News

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Graduation Photographs

In addition to the normal photographic service offered to graduates and their families at the Summer Graduation Ceremonies, the University Photographic Unit is offering a high quality graduation portrait service in its studio in Arts C109. This service, available during the summer (but not in Graduation week itself) will offer packages of colour prints taken with appropriate background, gown etc.

Please contact either Keith Wilson (ext 2233) or Keith Hunt (ext 8188), who will be pleased to discuss your requirements, show you examples of their work and fix a time for your portrait session.

Students may attend the British Association Festival of Science for free

The MRC is offering a number of bursaries to enable students to attend the Festival of Science in September. These bursaries will provide registration, accommodation, all meals and membership of the BA together with second class rail travel to the BA from any point within the UK.

To apply, candidates should write thirty words (larger entries will be disqualified) as to why they want to attend the Festival and what they think they can out of it. Completed entries to be sent to: Sandra Koura, Festival Manager, British Association, 23 Saville Row, London W1X 2NB.

Rules of application

1. Selection is by competition
2. Students from all disciplines are welcome
3. Entries must be validated with a University stamp
4. Applications can only be accepted from those aged 18 or over; mature students are not excluded
5. All entries must be received by Friday 19 June
6. Those selected will be notified after this date.

Shell Step Scheme

The Shell Step Scheme is a work placement scheme for students in their penultimate year. Step students can undertake a wide range of business-related projects. The projects require students to put theory into practice and to use their own initiative to perform key tasks for the organisation. The projects have to be completed during July and August (8 week placement). The student is paid £130 per week with no tax or NIC applicable and they have to present their finished project on their last day to an invited audience. There is a Sussex winner who goes through to the regional and then hopefully the national finals. Over 1600 students are placed in this way and Sussex has had two winners overall and two finalists over the six years it has been running the scheme. Students interested in applying should contact Patsie Sutcliffe (Project Administrator) in the Sussex Innovation Centre on 704400.

English in the Vacation

Foreign students wishing to improve their knowledge of English language and culture will be able to do so at a new Summer School offered by the School of European Studies to be held for the first time from 3 to 25 September this year.

'English in the Vacation' will complement the International Summer School, Sussex in September and EFL in the Sussex Language Institute. Unlike other short courses available in language schools and universities, it is designed to address the needs of overseas university students specialising in English. Intensive practice in English language will be combined with the interdisciplinary study of modern English literature and society, taught by University faculty. Further information is available from the Director, Professor Laci Lob in EURO.

Robin Lee Poetry Prize Competition

This year's winning entrant for the competition was Catherine Smith (student in CCE) for her poems Kingfisher and Waiting. The runners-up were Linda Chin and Sarah Wardle. The judges also commended Pam Hughes, Charles Marshall, Emily Raabe, Elisabeth Summer and Ann Williams.

KINGFISHER

You split the frozen water with your boot,
disturbed the neat shuttlecock of green and blue
breasting the black. Under the mercury sky

the question quivered between us. Did it freeze
down there, excited by a flicker of fish,
had it pierced the splintered surface, been sucked

into the stiffening stream? You toed it over
and the chestnut-bellied fact of it, the blue
and lucent green of loss smashed home

like the icy shock of drowning. I remembered
when we feathered ourselves up for love.
Today we met in drabber colours, talked clean,

churned fresh mud. It did not change
the freckles on your belly, the piston of your throat,
the way you unpeeled fruit. The sky tore
and peppered us with freezing rain. We sheltered,
sucking our fingertips back to life, ignoring
the flash of iridescence at our feet.

Catherine Smith