Perfect Day – Melissa springs to double gold 15/12/10

A University lecturer taught her rivals a lesson when she picked up two gold medals at the British veterans’ trampolining championship.

You might wonder why Melissa Day, who is only 28, is taking part in a veterans’ event but she explained it was the description given to competition for trampolinists and gymnasts who have stopped competing at international level.

Melissa, who lectures in sports psychology at Chichester University, travelled to the British championships in Lowestoft, Suffolk, with team-mates from the Kingston Trampoline Academy in Surrey. They won team gold - and Melissa took an individual gold.

“I certainly wasn’t expecting to do that well,” she said. “It was a great experience. I don’t compete much these days, I spend more time coaching, and it was nice to be able to show the young people we coach that we still have what it takes to win medals.”

Melissa took up trampolining when she was nine and competed for more than a decade, rising to a standard where she did well at national contests. She is now involved on the sports pyschology side of the England trampolining squad.

And Melissa is already starting to think going back to defend her title at the vets’ championship next year.

“It would be nice to do that, although now I’ve won gold and the team have too, the pressure and expectation will be on us to win again.”

Article reproduced with permission of the Chichester Observer Series, Thursday 9 December 2010.

University academic to feature in BBC documentary on Victorians 10/12/10

A senior history academic at the University of Chichester will feature in the final part of a BBC 2 documentary series by Ian Hislop about the Victorians.

Dr Sue Morgan, Reader in Gender History, will be appearing on The Age of the Do-Gooders at 9pm on Monday 13 December, where the pleasures and perils of booze and sex are the focus for the final episode of Ian Hislop's series about Victorian reformers, campaigners and philanthropists.

Drawing on Sue's specialism in 19th and early 20th century gender history, she will be talking about how the Victorian imagination was challenged, appalled and intrigued by prostitution, as well as how the Contagious Diseases Act worked.

The TV appearance will mark the conclusion of a busy year for Sue – in May, she published her sixth book, a major edited collection entitled Women, Gender and Religious Cultures in Britain, 1800-1940 (Routledge), which was an international collaboration of British, US and Canadian scholars.

It was the publication of this book that led Wingspan Production to approach Sue to advise on the documentary. The series has examined a number of influential Victorian reformers and their attitudes to child welfare, sex and drink, re-evaluating their legacy for the 21st century. Sue's pioneering work on late-Victorian campaigns around prostitution and male sexuality, particularly the flurry of Church and State interventions on the subject during the 1880s and 1890s, formed the basis of the final programme in which Sue will appear.

Sue said: “It was a pleasure to be involved in this series as an advisor and as a talking head. My greatest delight was that a woman reformer, Ellice Hopkins, who led a huge populist movement on ‘social purity' in the 1880s, and who I had rescued from complete obscurity as a PhD student at the University of Bristol in the early 1990s, gets some major air-time in the final programme, where Ian Hislop reads from Hopkins's best-selling 1883 essay True Manliness. That was the most exciting and moving moment for me in the whole thing.”

National recognition for University staff 09/12/10

Two members of staff from the University of Chichester have received national awards, recognising their contributions above and beyond their normal roles.

Gianna Knowles, senior lecturer in primary education, picked up the top prize for her photography skills in the British Council's 2010 Erasmus Competition. As part of the Erasmus international exchange programme available to University staff and students, Gianna spent four weeks in April teaching trainees teachers from across Europe and America at the University of Jönköping, Sweden.

In her free time, she travelled around Scandinavia by train, including travelling to the Arctic Circle. The portfolio of prize-winning photographs was compiled from pictures taken while travelling and living the day-to-day life of a Swedish university lecturer and sought to illustrate the benefits of taking part in the exchange programme.

Gianna received her prize in a ceremony at the British Council offices in London alongside prize winners in a range of categories from other universities across the UK.

Gianna said: “I would urge anyone who has the chance to take part in the scheme to do so. Not only did it give me the opportunity to teach in a different University and work with students and colleagues from many countries, but it also broadened my knowledge and understanding about education generally.”

Venetia Allan, senior lecturer in music, has been honoured by the Noise Abatement Society for her voluntary work to raise awareness of noise induced hearing loss due to MP3 player misuse.

She received the Trude Adler Award for her work in developing the UK's first Key Stage 3 curriculum to help the Society to educate young people about safe listening and hearing health. She also worked with Chichester District Council this year to organise an awareness event at the University, spreading the message to an older audience. Venetia was presented with her award at a ceremony at the House of Commons.

Venetia said: “I am surprised and flattered by the award from the Noise Abatement Society - this is a very worthwhile campaign and it has been a pleasure to be involved with such a dedicated team of people.

“I hope that the award will help to get the message of the campaign out there - that it is a positive thing for young people to love their ears! Through the adoption of the curriculum programme by schools, I hope that we can let as many people as possible find out about safe listening times and levels for personal music players.”

To find out more about the Noise Abatement Society, visit http://www.noiseabatementsociety.com/.