November/December 2013
November Submissions:
WISE awards:
Congratulations to all 11 departments who submitted their Athena
SWAN applications at the end of November. Thank you to all of you
and your SATs for the hard work you have put in!
Congratulations to Anne Young in the Eastman Dental
Institute for her achievements in this years WISE awards.
Anne was highly commended in the WISE Enterprise and
Innovation category.
http://www.wisecampaign.org.uk/about-us/wiseawards/2013-wise-awards
Headlines from Athena SWAN feedback (April submissions):
As you will know, 6 UCL departments applied for Athena SWAN
awards in April this year. PALS renewed their silver award, the
Institute of Ophthalmology, Institute for Women’s Health, Division
of Medicine and Mental Health Sciences received Silver awards, and
the Institute of Neurology received a Bronze award. These
departments have now had feedback from the Athena SWAN
assessment panels. Below are some key points from the feedback
that will be relevant to most SATs. In addition to this information,
SATs were also praised for particular actions or initiatives so please
see their applications on our Athena SWAN website.
HoD letter: Panels liked letters that clearly illustrated a personal
commitment to Athena SWAN. All HoD letters were viewed
positively by the panels.
The self-assessment process: Panels liked to see senior involvement
in the SAT, especially the HoD. The panel liked to see the roles each
SAT member had undertaken. The panel welcomed SATs meeting
with other SWAN departments, and that members had attended
SWAN events within the university and externally.
Departments were praised for staff consultation (surveys, focus
groups etc.) and evidence of staff engagement in SWAN and
awareness of the SAT.
Description of the department: Panels preferred data to be
presented in percentages and raw numbers. The panels welcomed
additional data, for example student destination data and PhD
completion times.
Always discuss issues raised in the data analysis – don’t try to hide
or ignore any problems. Panels appreciate an honest discussion
about data – both positives and negatives.
The panel commented that they liked the way the Division of
Medicine presented their data so please see their application which
is on our Athena SWAN website.
Supporting and advancing women’s careers: Panels liked to see
survey data to evidence improvements in staff opinions, appraisal
completion rates etc.
Panels praised departments who ensured administrative duties with
a heavy workload (e.g. SWAN lead) are rotated every few years.
Workload models should be transparent and fair.
The panel welcomed additional data and information, for example
outputs and grant value by gender and/or RAE and REF data.
Strong actions are needed in response issues identified through the
data – for silver standard; the panel will expect to see appropriate
and proactive actions.
You must show impact of actions for silver!
Action plan: Panels expect to see the SAT take ownership for
actions. Actions should follow on from discussions in the
application, and should clearly be responding to needs identified.
Action plans should not be dominated by ‘monitoring’ actions.
Success measures must be measurable – avoid vague success
measures. The panel commended the PALS action plan, which is
available on the UCL SWAN website.
Reminder - Data feedback event:
I am working with the HR information team to redesign
the Athena SWAN data reports. We are holding a meeting so that we can get feedback from you on what currently is/isn’t working with the SWAN reports, and how
we can improve them. This will include discussing
whether we need to re-structure the SWAN grades, and
how.
Your input would be really useful, so I would be grateful
if you could attend.
The meeting will take place at 14.00 on January 16th in
the South Wing G12 Council Room. Please let me know
if you, or a member of your SAT can come. Tea and Coffee will be provided.
If you or another SAT member are unable to attend,
please send any feedback to me before the event and I’ll
add any issues to an agenda
AcaMedics
AcaMedics is a student-run project encouraging and enabling medical students to get involved with clinical research projects. AcaMedics aims to find projects and
supervisors for students to undertake a short term project to gain an experience of research. A symposium is
held each year for students to present their work.
Please promote this opportunity to medical students,
and encourage staff to contact AcaMedics if they would
like to host a medical student. While this is mainly relevant to Departments in SLMS, I’m aware that there are
research projects in other departments that might be
relevant and of interest to medical students.
AcaMedics have just launched a new website and are
hoping that a SWAN lead might write a post for them,
perhaps on ‘women in clinical research’. Please contact
Linda Mao for more information.
Some ideas
Provost award for Public Engagement: Nominations are
now open until December 20th. Having read a lot of your
applications I know there is a lot of good engagement
and outreach work across our STEM departments – why
not nominate someone involved in these activities if
they meet the criteria.
Call for papers: Newcastle and Durham Universities are
hosting a conference on ‘Women and Change in Higher
Education: cutler and careers’. If any of you are
interested in being involved, please see the conference
poster attached and submit a proposal. The deadline is
10th January.
I hope you all have a lovely Christmas!
Contact
Harriet.jones@ucl.ac.uk
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