International Women's Day 2019
International Women's Day 2019 celebrated the achievements of women across the university in teaching, research, professional services and student roles, with a spotlight session highlighting inspirational stories from students and staff. We explored how the university has supported greater gender equality through initiatives such as the AdvanceHE Aurora Leadership Programme. The programme also explored the gender pay gap and we heard from colleagues at Swansea University on how a panel of senior women supporting institution decisions has helped to close their institution pay gap.
In the afternoon our keynote speaker Dr Maren Deepwell, Chief Executive of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) presented a session on her own experience of working in educational technology. Following Dr Deepwell's session Deborah Halliday, final-year Geography student at the university talked about the importance of women working in the rural sector and her own interests and experiences in this area. We ended the day with an inspirational story from Anna-Wendy Stevenson, Lews Castle College UHI. As a recent winner of Hands up for Trad music tutor of the year award, Anna-Wendy talked about how music has inspired her teaching career and provided us with the opportunity to listen to her music.
Session outlines
Session outlines
Opening the programme: Dr Su Engstrand, interim dean of the faculty of science, health and engineering.
In this session, Su will describe how her education and career in science in academia has influenced her thoughts on how we can make our University inclusive. Starting with the question, ‘ how well are we doing at UHI?’, Su will explain why she is optimistic about the future of UHI in offering opportunities for all. With a physicist as her mother, Su felt she was encouraged to explore science as a career from an early age and went on to study Biology. Su’s interests are in behavioural ecology, understanding the way that genes and environments shape animal behaviour. In her PhD, she studied incubation in birds, in species where the female takes sole responsibility for keeping the eggs warm throughout the developmental period. This led her to question the role of biology, culture and conscious action in determining gender based differences in behaviour in humans. Since having her two boys in 2002 and 2004, she has juggled lecturing at UHI, as Module, Programme then Subject Network Leader with raising a family and shares her thoughts on how making small changes in our behaviour at work which can make life easier for everyone with commitments outside of work. She will describe how opportunities such as the Aurora programme have given her the space and tools to reflect on her own behaviour and ends by challenging us all to think about how we can make the University of the Highlands and Islands a truly inclusive institution.
Session recording | Presenter bios
Keynote: Athena Swan and Swansea University: Tackling the Gender Pay Gap Professor Diane Kelly and Professor Joy Merrell, Swansea University
Session recording | Presenter bios
Promoting equality: from professional practice and organisational culture to personal commitment
Equality is for everyone. Promoting equality in a distributed organisation is likewise a shared undertaking, one that everyone plays a part in. In this talk we want to share our perspective focused on three key issues:
- equality as a challenge for Learning Technology professionals, for which we will share insights from ALT’s Annual Survey as well as the CMALT accreditation scheme, charting the development of professional practice and outlook;
- equality as a key value in organisational culture, where we will discuss ALT’s approach to working as a distributed organisation and our own experience of putting our open leadership into practice in a series of monthly blog posts;
- equality as a personal commitment, focused on our participation in the #femedtech network as volunteer curators and how this informs our professional practice.
Session recording | Presenter bios
Hearing from our Aurorans
Session recording | Presenter bios
Women working in the rural sector, Deborah Halliday
In this session Deborah, a fourth-year Geography student will talk about her passion for the Scottish Highlands and her experience of work placements in the rural sector. Deborah will also talk about Women in Wellies, designed to promote the idea of entering the rural career sector to young women and explore with you why rural careers are important for women.
Staff inspiration story: Music and teaching, Anna-Wendy Stevenson
My session will be a musically illustrated talk – where I will cover my own musical journey and the discovery of my purpose in music education. The opportunities to connect with the LTA, Aurora and Alpine programmes have enabled me to reflect on my role as Programme Leader for BA Applied Music, musician and mentor. I have come to understand that the challenge of leadership from a perceived place of periphery has afforded the most stimulating and rewarding opportunity to develop my purpose through creating, supporting and leading new curriculum across the region. I am delighted to be accompanied by BA Applied Music 3rd year student Andrew Herrington, nominated in the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards 2018.
Presenter biographies
Presenter biographies
Maren Deepwell and Martin Hawksey
Maren Deepwell @marendeepwell is chief executive of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) and leads its work on professional recognition and development. Martin Hawksey @mhawksey leads on innovation, community engagement and technology for ALT. ALT membership includes practitioners, researchers and policy makers with an interest in Learning Technology.
As the senior staff team of ALT Maren & Martin work with Trustee and Members on a diverse range of projects including ALT’s conferences, annual survey, national policy development and professional development. Sharing their approach to open leadership is a monthly blog series on running a virtual organisation and both actively disseminate their independent professional via their personal sites https://mashe.hawksey.info/ and http://marendeepwell.com/ .
