Our goals and our work
We pledge to work with students and staff to promote an inclusive culture within the School that celebrates diversity and works towards equity for everyone. This is an ongoing commitment, as we aim to improve continually our ways of working to enable all staff and students to reach their full potential.
Victoria Martin, Director of Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (2019 - 2024), School of Physics & Astronomy
Current Goals
We are always planning for new ways to improve ourselves and EDI within the School. Some main goals we want to achieve in the near future, are the following:
- Decolonising aspects of the taught physics curriculum
- Working towards widening participation
- Seeking to address the ethnic minority attainment gap
- Working towards making JCMB more accessible
- Revision of the promotions process and the workload allocation model
Highlights of our achievements
We support the school, and members of the school, in delivering a number of important improvements:
- Improved approaches during staff and PhD student recruitment based on our understanding of and commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion
- Improved induction processes for new colleagues
- Annual promotions workshop to aid transparency of the process
- A school commitment to extend all fixed-term contracts after a period of extended leave regardless of the funder
- An annual 'Addressing Bullying and Harassment' workshop
- Delivered a menopause coaching session, raising awareness and leading to a new school network
- Created a new Neurodiversity Support Network
- Support the quarterly catch-up of Parent and Carer Network, with new approaches set up to ensure that information is shared widely
- Funded places on the university-wide 'mindfulness' course
- Introduced the Elizabeth Gardner fellowship, aimed at candidates from backgrounds that are under-represented in the school’s academic community
- A new carers' expenses scheme for staff travelling on work-related trips [internal link]
- Delivery of a biannual staff satisfaction survey to monitor our progress and help us understand how we can continue to improve