All Hands on DEC - Summer 2008
- Visitors flock to the 16th annual Festival of Design & Innovation
- BU helps to make Clearing clearer
- Cream of design crop head to New Designers
- BU Annual Careers Advisers & Teachers Convention
- DEC at Imagineering
- BU secures prestigious funding grant from HEFCE
- Virtual Manufacturing Group win award at ET08
- Report back from Laurence Tratt, Software Systems Research Centre
- How to submit future stories
- Next Newsletter
Visitors flock to the 16th annual Festival of Design & Innovation
On Thursday 26 June, a year's worth of planning and hard work came together at the opening night of the Festival of Design & Innovation 2008.
Guests from both BU and industry, along with the Mayor and Sheriff of Poole attended the opening night. Guests were entertained with speeches from Professor Geoff Kirk, President of the Institution of Engineering Designers, and Phil Robinson, a BU design graduate who invented the Biologic ZorinPump, and co-authored Inventing for Dummies. Following the speeches the guests were able to view the innovative designs produced by the 170 students displaying at the show.
The four-day event attracted in excess of 1000 visitors, and received a lot of positive feedback. Many returning visitors felt that is was the best Festival so far, and were impressed by the range of innovative designs on display. Mayor of Bournemouth Councillor Stephen Chappell commented: "All the work was of a very high standard, and we hope that the patents applied for are successful and that the various products obtain a manufacturer and will soon be on the market."
Six of the designs featured at the show are in the commercialisation process, and we await news of their progress. In the meantime, as preparations for next year's Festival begin, we are sure to hear more success stories from our design graduates as they embark on their careers.
Well done to everyone involved in making this year's Festival such a success.
If you have not visited the Festival website already take a look at www.festival.bournemouth.ac.uk to date we have exceeded 6000 visits to the site!
Click on an image below to visit the Festival Gallery section
BU helps to make Clearing clearer
During July BU's plans for marketing and PR for Clearing were announced. The concept of the Clearing marketing and PR campaign will be 'Unclear about Clearing,' which will raise awareness of BU and also promote us as an advice centre.
A wide variety of media will be used to advertise BU during Clearing including local radio, press, bus, train station, Adshel and online adverts covering several regions. The adverts will be positioned in areas that BU has received the most applications from in the past three years, as well as Partner College regions. This activity will be supported by a PR plan, which will help to extend and maximise BU's media coverage during Clearing. Clearing will also be flagged up on the BU website (the homepage, Future Students section and the Course Search). Supporting icons will also be added to each course stating "Clearing 2008."
If you would like to view the marketing and PR plans for Clearing please email Emma Bennett.
Cream of design crop head to New Designers
Many of the best designs on display at this year's Festival of Design & Innovation were chosen to represent BU at the 'New Designers' event. The event, which ran from 9 to 13 July is "the foremost event in graduate design."
Students from Interior Design, Industrial Design, Product Design and Computer Aided Product Design displayed their final year projects at the prestigious event, which was held at the Business Design Centre, Islington.
Over 4,000 students displayed at the event, which attracted in excess of 18,000 visitors. New Designers provided a fantastic opportunity for our students to network with other students, potential employers and key figures in the design community.
BU Annual Careers Advisers & Teachers Convention
On 2 July BU welcomed 55 careers advisers and teachers to the Talbot Campus to take part in the annual Careers Advisers & Teachers Convention. The delegates enjoyed a busy day including the chance to attend subject area seminars, including seminars on Psychology, Creative Technology and Design at BU.
The keynote speech was delivered by Alan Bullock, Head of Guidance at Havant College . This was followed by a lunch exhibition in the Student Centre, where delegates were able to obtain more information about each course and academic school. In the afternoon, delegates had fun in a 'speed dating' session, where they got the chance to quiz academics.
DEC at Imagineering
From 28 to 31 May, DEC was represented at the Imagineering event in Shepton Mallett. Imagineering is an education charity which encourages young people to pursue careers in engineering and related areas, through involvement in fun activities.
The Imagineering event took place within the Bath & West Show, and gave us the opportunity to meet with thousands of potential students. The School Marketing Team was supported at the event by Chris Glasspool, Mehran Koohgilani, Nigel Garland, Tim Orman and Darrell Gibson.
Despite adverse weather conditions, over 21,000 people visited Imagineering.
BU secures prestigious funding grant from HEFCE
Christine Keenan, in partnership with colleagues at Nottingham Trent University and the University of Bradford , has been successful in securing a three year funding grant of £199,000, under a new grant programme to "evaluate institutional practice relating to student retention".
The funding will build on the complementary work already being carried out between the partners in their research into First Year Experience with a particular focus on transition to HE, induction processes and successful retention models. BU and the University of Bradford are also currently working on a one year evaluation project funded by the Higher Education Academy under their research observatory funding conducting an "evaluation of systematic support provided for students during their transition and induction to HE." Christine has also set up the First Year Experience special interest group within the Learnhigher Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning.
Virtual Manufacturing Group win award at ET08
The Virtual Manufacturing Group within DEC have received much International recognition over the past few years, including a prestigious award at the ET08 conference in Orlando attended by 3000 delegates. The Group won the Best Paper award at the conference for their manuscript entitled "Control of Asymmetric Recrystallization in Single - and Multi-hole Die Extrusion".
The Group was selected to win the award by a committee made up from members of the largest Aluminium Extruder companies in the USA. The conference which takes place every four years has been running since 1968.
Report back from Laurence Tratt, Software Systems Research Centre
In June Laurence Tratt was an invited panellist at the international Code Generation conference in Cambridge, speaking on "Flexibility in code generation".
An article "VIDE: supporting model driven architecture" by Jon Vincent from the Software Systems Research Centre was recently published in the European eStrategies Projects magazine. The VIDE project, funded by the European Commission to the tune of 236675 Euros commenced in June 2006, and has now gone through two successful reviews at the European Commission in Brussels.
Melanie Coles, Sherry Jeary, Keith Phalp, and Jon Vincent organised a workshop on Business Support and MDA (MDABIZ) as part of the international TOOLS conference held in Zurich this summer. The themes of this workshop reflected the group's expertise in 'upstream' software development, and members of the workshop team also presented work on a flexible and accessible model driven toolset, which forms part of the VIDE project.
In July Laurence Tratt was an invited speaker at the Dynamic Languages Symposium in Paphos speaking on programming language design. The DLS is the premier world event for dynamic languages and Laurence's invitation is recognition of his role as the designer of the innovative Converge programming language.
How to submit future stories
If you have a story you would like included in the next issue of "all hands on DEC" please send it to Emma Bennett . Each month the next deadline will be found at the bottom of the newsletter and a document can be found in the 'I drive' (I:\DEC\Private\Marketing\All Hands on DEC) with all copy/story deadlines for the rest of the year.
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Next Newsletter
Story deadline is: 17 September 2008
Newsletter will be sent out: 31 September 2008
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