Good Practice Benefits All is the theme of the Athena SWAN Awareness Day 2014 to which all staff are invited on Friday 19 September.

The University was awarded an Athena SWAN Bronze Award in April, which recognised our commitment to the Athena SWAN initiative. The initiative is focused on advancing women’s careers in higher education and research in the sciences. By pursuing this agenda, we aim to create the best working environment for all staff, and this year’s event will cover themes relevant to staff across the Faculties and Professional Service departments.

A draft programme is already available and we invite you to join us in the Grimond Foyer on Canterbury campus at 09:30am. The event will run until 1.30pm and includes lunch.

We can confirm that Professor Paul Walton, from the Department of Chemistry at York University, will give a keynote address: ‘Becoming an Athena SWAN Gold Department’. A panel discussion, led by the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Dame Julia Goodfellow, will give participants the chance to discuss the initiative and find out what we’re doing here at Kent.

There will also be workshop sessions on: Promotion; Career Planning for Early Career Researchers (and those wondering what their next step should be); Whether Female Programmers and Male Librarians are Exotic Species; Writing an Athena SWAN Application; and Unconscious Bias.

We welcome all staff – men and women; academic and professional service; Medway and Canterbury based – to attend the event. To find out more and register, visit the Awareness Day webpages.