School of Chemistry Focus of Department STEMM Date of Application November 2017 Award Level Silver Institution Athena Date: November 2014 Level: SWAN Award Bronze
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Department Application Bronze and Silver Award Name of institution The University of Manchester Department School of Chemistry Focus of department STEMM Date of application November 2017 Award Level Silver Institution Athena Date: November 2014 Level: SWAN award Bronze Contact for application Prof Eric McInnes Must be based in the department Email [email protected] Telephone 0161 275 4469 Departmental website http://www.chemistry.manchester.ac.uk 2 1. LETTER OF ENDORSEMENT FROM THE HEAD OF DEPARTMENT Professor R. E. P. Winpenny School of Chemistry The University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester M13 9PL +44(0)161 275 4654 [email protected] 27th November 2017 I am delighted to give the full and unequivocal support of the School Management Team and all our staff to this application to renew our Athena SWAN Silver Departmental Award. We have an excellent working group that meets regularly to discuss progress and this has raised awareness of issues. More importantly, we have made real progress in addressing equality and diversity issues since our Silver Award in 2013, and that progress is very clear from the excellent application our SAT team has written. We are strongly committed to equality and diversity because it is the right thing to do: we all want to work in an environment that is as open, fair and friendly as possible. I have been very proud of what the School has achieved in the last few years. We are now in the top five in Europe for research (as measured by the Nature index) and in the top six in the UK for undergraduate education (as measured by the Guardian). The School has also continued to advance the equality and diversity agenda, as measured by the increase of female academic staff, which I think we can connect directly to decisions our management team have taken. We have greatly increased our financial commitment to this agenda, including refurbishment of social space, and to fund progressive policies regarding, for example, maternity cover for academic staff, staff training, and career development for researchers. We believe we are already seeing the benefits of this investment. As can clearly be seen from the document Prof McInnes and the SAT has prepared, in many areas the School out performs Athena SWAN Gold Chemistry departments such as Imperial College. It is very striking that “new” initiatives elsewhere are so embedded in our culture as a School that they no longer are even debated. For example, we are passionate about restricting events to core hours so that all staff with caring responsibilities can attend. A more recent change is to insist that we always have female candidates on the shortlist for academic positions; this change was made after a selection panel, chaired by a female professor, produced an all-male shortlist. I am very proud of what we have achieved in making a university career family friendly. I am also very proud of the application our SAT team has prepared, and can confirm that the information presented in the application (including qualitative and quantitative 3 data) is an honest, accurate and true representation of the School. We have not over- interpreted statistics and have not made any unjustifiable claims. Considering other Chemistry departments that have Gold status, we believe we are well placed to achieve that award in the near future, if the application is assessed based on the data we have included. Prof Richard Winpenny Head of School of Chemistry Word count 457 4 2. DESCRIPTION OF THE DEPARTMENT The School of Chemistry (SoC) is one of the largest in the UK; with 76 academic staff, 73 PSS, 12 independent research fellows (RFs), ≈140 Researchers, ≈340 postgraduate (PG) students, and >720 undergraduate (UG) students. We are also one of the highest ranked in teaching and in research. The ethos of our School is that we thrive through professional pride in the quality of what we do and the collegiate way in which we do it. Our commitment to the wellbeing of our staff stems not because it makes us a better chemistry department (which it does) but because we find it inconceivable that people wouldn’t want to work in as fair, open and friendly an environment as possible. The central role of Equality & Diversity (E&D) in School policies, and the manner in which staff and students are consulted and involved in decision- making processes, are described below. Our Athena SWAN Silver Award is displayed prominently in our entrance foyer and the logo is used extensively throughout the School, website (above), notepaper, email signatures, presentations and job adverts. Our staff and PG students are split across three sites on University campus: the Chemistry Building, the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (MIB) and