Professor Joy Merrell
After a successful clinical career as a general nurse and a health visitor, Joy moved into Higher Education in 1989 as a lecturer in health visiting at the University of Manchester. In 1998 she came to Swansea University and was appointed to a Chair in Nursing in 2003. Joy has had a long standing interest in women’s health issues dating back to her Masters and PhD work in community well woman clinics. She teaches on the specialist community public health nursing programmes, developed and is programme director for the BSc (Hons)/Grad diploma course in General Practice Nursing.
Since 2012 Joy has been actively involved with Athena SWAN. She successfully led the College of Human and Health Sciences Athena SWAN self-assessment team to achieve a bronze award in April 2013 (the first Athena SWAN College award at Swansea University) and a silver award in April 2017. She was appointed Chair of the University Athena SWAN self-assessment team in January 2015 and led the successful submission for a University silver award in 2017. She serves as a member of the University Equalities committee and University Council. She acts as a mentor and peer reviewer to other Colleges and departments within the University seeking to gain Athena SWAN awards. Externally she acts as a critical friend to universities and departments submitting for an Athena SWAN award and is a reviewer for Advance HE assessing Athena SWAN submissions.
Professor Diane Kelly
Diane began her career in London as an undergraduate and then undertook a PhD, as a joint project between Imperial Cancer Research Fund and Swansea University. After post-doctoral positions at Sheffield University and The Wolfson Institute of Biotechnology she moved to Aberystwyth University and then came full circle to Swansea University as Reader and then Professor in the newly formed Swansea Clinical School, now the Medical School, in 2004. She is a member of the BBSRC pool of experts and Natural Products (NPRONET, NIBB) board member and has recently been elected as a Fellow to the Learned Society of Wales.
Throughout her career Diane has always been passionate about equality both in and out of the work place. Diane had the privilege of being a member of the first University committee to gain an Athena SWAN Bronze award. Since then she has chaired the University Athena SWAN committee for the successful Bronze Award renewal in 2012 and continued as a member of the University SAT which worked towards the successful silver award. (2017) Diane chairs the Medical School’s SAT, the School was awarded Bronze in 2014 and Silver in 2016. She is a founding member of the University Athena SWAN Strategy group and chairs and sits on UK Athena SWAN assessment panels at ECU. Diane also acts as a critical friend to other departments within her own and other Institutions preparing their submissions and mentors the University Race Equality Committee chair as the University works towards the Race Equality Charter mark.
Dr Sue Engstrand, Subject Network Leader, Science, technology and the environment, University of the Highlands and Islands
Sue Engstrand is interim Dean of the Faculty of Science, Health and Engineering. She moved from her post as Subject Network Leader for Science, Technology and the Environment at UHI, where she has led developments to expand our curriculum offering in the fast moving discipline of computing. She also represents the University with the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance and the Digital Skills Partnership. Her current research interests are in inter-professional education, and has been involved in developing an integrated approach to teaching and learning across our land based programmes, with initiatives such as the Integrated Land Use Conference .
Sue studied Biology at the University of Oxford and has a PhD in ecological energetics and behaviour from the University of Stirling. She has worked with conservation agencies and for 9 years as a Senior Teaching Fellow in the School of Biology at St Andrews University. Sue achieved Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy through the university’s ALPINE scheme in 2017. She is a graduate of the Leadership Foundation’s Aurora programme for female leaders in academia.
Deborah Halliday
Deborah Halliday is a fourth-year Geography student studying at the University of the Highlands and Islands. Deborah's interests involve hill walking, camping and cycling. Deborah enjoys being outdoors and hopes to achieve a job in the rural sector regarding environmental conservation. In Particular, Deborah intends to become more involved in land, woodland and deer management. In addition to her environmental interests Deborah also enjoys learning languages.
Anna-Wendy Stevenson
Anna-Wendy Stevenson is the Programme Leader for the innovative BA (Hons) Applied Music degree and lecturer on the MA Music and the Environment with the University of the Highlands and Islands. A fiddler, composer and recording artist, she has performed and delivered workshops in traditional Scottish music world-wide and curated and directed events for a wide range of organisations, communities, media groups and festivals in the UK, Canada, USA, Australia and Europe. From her base in the Outer Hebrides, Anna-Wendy leads community engagement activities, developing local, national and international partnerships to facilitate learning opportunities for musicians whilst promoting Scottish and Gaelic music. Anna-Wendy is a graduate of the Extend Leadership Programme, led by Engage Arts for educators in the cultural sector and is senior fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Anna-Wendy is also a mentor through the university mentoring scheme and has just completed the Aurora Leadership Programme. Anna-Wendy is winner of the 2018 MG Alba Scots Trad Music Tutor of the Year.