Dear Friends of the University
I represent the Coffee with a Colleague Initiative, which aims to link up colleagues from, at present, Whiteknights, Henley and London Road campuses for a chat in person or online. Coffee with a Colleague promotes contacts and links across campus, creating informal connections between staff members that otherwise would not exist. We believe a connected University is a strong University.
Coffee with a Colleague ties in with the First Principle of the University strategy which centres around ‘community’. We aim to connect academic, non-academic and research staff as well as PhD students which group we feel could benefit from connecting with the wider university staff.
We have had a pilot and the first two matching rounds with over 150 participants so far, and have had some very good feedback from our participants, such as one who told us “I just wanted to say I went on my first coffee with a colleague last week, and I thoroughly enjoyed it! It’s such a brilliant idea, and the colleague I met was so friendly and interesting to talk to, and we even found a few work interests in common so he’s also now an excellent contact for me to have!“
Please read more in the staff portal article. Future plans include ensuring that staff from estates, cleaning, porters and catering feel empowered to participate, as well as finding connections inside of HBS, leading to adding South Africa and Malaysia to our initiative. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to chat online over a coffee to someone doing the same type of work for our University but in a different country?
Coffee with a Colleague is run by 3 volunteers (we are looking for a 4th to replace someone who moved away from the University) and we have no structural funding. The VC is very supportive of our initiative and kindly found some funding to have the algorithm that does the matching set up and for some coffee vouchers.
We are asking for £150 to donate to the Typography Real Jobs scheme in return for a digital brand we can use as well as a poster design (digital/print suited).
- A digital brand image (logo, consistent formatting) will allow us to become more recognisable and help promote our initiative, which is currently being done through email lists, staff portal and various TEAMS communities as well as individual ambassadorships.
- The poster will become a recognisable reminder which we can distribute and hang up in suitable locations across campus, as well as attach to reminder emails. Some people do better with visual images than with written paragraphs.
- The Typography Real Jobs scheme brings together University of Reading students and clients for personalised work placements.
- Using the Real Jobs scheme is long on time but cheap on money, they ask for donations starting from £100 which go to the Typography Student Fund and from there back to supporting students. It is a win-win-win type of plan.
Kind regards,
Eva van HerelExecutive Administration Officer, School of Humanities, University of Reading
Health and Safety Co-ordinator for the School of Humanities
Lead for ESCoP, the Exec Support Community of Practise
Ambassador for the Coffee with a Colleague initiative (CWAC) Information | Participate
Member Trustee on the URPS Board of Trustees
Edith Morley Building G58, Whiteknights Campus, Reading RG6 6ELeva.vanherel@reading.ac.uk | t: +44 (0)118 378 4952 | http://www.reading.ac.uk/humanities/