School of Health & Wellbeing

What’s been happening to promote equality and diversity in IHW this month? Our AS Champion Professor Cindy Gray provides a quick overview.

Promotion of equality and diversity in IHW in 2020/2021 will continue to focus on supporting staff and students during the ongoing issues presented by COVID-19.

In their annual reports, the ten Athena Swan working groups highlighted a number of priorities for the coming year. These included supporting ECR career progression in the face of the pandemic, improving consistency in the P&DR process, supporting staff with caring responsibilities and promoting flexibility for professional services staff. 

We have conducted two extensive consultations with staff about their experiences of P&DR and the impact of COVID-19 on their working lives. The results will be published in HAWKEYE next month, but we have already planned/implemented a number of activities to address issues raised in the COVID-19 consultation:

• You complained about Zoom fatigue
  We developed a  addressing particular issues raised
• You raised concerns about coming back to campus 
  We implemented a light-touch IHW annual review to include supportive discussion of returning to offices
• You raised complaints about the process of applying for PhD extensions
  We fed these back to MVLS Graduate School
• You called for more communication around COVID-19
  IHW is holding a COVID-19 Town Hall Meeting on Tuesday 06 October from 12 noon to 1 pm. Please submit any questions via our online suggestions/questions box by noon on Monday 05 October

Feeling supported is even more important as we work remotely and no longer have the opportunity to chat to colleagues informally in the office, kitchen and corridors. Please do take advantage of the IHW mentoring schemes, which continue online during the pandemic. Mentors are available to support academic and professional services staff, as well as PGR students. More information can be found on these webpages:

• Mentorship for IHW research and teaching staff
• Mentorship for IHW professional services staff
• Mentorship for IHW postgraduate research students

Finally, the IHW Athena Swan webpages have been revamped and will be going live shortly.

To find out more about what we do, please visit our current Athena SWAN webpages. If you would like to get involved, please email cindy.gray@glasgow.ac.uk or breda.cullen@glasgow.ac.uk.

Professor Cindy Gray
Athena SWAN Champion
Institute of Health and Wellbeing

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First published: 1 May 2018