Equalities @ EECS

quoting from universitiesuk.ac.uk:

This webinar will look at how institutions can effectively respond and take action to identify and implement change, and embed this across their university. We will hear lived experiences, as well as from university leadership and practitioners working to affect change in their institutions. The session will also help to inform ongoing work and new sector guidance being coordinated by Universities UK into tackling racial harassment at universities and addressing the BAME student degree awarding gap.

The QMUL EDI Team has updated their Recommended Books and Podcasts webpages.

This is a publicly available webpage, containing a number of books and podcasts relating to equality, diversity and inclusion.

On INWED day, the Womens Engineering Society were delighted to announce the winners of the Top 50 Women in Engineering (UK): Sustainability awards!

Now in its fifth year, the 2020 WE50 celebrates women who have made a significant contribution within sustainability. Winning nominees were required to provide evidence of their successful support of UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goals or the Net Zero Carbon Programme.

The #WE50 awards seek to recognise the wealth of female talent within engineering and related disciplines. The #WE50 theme changes each year to recognise women working in different fields and from varying routes into engineering

Here is the list of this year’s winners!

The Institute of Coding at Queen Mary has strengthened its relationship with DeepMind through scholarship programme for women and BAME students. DeepMind is a leading British artificial intelligence (AI) company which has renewed its support for under-represented students pursuing postgraduate studies in AI at Queen Mary. The donation from DeepMind will be used to continue and expand the University’s DeepMind Scholarship programme, which launched in 2019. During the academic year 2020/2021, eight DeepMind Scholarships will be awarded to women and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) postgraduate students living in the UK who are currently under-represented in the field of AI. Find out more:

https://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/2020/se/queen-mary-strengthen-relationship-with-deepmind-through-scholarship-programme-for-women-and-bame-students-.html

The Women’s Engineering Society is looking for nominations and self-nominations by 13th July for two awards. The Amy Johnson Inspiration Award is given to an individual who is not currently working as an engineer for furthering diversity within engineering and applied sciences. The Men as Allies Award is awarded to a man who has gone above the call of duty to support his female colleagues and address the gender imbalance within engineering and applied sciences. Both awards are accepting nominations until 13th July.

https://www.wes.org.uk/content/amy-johnson-inspiration-award

https://www.wes.org.uk/content/men-allies-award

Data science has never been more important but there is a considerable issue. The Data Feminism book is a collaboratively crafted book led by Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein which seeks to investigate data science from a feminist perspective. Biased data sets and assumptions can lead to biased technology and there is a great possibility for harm. Assumptions, like a male/female binary can lead to incorrect and harmful classification systems. You can read more about the book here:
http://datafeminism.io/
and download it here:
https://mutabit.com/repos.fossil/datafem/uv/datafem.pdf

The Women’s Engineering Society, Wikimedia UK, The Institution of Engineering and Technology, the Electrifying Women Project and Archives For London are creating an online “wikithon” to add articles about extraordinary women in engineering. It will teach how to edit and create articles and encourage participants to celebrate the achievements of women in engineering on the Wikipedia platform. It will take place at 13:30 BST June 24th. You can join through Eventbrite:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/extraordinary-women-in-engineering-a-wes-wikithon-tickets-57696650234

Just a short post today to add to Monday’s about the parents and carers network:

https://equalities.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/2020/06/08/qmul-parents-and-carers-network/

There is also a slack channel for parents and carers in EECS to exchange ideas and support.

https://join.slack.com/t/eecsparents/shared_invite/zt-e361dfpz-2K5EXlEARvgOQRo8gqWuZg

Dear EECS Students and Staff,

Here in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, we stand in support of and solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and those peacefully protesting following the horrific killing of George Floyd in the US. We have all been shocked and saddened by the death of George Floyd and the historic and ongoing racism and anti-Blackness in the US, the UK, and across the world. We want to share in expressing our condolences to all those affected, and in condemning incidents of racism and hate crimes. We stand with and support our Black colleagues, students, friends, and family.

We recognise that the systems and underlying attitudes that led to George Floyd’s death are not unique in either time or place: racism, anti-blackness, and inequality are unfortunately found across the UK.  We recognise the distress that this incident has caused to staff and students, particularly Black staff and students, and that this stress is compounded by the ongoing global coronavirus pandemic which has also disproportionately affected Black and ethnic minority people. As a community, we commit ourselves to caring for each other and to being open to talk, listen, and learn about these issues.

Many will also want to express solidarity with those taking action at the moment. You can join us in finding out more about the #BlackLivesMatter movement and how we can support it by donating, educating ourselves and others, as well as self-care and support for Black communities here:

https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co

We recognise that it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist. 

Support is available for students and staff who have been victims of hate-crime here:

https://reportandsupport.qmul.ac.uk/support/what-support-is-available-for-hate-crimesincidents

And general staff support here:

http://hr.qmul.ac.uk/wellbeing/mental-wellbeing/employee-assistance-programme/

Although we are striving for equality within the School, we recognise that more efforts are needed going forwards to recruit, mentor, support and promote BAME academics, technical and professional-services staff.  EECS is committed to progressing equality, diversion and inclusion. Our Equalities Committee has been working to address inequalities within our School and we will use our next meeting to reflect on how well our Action Plan addresses race equality and identify further avenues for promoting and supporting diversity and inclusion for all our staff and students.