a report on the activity and current issues within the student body so that the needs of students are addressed at varying levels at the university!
Coming up...
We are looking forward to our refreshers and are currently in the process of organising a timetable of events just for our postgraduate body! Watch this space, our social media accounts, website and weekly digest for more information!
Here at the KPA, we are constantly working to ensure that we are putting on the correct events and providing our best service to our members. As you know, we have a full committee this year, who all have tonnes of enthusiasm and ideas for events! We will be continuing our coffee mornings and postgrads that lunch throughout the year, so please do keep coming along to these! We will also be working alongside the clubhouse to hold some fantastic events; If you have any thoughts or ideas for events that you would like to see, please do get in contact kpa.chair@keele.ac.uk, or kpa.vp@keele.ac.uk! We would love to see some ideas!
Congratulations...
I would like to use this space to congratulate some of our postgraduate students in their academic achievements and contributions to campus...
Congratulations to Elliot Lancaster who has achieved national success after creating an app to improve recycling and tackle fly tipping!
Congratulations to Luvuyo Zantsi who has passed his viva with minor corrections - a fantastic achievement!
Congratulations to our very own, Gabriella Gay, who has finished her BSL Level One (British Sign Language) Assessments!
(If you would like to nominate yourself or another student to feature within this section, please get in touch with me at kpa.chair@keele.ac.uk)
If there’s anything missing that members would like to have seen included or anything members are expecting to be done, you are welcome to get in touch with queries or issues.
The committee and I look forward to working with all you amazing postgrads! Please feel free to email either Currie or I on kpa.vp@keele.ac.uk or kpa.chair@keele.ac.uk if you have any concerns, want to give us updates or simply just want a chat!!
Best,
Katie Charlton
(KPA President)
Get in touch with us!
We would love to hear from you!
