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8 September 2011 |
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 News
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• Improved showing from LSE in World University Rankings
LSE has improved its position in the latest global league table of
universities. The School welcomed the rise to 64th in the QS table,
although it continues to have grave reservations about the methodology
behind such rankings.
The World University Rankings published on 5 September 2011 placed LSE
64th in the table – an improvement from 80th in 2010. Cambridge was rated
the world's best, with Harvard in second and the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology third. In the UK, Cambridge was followed by Oxford and Imperial
with LSE in 11th position.
The QS ranking is one of three which claim to compare world
universities
accurately. The other tables are produced by THE-Thomson Reuters and
Shanghai Jiao Tong University. However there is no universally agreed
methodology for such a comparison and all three tables have their particular
critics. LSE has long argued, and produced empirical evidence to back its
claim, that its small size and exclusive focus on the social sciences result
in rankings underestimating its strengths.
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• Sara B Hobolt to become the first Sutherland Chair of European
Institutions at LSE
The European Institute is delighted to announce that Sara B Hobolt has been
appointed the first Sutherland Chair in European Institutions. She will join
the European Institute on 1 January 2012.
The Sutherland Chair in European Institutions was made possible by a
donation from LSE Chairman Peter Sutherland KCMG. His generous gift will
support the post for 10 years and will help transform the European
Institute. The naming of the Chair reflects the commitment and work of Mr
Sutherland both within European Institutions and towards the European ideal.
Sara is currently University Lecturer in Comparative European Politics at
the University of Oxford and Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. She is one
of the leading scholars on public opinion, voter behaviour and the European
integration process. Her book Europe in Question: referendums on European
integration was awarded the Best Book prize by the European Union Studies
Association in 2010 and she is this year’s winner of the American Political
Science Association’s Emerging Scholar Award, given to the scholar who has
made the greatest contribution to the field of elections, public opinion and
voting behaviour.
Her appointment will strengthen a significant corpus of LSE scholars working
on the European Union which includes Professors Damian Chalmers, Kevin
Featherstone, Simon Hix and Karen Smith. Sara will continue her work on
electoral democracy and political behaviour in the EU at LSE, and will be a
leading member of both Europe@LSE and the European Union Politics, Law and
Policy research stream.
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• LSE
shortlisted for Best for Fathers award
LSE has been shortlisted for a Special Award in this year’s Top
Employers for Working Families awards.
The School won a place in the finals for the Best for Fathers category
after its family-friendly policies for working parents and carers caught the
eye of the judges. Paternity pay at LSE is paid at full
salary and the leave is flexible and can be split into as many blocks as
required. The School is also planning a fathers’ mentoring programme and a
series of presentations for new fathers, which will also be open to the
partners of female employees at LSE
The Top Employers for Working Families Benchmark and Special Awards
recognise organisations across the UK who do the most to support their
working parents and carers.
Barbara Bush, LSE HR Director, said: “We are delighted to have reached
the finals of the Best for Fathers Award. Parents who are well supported at
work are more likely to be productive and committed employees and our new
events for fathers and fathers-to-be aim to build on the success of our
existing policies, which led to us appearing in the Top Thirty Employers for
Working Families in 2010. The events will offer advice on how best to manage
the joy and anxiety of being a father and will also be open to non-LSE employed partners of female staff, as this support should ultimately
benefit both parents. We are also aiming to offer mentoring for fathers
employed at the School over a 12-month period, to provide more personal
support to new parents and to ‘grow’ mentors for future parents."
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• LSE good practice highlighted in report on effective course
evaluation
LSE has been singled out for its best practice in a new research report
into the issues facing HE institutions in gaining and implementing student
feedback on courses.
LSE is highlighted in the report, Effective Course Evaluation - The
Future for Quality and Standards in Higher Education, which was
published on 1 September. The report was commissioned by Electric Paper,
which works with over 600 universities in the UK and worldwide (including
LSE) to help them evaluate their courses via its automated paper and online
survey management system EvaSys.