the Photon Science Institute (PSI). Most UG teaching takes place in the Chemistry Building. Academic staff are organized into 7 sections: Analytical, Measurements and Physical; Computational & Theoretical; Chemical Biology & Biological Chemistry; Inorganic; Materials; Organic; Teaching & Scholarship. Equality of teaching and research is written explicitly into our workload model, with Teaching & Research (T&R) and Teaching & Scholarship (T&S) career paths up to Professorial level. In teaching, we consistently achieve mid-90s% in NSS returns, the 2018 Guardian University Guide ranks us in the top 6 in the UK, and staff have won international awards, e.g. for development of Massively Open Online Courses. In research, the 2017 Nature Index put us in the top five in Europe, and the 2017 QS World University Ranking places us as one of only 4 UK chemistry departments in the world’s top 40. We have a strongly collaborative and supportive ethos, reflected in almost half of all grants having multiple investigators, and the very high (and gender balanced) percentages of T&R staff that hold significant grants and that were returned in REF2014. We are a metropolitan university that sits proudly in the heart of the city and are committed to our local community with extensive outreach and widening participation schemes (reaching ca. 14000 school children per annum). 5 A snapshot of the School: Figure 1: Student data. • We have 42% female(F) UG, 67%F PGT and 41%F PGR (42%F PhD) students (Fig. 1). This is at the Chemistry national average for UGs, ≈15% above average for PGT, and 2% above average for PGRs. Figure 2: Academic and research staff data. [Note that, throughout this document, we separate data for RFs - who are expected to take, or already hold, a permanent academic position - from “Researchers” that include PDRAs, EC Marie Curie or Royal Society Newton Fellows.] 6 • We have 36%F Researchers (Fig. 2): well above the national (and Russell Group) average of 31%F (Cost Centre 113 - Chemistry data; based on Full Person Equivalents). This can be compared to Athena SWAN Gold chemistry departments (2014 data, as reported in York 2015 Gold submission): York 41%, Imperial College 29%. • We have 15%F Professors: well above the Russell Group average of 11%. • Collating the data in Figure 2 such that we can compare against data given by York and Imperial (in their most recent submissions), we have: 15%F Profs, 7%F Reader/SL/SRF, 27%F Lecturer/RF. York have higher %F other than at Prof (13, 33, 44%, respectively; well ahead of average), and we are similar to Imperial (12, 10, 27%). Figure 3: Distribution of academic grade within gender groups. • Women are just as likely to hold senior roles as men (Fig. 3): 55% of F academics, cf. 52% of M, are Professors, and 9 and 17%, respectively, are Readers (these were equal until a recent F promotion to Professor). This is despite a historical gender bias in appointments that means that the average man has been in post longer than the average woman. All female staff appointed prior to 2016 hold promoted positions. The absence of female SLs is because women have been promoted direct to Readerships. • 36% of F, and 13% of M, academics are Lecturers (Fig. 3). This reflects advances towards gender parity in appointments in recent years. The % of Lecturers that are female has increased from 14 to 36% in the last 4 years, through appointments and promotions. 37% of academic/RF appointments since 2013 have been female. 7 Figure 4: PSS staff by gender. Figure 5: Distribution of PSS grades within gender groups. • We have 42%F PSS overall (Fig. 4). There is a very similar distribution of Grades across both genders (Fig. 5), with almost equal numbers of women and men at the highest Grades 7-9. • Amongst PSS, Technical/EO/IT roles are male dominated (75%M), while Clerical/Admin/Managerial roles are female dominated (65%F). We, and the Faculty, are taking steps to address the former via the National Apprenticeship Scheme (see Section 5.4). 8 Progress since 2013 Silver Award: The culture and efforts in the School were recognized by an Athena SWAN Silver award in 2013. Rather than repeat data presented elsewhere in this document, we summarise the progress that we have made since then in a “scissors plot” of gender representation against academic career stage (Fig. 6). Compared to 2013 data, the plot has narrowed significantly at all career stages beyond undergraduate. Figure 6: Gender representation against academic career stage. 2013 data taken from 2013 Silver award documentation; 2017 data from this document. UG = all undergraduate population; 1st/2(1) = % of top degree classifications awarded to male (M) and female (F) students (note, the % of top degrees going to F UGs is higher than the % of F UGs, i.e. a higher % of F UG get top degrees); PG = postgraduate; Researcher = RF and PDRA; Acad = Lecturer grade and above; Prof = Professors.