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Office of the President and Provost (Equality, Diversity & Inclusion)

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Deans and Professional Services Director's Race Equality Pledges 2020

Arts and Humanities

• Ensure that all departments and programmes have an inclusion lead
• Ensure that all departments and programmes have a 2-year EDI plan which includes race equality objectives
• Support staff to embed race awareness in their everyday practice through sharing of internal and external digital resources
• Ensure that all staff on selection panels have completed unconscious bias training
• Organise student town hall every term and use feedback to inform EDI plans at dept level
• Ensure past 3 years’ student & staff EDI data made available to HoDs and DMs to support planning
• Make sure all new programmes embed race equality in their design by carrying out an EDI ‘health-check’
• Make sure job descriptions for all new academic staff appointments have been approved by faculty EDI committee
• Make sure HoDs and appraisers encourage qualified BAME staff to apply for promotion and career development opportunities

The Bartlett

Promote a culture of engagement with race and racism, by:

  • Actively stimulating and appropriately resourcing a group for racialised minority students and staff in the Bartlett. This group will determine their own terms of reference including name of the group, its membership, and aims and objectives.
  • Hosting dialogues on race and racism in the Faculty with staff and students in or around May 2021, with the support of an external facilitator. These dialogues will aim to encourage continuing and new conversations on race, and serve as an accountability mechanism for these Pledges.

Critically assess and improve our curriculum and pedagogy to move towards eliminating the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) Awarding Gap, by:

  • Growing teaching content that addresses race in the curriculum
  • Requiring each department and school in the Bartlett to identify ways it will actively review race in their curriculum
  • Bidding for an Inclusive Learning Specialist to support teachers through changes to their teaching and curriculum

Address diversity in staff recruitment and progression to represent better our London location, by:

  • Ensuring every business case for an academic appointment includes a statement that identifies the contribution of this appointment to equality, diversity and inclusion
  • Piloting automatic shortlisting for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) candidates who meet essential criteria, initially in professional services posts
  • Reviewing processes throughout the recruitment cycle and supporting, for example, an increased pool of Fair Recruitment Specialists and the peer review of job descriptions.
Brain Sciences
  • Pledge: Continue to support the actions to reduce BSc awarding gap to ensure maintenance of existing success.
  • Pledge: Expand awarding gap project within the Faculty to include investigation of gap at PGT.
  • Pledge: Establish BME doctoral studentships to increase the academic pipeline.
  • Pledge: Increase the number of BME staff in the Faculty.
  • Pledge: Enhance BME staff and student experience based on qualitative research.
  • Pledge: Conduct promotion process reviews to address race wage gap.
  • Pledge: Continue engagement in Inclusive Advocacy programme beyond current pilot. Pledge: Establish Faculty diversity awards to recognise staff and student contributions to diversity.
Engineering
  • To use Fair Recruitment Specialists for all senior positions in the Faculty (grade 9 and above)
  • To create an all-encompassing Race (Equality) Group (students, PS, Academics, etc.) to explore racial issues related to ‘belonging’
  • To support the BAME attainment gap lead in their work and support inclusive curriculum activities
  • Seek and promote BAME role models in education and research, highlighting the work of colleagues who embed EDI principles and show a different, more human and effective way of doing administration, research or teaching
  • Aim to ambitiously increase the racial and ethnic diversity of our staff (grades 8-10) through best recruitment practices and a pro-active approach
  • Create and run Faculty-wide events around race inequality and systemic racism
IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society
  • Revisit the statement we made in response to Black Lives Matter, to provide a public update on the progress that has been made so far
  • Work to eliminate the attainment gap for undergraduate students
  • Run a task & finish group exploring ways of widening participation
  • Monitor the application to appointment ratio for UK BME applicants to academic jobs, in conjunction with HR
  • Explore and implement positive action around the senior academic promotions process
  • Continue to use Fair Recruitment Specialists for all senior appointments, including internal roles
Laws
  • Permanently embed Laws’ Perspectives Workshops in the Faculty which engage with legal topics from marginalised perspectives including race and issues of intersectionality and continue to promote inclusivity on all modules, liaising with the UCL Liberating the Curriculum initiative and Student Curriculum Partners
  • Use where feasible ethnically diverse advisory panels in all Faculty promotion processes
  • Promote more ethnically diverse speakers and panels at Faculty events
  • Review LLB admissions processes in order to encourage and support more successful applications from BAME students
  • Investigate causes of historic BAME Attainment Gap in Laws and explore appropriate responses
Life Sciences
  • Tackle the Awarding Gap through continuing to support our Awarding Gap Lead and Teaching Teams as they work through innovative and practical approaches to reducing summative assessment and create a culture of belonging.
  • Improve Fair Recruitment through attention to detail in all aspects of mentoring, advertising and recruitment practices including Fair Recruitment advisors.
Maths and Physical Sciences
  • Develop a series of MAPS Lunch hour conversations that will run throughout the academic year and which are titled “Tackling racial inequity in higher education and in STEM.”
  • Support MAPS departments in the implementation of the Inclusive Curriculum Healthcheck as well as in ensuring that departments carry out a continuous assessment of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the BAME student experiences and that mitigating impact plans are put in place accordingly.
  • Continue encouraging our staff and student community to take collective responsibility in preventing and challenging unacceptable behaviours, including challenging racial harassment, by launching a video series that encourages members of our community to understand, reflect on, prevent and report unacceptable behaviours.
  • Continue using the Fair recruitment Specialist scheme, whenever possible, for recruitments taking place this year.
Medical Sciences

