School of Built Environment retains Athena SWAN Silver Award

Thursday, 10 May 2018

The School of Built Environment (SBE) has successfully renewed its Athena SWAN Silver Award.

It originally won the award in 2009, and successfully renewed it in 2013.

Athena SWAN awards recognise the advancement of gender equality in higher education and are given by the Equality Challenge Unit. Until 2015, the award covered only the STEMM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine), but has since expanded to include arts, humanities, social sciences, business and law departments.

For SBE, the award renewal process was led by Dr Maria Vahdati and Dr Eugene Mohareb, as the School’s co-directors of Diversity and Inclusion. 

The renewal process required substantial effort, including completing a self-assessment document that reflected on the progress made against the previous action plan and setting out new initiatives and activities for the next four years. The submission also included an analysis of data to identify the real impact of the actions, and surveys of staff and students on how well the changes had worked so far.

Maria and Eugene said, “The renewal process gave us an important opportunity to engage and work with colleagues from across the University to investigate what Athena SWAN aspires to do. As well, we received excellent feedback from our students, which was valuable in setting our action plan. It was fantastic to see the enthusiasm of all involved to make our school a fairer place for everyone.

“We know that diverse institutions are more successful and innovative, and individual successes comes from supporting and inclusive working environments.”

Professor Chris Harty, Head of SBE, said, “The Athena SWAN award is a real achievement for the School, and congratulations are due to all of the colleagues who worked extremely hard on the submission. More importantly, the award reflects what we consistently do as a school, not just how well we can write an application.  We should be very proud of ourselves”.

The renewal of SBE’s award means that six of the University’s seven STEMM schools hold an Athena SWAN award. The School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences (SMPCS) and School of Archaeology, Geography and Environmental Science (SAGES) also hold a Silver Award. The School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences (SPCLS), School of Biological Sciences (SBS) and School of Chemistry, Food and Pharmacy (SCFP) hold a Bronze Award.

At University level, we hold an Athena SWAN Bronze Award, and we are working towards submission for a Silver Award in 2019.