School achieves Athena SWAN Bronze award

The School of Computing has been awarded an Athena SWAN award for gender equality work.

The Athena SWAN award recognises the School's commitment to combating underrepresentation, and advancing the careers of women in science research and academia.

The University was awarded an institutional Athena SWAN Bronze Award in April 2014, which recognised that Kent has established a solid institutional foundation, through the development of policies, practices and systems, to advance gender equality.

Professor David Chadwick, Chair of the Computing Athena SWAN committee, led the School application alongside Co-chair Angela Doe. He commented on the award:

‘I am pleased that Athena Swan has recognised the good work that we have doing to improve the equality and diversity within our school. We have made significant improvements to our recruitment, advertising and promotion procedures in order to make up for the severe national shortage of women in computing at all levels. We will continue to press ahead with our changes, and we plan to achieve a Silver Award in three years time.’

The School of Computing was one of five Schools in the University to be given the Bronze award. The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Dame Julia Goodfellow, responded to the news:

'I congratulate the schools on their awards. This represents many years of working to improve the recruitment, retention and progression of women in the Faculty of Science. Each school is able to showcase a range of positive actions and good practice.'

The Dean of Sciences, Professor Mark Burchell, who chairs the Athena SWAN Working Group, added his congratulations:

'These five new awards show how our faculty-wide ambition for real change is being realised. The school awards attest to the excellent work that the schools have been doing over the past few years, ably supported by our central HR and Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity teams. Schools have examined their practices and have started to make real changes that are benefiting staff.'