Student access and success:

Increase visibility of BAME role models in the faculty by creating honorary academic positions in order to expand the pool of role models. (NEW)

Comment – this recognises that simply relying on organic growth of the senior BAME pool will be too slow a process

Continue to extend the reach of the Widening Participation programme to more schools with high representation of BAME students, to enable improved awareness and increase access to programmes, such as UCL Horizons, the faculty virtual open days, and the Medical Sciences Lecture Series. (RENEW)

Comment – the attendances at scheduled events (such as FSM school lecture series) remain under-represented

Staff recruitment and progression:

Increase diversity on recruitment panels, especially at senior level appointments, by involving Fair Recruitment Specialists, and committing to training members of Medical Sciences as Fair Recruitment Specialists. (RENEW)

Comment – this has proved both welcome and successful and is something we wish to continue and broaden

Work with the central EDI team to launch a local Inclusive Advocacy Programme. (NEW)

Positively support career aspirations by encouraging staff to engage with the race equality career pipeline initiatives (e.g. B-MEntor, Emerging Leaders, Inclusive Leadership, etc.). (NEW)

Demystify the promotion and advancement process by issuing clear accessible guidance on eligibility, application and assessment procedures; with mandatory feedback on applications. (RENEW)

Comment – this has proved both welcome and successful and is something we wish to continue and broaden

Ensure transparency on progression criteria, with clear action points in annual appraisal process for career development and progress.  (RENEW)

Leadership and governance culture:

Establish ring-fenced fund (subject to budget approval) for BAME staff to attend leadership training programmes. (NEW)

New leadership groups or panels will be proportionally reflective of the communities to which they deliver work and present. (NEW)

Comment – this will include our work in philanthropy and when facing donors.  BAME colleagues have been under-represented 

Improve and provide clear guidance on reporting procedures of discrimination experienced in any form, process of investigation and mandatory feedback of action prompted to demonstrate Faculty’s commitment and zero tolerance policy. (RENEW)

Promote diverse leadership by applying positive action initiatives when appropriate when appointing senior roles, such as UCL’s Accelerate to Leadership programme and positive action waivers. (NEW)

