People

Local Government

Professor of Land Economy and Head of Department, Malcolm Grant, has been appointed Chairman of the Local Government Commission.

Local Government Minister David Curry said: "Professor Malcolm Grant, the current Deputy Chairman of the Local Government Commission for England, has been appointed Chairman of the Commission with effect from 1 July 1996."

Professor Grant has been a member of the Commission since 1992 and is currently the Deputy Chairman. His three-year appointment will ensure that experience is retained at the Commission as its workload shifts to its statutory responsibilities on electoral reviews.

Top Architect joins EM

Michael Bienias joined EM in July as Deputy Director, having previously held the position of Chief Architect for Cambridge City Council. Michael's last claim to fame is the Park and Ride Scheme on Madingley Road, the first specially designed site in Cambridge and one of the few in the whole country to have benefited from the architect's touch! Although Michael trained in Oxford, his origins are very definitely in Cambridge and, apart from his University days, he has lived in the county for most of his life. His designs for the city include a variety of individual private buildings and urban developments such as the Histon Road Allotments, Housing and community Centre development. As well as enjoying sailing and the odd pint of beer in The Eagle, Michael has also found time to design and build his own house in Dry Drayton and raise a family. He is looking forward to bringing his understanding of strategic planning issues and architectural development to his new job, and hopes to develop an open and consultative approach to his new EM life.

Chaplain Chap

According to the best estimate, there are about 6,500 people working in and for the University who do not have a link to a college. These include the assistant staff, technicians, and some of the administrators, post-doctoral researchers and teaching officers. Until now they have not had the same access to a chaplain as students and those who have a college. The Reverend Jeremy Clark-King, assistant priest of Great St Mary's - the University Church - has been appointed to be chaplain for all these people. He has already visited half of the University's 118 departments and "greatly enjoys finding out what people are working on in the vast array of projects and research work going on in the departments".

He is available to talk, in confidence, with anyone of any faith or none. Based at Great St Mary's, Jeremy can be contacted there by UMS or by phone on 350914 or by email at jc223@cam.ac.uk.

Signing Support

Paget Gorman Signed Speech is used by many speech and language-impaired children, their parents, teachers, speech therapists and care staff. It's a grammatical sign system which reflects normal patterns of English and aims to encourage speech, so signing is accompanied by spoken words.

The Paget Gorman Society's main resource is a manual which has been edited in Cambridge since the 1970's firstly by Dr Robin Anderson (Computer Laboratory) and latterly by Mr Richard Stibbs. It includes over 4,000 signs, giving access to the meaning of nearly 56,000 words.

Richard Stibbs, Head of User Services at the University Computing Service, whose profoundly deaf son used Paget to great effect in infancy, has been Honorary Treasurer and editor of the manual for many years.

Richard raises money annually with a bedding plant sale. He grows a wide range of plants and they include a colourful range of marigolds, nicotiana, sweet peas and snapdragons, as well as a range of tomato plants. This year, he sold £216 worth of plants to friends and colleagues around the University.

Paget Gorman Signed Speech was originated by Sir Richard Paget in the 1930s, and developed by Grace Paget and Dr Pierre Gorman, lately Fellow of Corpus Christi and now University of Melbourne. The system can be used at whatever language level is considered appropriate. Simple one or two-sign structures can be expanded to make complete sentences in which grammatical features are indicated quickly and simply by standardised gestures.

Anatomy Abroad

A team from the Anatomy Department have taken Barcelona by storm. At the invitation of the Spanish Association of Anatomists, the core team responsible for both technical and teaching aspects of the Human Dissecting Room facility in the Department, played the major role in an international symposium. Entitled 'The Modern Dissection Room Facility', the Cambridge group acted as the international role model.

All Spanish medical school anatomy departments were represented and the Cambridge team gave eight invited presentations. Following the symposium the Spanish are hoping to pass the Act of Barcelona 1996 concerned with the legal side of anatomical bequests. The technicians involved were Bari Logan, Carmen Bester, Lynette Nearn and Martin Watson, all of the Anatomy Department.