A year of progress within Brain Sciences

Looking back at what we have achieved together over the past year, we have made significant progress advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion within the Faculty of Brain Sciences, particularly considering that we have been working through a global pandemic. The initiatives and work described below are merely the tip of the iceberg of the enormous amount of work that has gone to progressing our vision of Brain Sciences being a great place to work and study, where all members of our community belong and achieve their potential.

Supportive governance:

EDI Leadership: Equity Leads covering gender, race, disability, LGBT+, and religion and belief have spent the past year understanding their focused areas, and regularly collaborate to ensure our equity work is intersectional. Directors of EDI and Inclusion Leads within each Institute/Division have taken a proactive leadership role to ensure work conducted at Faculty/UCL-level is effectively implemented within their departments.

EDI Partnership: The EDI Team has worked in partnership with the Faculty HR Network to ensure our policies and practices are developed effectively in collaboration.

Inclusive culture:

Kitchen catch-up: For the past few months, colleagues across the Faculty have been meeting over a coffee for a 15 minute catch-up. One member of staff said: “I really enjoyed meeting my match (and in fact we are hoping to meet up in person when we are on campus a bit more regularly); it’s a great initiative to meet someone I would most probably never have met otherwise”.

Carers support scheme: With schools and offices closed, many of us have experienced immense difficulty trying to maintain normal, healthy working habits. To mitigate the impacts for staff with caring responsibilities, UCL set up a carers fund. However, we recognised that between the high costs of childcare, and high demands of completing a PhD or Professional Doctorate, continuing working during COVID-19 has been particularly challenging for our PGR students. To support them through this difficult time, the Faculty of Brain Sciences allocated £7,500 towards alleviating the pressures of caring responsibilities. 11 applications were successfully granted funding towards childcare costs, learning resources and travel costs to caring duties. One PhD student said of the scheme, “I am grateful for the help FBS has offered – both financial and pastoral – during this challenging period.”

LGBTQ+ network: our LGBTQ+ Equity Lead, Carolyn McGettigan, established the Faculty’s LGBTQ+ staff and research student network, opening the conversation on key areas to progress inclusion, from raising visibility of our LGBTQ+ community, hosting social events, organising training and workshops.

Educated community:

Race equity: Our staff have a serious interest in learning more about equality issues. Through a series of training workshops on racial bias, 228 members of staff have engaged in discussing topics such as whiteness and white fragility and debunked myths on the concepts of race. One attendee said of the training: “A really engaging thought-provoking session. I liked that we unpacked so much and there were honest but kind and respectful conversations.”

Cultural awareness: Workshops on intercultural competence later this July aim to improve communication and understanding between our staff, to enable cohesion and collaboration between our diverse staff groups.

PS&T mentoring scheme: the Faculty relaunched the professional services and technical staff mentoring scheme, to support staff with unclear career pipelines. 40 staff were successfully matched, and professionally trained in mentoring by an external mentoring consultant.

Data-driven actions:

Surveys and focus groups conducted throughout the year have covered issues such as career progression, recruitment practices, and bullying and harassment, so that our EDI strategies and priorities are well-informed and meet the needs of our staff and students. 880 staff in the Faculty completed the general staff survey, providing us with a meaningful dataset to guide our actions for the next academic year.

Athena SWAN success:

Three of our departments, IoN, IoO and PaLS, have now successfully achieved Silver Athena SWAN awards, recognising their significant impact in advancing gender equity. IoPD submitted their application for Bronze, setting them on the path to progress meaningful change. We hope to continue this successful streak when EI and DoP apply in the next academic year.

Thank you to everyone for contributing towards driving change within the Faculty. We’re looking forward to making further progress in the next academic year.

 

Anna, Vice Dean (EDI)

Ciara, Athena SWAN Coordinator