School of Health & Wellbeing

Eleanor Grieve and Jim Lewsey report back on another successful Athena Swan induction event for students, and some important work aimed at ensuring diversity in the curriculum.

Our group continues to monitor student numbers, applications, offers, acceptances and degree classifications by gender on an annual basis to allow us to explore gender sensitive issues within the teaching programmes in SHW and to take any appropriate actions to ensure gender equality.

Overall there is a bias towards female representations across courses but little difference in application, offer and acceptance ratios.

The group has initiated an Athena Swan hybrid induction with an attendance of 70 last year. The session introduces SHW and what the university does to promote equality, diversity and inclusion. It included

• an introduction to SHW by Prof Jill Pell;
• an introduction to SHW teaching and Athena Swan by Dr Julie Langan-Martin;
• an overview of the Athena Swan working group by Dr Eleanor Grieve;
• an overview of legal frameworks and UoG Dignity at Work and Study Policy by Dr Sharon Greenwood;

Stéphane Charrier, Student Support Officer for MVLS Postgraduate students, gave a presentation on how Student Support Officers can help students, such as liaising with disability services, financial aid, reporting caring responsibilities, or support if experiencing bullying or harassment. This year, in addition to the speakers above, we were also joined by the Disability and Inclusion Lead for Glasgow University, Dafydd Waters. All students were sent the slides and recordings. Lunch was provided.

For the first time this year, there has been development of some pilot work around diversity in the curriculum. A sub-working group was formed with the involvement of two volunteer students to review some core course materials on the Master of Public Health using a validated tool. A joint report to present to Co/Directors of Education will be produced by end of October 2023. The students have been awarded "Athena Swan: Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Education Champion" on their transcripts, this in itself a new initiative by the group and approved by Senate to recognise and acknowledge the value of students’ contribution to AS.

Eleanor Grieve and Jim Lewsey
Chairs of SHW Athena Swan undergraduate and postgraduate taught student working group  

If you would like to join this Athena Swan group, please contact the group chairs – they'd be delighted to hear from you.

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First published: 23 October 2023