The report illustrates how LSE identified a requirement for a system
which would allow it quickly and efficiently
to survey its 9,000 students
and gain feedback on its courses and teaching. LSE used Electric Paper's EvaSys survey management system, which allows the flexibility to evaluate
modules using both online and paper-based surveys automatically and without
the need for manual data entry. "There were two main goals when introducing
EvaSys at the School," explained Mike Page, head of ARD systems and business
processes at LSE. "We wanted to improve the timeliness and accuracy of
survey results, and to encourage higher response rates."
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 Notices
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• LSE Annual Fund funding opportunities
The deadline for LSE Annual Fund applications has been extended to
Tuesday 13 September because of last week's disruptions to the School's
internet service, so please ensure you get your application in on time.
The
Annual Fund webpage contains information on applying for funding,
guidance notes, and a link to the online application form.
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• Sleep
workshop for staff
Are you experiencing insomnia? Disrupted asleep? Are your sleeping
patterns affecting your work or day to day functioning?
Affected sleep can have an adverse effect on our mood, functioning and
wellbeing.
The LSE Staff Counselling Service will be running a sleep workshop for
staff on Monday 12 September from 12-1pm, in room CLM D302. The workshop
will look at a range of difficulties associated with sleep. It will increase
your understanding of its process and examine a large number of strategies
and ideas about how you might work towards achieving better sleep.
To book a place on this workshop, visit the
Training and Development
system.
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• New exhibition: Substructure
Monday 5 to Friday 30 September
Atrium Gallery, Old Building
Subscruture, a new exhibition
made up of photographs and videos created by CYJO in collaboration with
Compassion for Migrant Children, is now on display in the Atrium
Gallery. The exhibition confronts the viewer with stories of exhaustion,
pain, expectation, and hope. They are the stories of the lives that you and
I could have easily been born into.
Substructure was developed by CYJO through a chance meeting with Jonathan
Hursh, the founder of Compassion for Migrant Children. On learning about the
meaningful work he and his team were engaged in, helping migrant children
through their multiple community centres, and about the statistics behind
the migrant worker population in China, she felt compelled to create an
educational platform to help resonate the voices behind these hard working
individuals - individuals who are equally important and part of the social
fabric of a fast-paced and developing China.
This exhibition is free and open to all, no ticket required. Visitors are
welcome during weekdays (Monday - Friday) between 10am and 8pm (excluding
bank holidays or unless otherwise stated). For further information, email
arts@lse.ac.uk or call ext 5342.
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• LSE
Perspectives
The LSE Perspectives September 2011 gallery is now online. You can
view this month's selection of photos
here.
The gallery features 12 striking images submitted by members of the LSE
community. Each image reflects a unique perspective on a particular scene.
LSE Perspectives is an online gallery featuring photographs taken by LSE
students and staff. If you have taken any artistic images on your travels,
from your home town or even just here in London why not submit them for LSE
perspectives so that they can be shared with the LSE community.
For more information and to submit your images see
LSE Perspectives submissions. Every month the Arts team selects 12 images
and publishes them online. Previous galleries can be found
here.
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• Academic
abroad
In August Dr David Lane (pictured), Department of Management, visited
the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He was an invited ‘Highlight
Speaker’ at a conference on Systems Engineering and Operations Research
in Health Care.
The conference provided a forum for health care professionals, OR
practitioners and university faculty to discuss effective applications of
systems engineering and operations management tools in the delivery of
health care.
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• More
for less - take advantage of special offers for LSE staff
This
week's offer is for refills of Ecover
products including laundry liquid, washing up liquid, and fabric softener:
'Did you know that
you could refill your empty bottles of Ecover? This saves you money as well
as plastic resources - your bottle can be re-filled up to 50 times before
you need to replace it (not forgetting to recycle your old bottle). We now
sell over 91,000 litres of refill a year, saving tonnes of plastic from
going to refill' - Ecover
If you decide to refill
your empty bottle, just wash it out and take it along to the
Alara organic café and whole food shop
at 58-60 Marchmont Street, London, WC1N 1AB. Refills are charged at £4.70
per 1.5L bottle of laundry liquid, £2.07 for a 1L washing up liquid* and a
1L fabric softener is £2.20 (* a new bottle currently retails at £2.25 at
Waitrose or Sainsburys).
If you know of any deals that you think may be of interest to Staff
News readers, email Margaret Newson, purchasing manager, at
m.newson@lse.ac.uk.
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 Research
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• Boys
with absent fathers more likely to be young fathers
Boys with absent fathers are more likely to hit puberty later, but become
fathers earlier, according to research from LSE.
According to a study published in the Royal Society Journal Biology
Letters, boys with absent fathers were more likely to go on to have at
least one child by the age of 23. Boys who lost their fathers before the age
of seven were particularly affected, being nearly seven per cent more likely
to become young fathers.
In addition, the absence of a father specifically in adolescence –
between the ages of 11 and 16 – made it more likely that there would be a
delay in a boy's voice-breaking – a proxy of puberty.
Paula Sheppard, a researcher at LSE and one of the paper's authors said:
"Our research suggests that it's not just the absence of a father that can
affect when a boy experiences puberty and becomes a father, but also the
timing of that absence.
"It's particularly surprising to see that a boy's puberty can be delayed
as a result of events that happen in adolescence. We've previously assumed
that these things are 'locked-in' in early childhood."
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• Reading the Riots study to examine causes and effects of August
disturbances
The causes and consequences of the English riots last month, the most
serious bout of civil unrest in a generation, will be examined in an
innovative study by LSE and the Guardian newspaper.
Researchers will interview hundreds of people who were involved, in the
first empirical study into the widespread rioting and looting.
Professor Tim Newburn, head of the Social Policy department at LSE, will
give the academic direction to the project – "Reading The Riots". As well as surveys of those who took part in the disorder, the research
will include interviews with residents, police and the judiciary, and an
advanced analysis of more than 2.5 million riot-related Twitter messages.
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 Events
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• Upcoming
events include...
The 9/11 Wars
On: Tuesday 13 September at 6.30pm in the Hong Kong Theatre, Clement
House
Speaker: Jason Burke
Coexist
On: Wednesday 14 September at 6.30pm in the Wolfson Theatre, New
Academic Building
Speakers: Adam Mazo, David Russell, Dr Purna Sen
Pakistan: a personal history
On: Tuesday 20 September at 6.30pm on the LSE campus, venue tbc to
ticketholders
Speaker: Imran Khan
The Grassroots Fight Against Corruption in Russia
On: Wednesday 21 September at 6.30pm in the New Theatre, East
Building
Speaker: Alexey Navalny
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• Recent Developments in the Financing of Long-term Care in the USA,
UK, Japan and Israel
PSSRU’s AXA Research Fund Project and the International Long-term
care Policy Network (ILPN) are hosting this seminar on the financing of
long-term care on Wednesday 14 September at 2.30-4.20pm in NAB
1.04 at LSE.
Speakers Dr Joshua Wiener, RTI International, USA, Professor Tsuneo
Inoue, University of Doshisha, Japan, Dr Shuli Brammali-Greenberg,
Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute, Israel, and Dr Jose-Luis Fernandez, PSSRU at
LSE, will focus on recent developments in the financing of long-term health
care, especially around the balance of responsibility between the State and
the individual.
This seminar is free and open to all but registration is recommended. To
register for a place, please contact Vivek Padvetnaya,
ilp-network@lse.ac.uk or call 020
7955 6617.
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• Podcasts of public lectures and events
Security Challenges Ten Years After 9/11
Speaker: Michael Chertoff
Recorded: Monday 5 September 2011, approx 49 minutes
Click here to listen
Post-crisis Policy Challenges in the World Economy
Speakers: Dr Heiner Flassbeck, Dr Supachai Panitchpakdi
Recorded: Monday 5 September 2011, approx 88 minutes
Click here to listen |
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 60
Second Interview
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• with..... Catherine Fraser
I moved to London just under three years ago and began my first job at LSE two months months later. I started as the office coordinator for the Department of Management, then the coordinator for the CEMS programme, and now I work as the programme manager for the two year MSc Management programme.
I love living in London but
definitely consider myself a
northerner - I'm from Manchester
(the part where they film
'Shameless'!), grew up mostly in
Derby (ok, I'll admit Derby is not
very northern) and spent seven years
in Leeds, which is one of my
favourite cities. I have a BA Hons
in French and linguistics and an MA
in French and francophone culture,
both from Leeds University, and have
spent time living in both the
Parisian suburbs and Nice in the
South of France. My French is very
rusty these days though....
As well as loving all things
French, I love baking, hiking in the
Lake District, Aston Villa (blame my
husband) and am currently training
for the London Royal Parks half
marathon.
Tell us more about the
exchanges you run as part of the MSc
Management programme.
I run two exchange programmes as
part of the MSc Management
programme,
CEMS,
which
is a global network of 27
institutions and over 60 corporate
partners who work together to
deliver the CEMS MSc International
Management programme, and the MiM
Exchange route.
LSE MiM Exchange students spend a
term abroad at one of the School's four
exchange partners during the Michaelmas
term of their second year.
For 2011-12, we have 51 LSE CEMS
students and 11 LSE MiM Exchange
students on the MSc Management
programme. We will be receiving 45
visiting CEMS and MiM Exchange
students during the Michaelmas term
and 18 in the Lent term.
What are the best and worst
presents you have ever received?
The worst would definitely have
to be one of the presents I received
from my great aunt in Ireland over
the years. Or maybe they were the
best.... a crochet beret, American
tan tights, a swimming cap
(head-wear became a theme for a
while).
The best would have to be the Sega
Master System, complete with ‘Alex
Kid: the lost stars’, ‘Wonder Boy in
Monster Land’ and the first Sonic
the Hedgehog game. It came about ten
years after everyone else had one
(we were poor!) and was given to us
by one of my dad’s colleagues but we
were so happy.
What is your earliest
childhood holiday memory?
France, 1986 - my younger sister
and me, in matching tracksuits,
performing Kylie Minogue's 'I should
be so lucky' to a campsite full of
bemused holidaymakers. We used
tennis rackets as guitars, which I'm
not sure was entirely in keeping
with Kylie's own performance.
If a genie granted you three
wishes, what you would ask for?
1. Unlimited money, of course.
2. The ability to speak all
languages in the world fluently.
3. The ability to simply think of a
place and then be transported there.
What was the last thing that
made you laugh out loud?
A joke my husband told me: What
do you call an exploding monkey? A
BA-BOOM. It gets me every time!
What is your favourite drink?
Gin and tonic. |
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 Training
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• Training for staff at LSE
Courses scheduled for the next two weeks include:
- Achieving Good Quality Sleep
- Fire Safety Awareness
- One-to-one IT Training
- Getting to Grips with the Office 2010 Upgrade
- Moodle Next Steps Training
- Moodle Refresher
- Creating a reading list in Moodle
For a full listing of what is available and further details, including
booking information please see
www.lse.ac.uk/training. |
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 Media
bites
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• Guardian
(5 September 2011)
There is a pressing need for credible research into the riots
"A major political debate about the causes of the riots and the
appropriate policy response is under way, but this has been
characterised more by rhetoric than evidence thus far." Professor Tim
Newburn explains the recently launched LSE and Guardian Riots
Study.
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• Independent
(30 August 2011)
Libya leader gives Gaddafi forces surrender deadline
Professor Fawaz Gerges argues that the Algerian regime is making a major
blunder in accepting Gaddafi's wife and children.
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• Guardian
(28 August 2011)
Reforming human rights in Europe
A letter from Professor Francesca Klug states "How refreshing of the
deputy prime minister to call time on hypocrisy. We cannot insist other
regimes comply with international human rights standards while seeking
their extraction from our law."
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