Population and Health Sciences
  • Update and expand FPHS race equity action plan; include specific initiatives for each Institute.
  • Promote and co-ordinate Faculty-wide race allies training.
  • Commit to using the Accelerate to Leadership scheme for all grade 9 and 10 PSS posts.
  • Work with central EDI/HR to expand the Accelerate to Leadership scheme to include grade 8 PSS staff, pilot this within the Faculty and monitor over time to ensure representation at grade 8 PSS mirrors that of lower grades and the pipeline to PSS 9/10 is strengthened.
  • Fair Recruitment Specialists have been utilised across several Institutes. To allow us to further expand their use, and to ensure FRS are being used most efficiently (i.e. cross-Institute, throughout the whole recruitment process), we will commit to training at least 10 new FRS within the Faculty.
Social and Historical Sciences
  • To support each Department in the Faculty in developing and implementing an annual EDI plan with a particular focus on race equality
  • To mobilise the energy and attention of the leadership of the Faculty in addressing racism and race equality by devoting (at least) three meetings a year of the SHS Senior Leadership Team to equality, diversity and inclusion, in addition to regular meetings of the SHS EDI Strategy Board
  • To intensify our work to significantly increase the recruitment of BAME academic and senior professional services staff across the Faculty e.g. through use of Fair Recruitment Specialists, developing Positive Action approaches, and the Accelerate to Leadership programme
  • To provide forums for student discussions of race and racism within the Faculty, including BAME student-staff networks, and via the establishment of an SHS EDI Student Board (to shadow the SHS EDI Strategy Board)
  • To continue a programme of cross-departmental work towards the elimination of the BAME awarding gap
  • To run, for the second year, a 5 week summer term online reading and discussion group open to all staff in SHS, on ‘Racism and Racialization in the Social and Historical Sciences: educating ourselves’, convened by the Dean. The focus in summer 2021 will be ‘Race, gender and the politics of intersectionality’.
  • To establish two new Faculty-funded scholarships for PhD students from under-represented racialized/ minoritized ethnic groups for entry in 2021
  • To continue the work of the Faculty group on ‘Diversifying Postgraduate Research’ to develop an action plan to increase the numbers of BAME PhD students and to transform how we recruit, supervise and support PhD students
  • To continue the work of the Faculty ‘Diversity, Difference and Inequalities’ strategic initiative to increase research and teaching around race and racism across the Faculty
  • To convene another SHS Decolonising the Curriculum week
  • To continue to support the development and work of the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialization, and the launch of a new MA programme in Race, Ethnicity and Postcolonial Studies
  • To contribute social science expertise to research on the experiences of Chinese and East Asian students at UCL, in partnership with UCL SU.
Student & Registry Services
  • Prioritise Black, Asian and minority ethnic staff for leadership and management development programmes, e.g. the Future Leaders and Women in Leadership programmes
  • Utilise the Fair Recruitment Specialists wherever possible.
  • Ensure that recruitment panels include ethnic minority representation wherever possible.
  • Senior staff to continue to work as Inclusive Advocates.
  • Ensure that recruitment to the division’s Graduate Programme is representative of the various UK ethnicities.
Human Resources
  • To drive forward UCL’s strategic HR-related priorities, as identified by the Race Equality Implementation Group 2021 report
  • HR to partner with the EDI team to develop and pilot new models for valuing staff contributions to EDI activity
  • To implement race equity training for hearing and appeals panel members and recruit more BAME staff to be on panels
  • To role model best equity and inclusion recruitment practice within the HR Division, including piloting lawful positive action recruitment methods (Equality Act, 2010).
  • Develop and implement a UCL Diversity Hiring Strategy that will help aid the recruitment/progression of 50 Black academics over the next 3 years.
Estates
  • Launch a fully functioning and operating EDI Committee working across both Estates Operations and Estates Development. The committee will in the first instance, prioritise race equity engagement across the Estates Divisions
  • Requirement for Fair Recruitment Specialists to act as independents on all recruitment panels for Grade 7 and above positions
  • Establish mentoring opportunities for our BAME staff, which aims to encourage “reverse mentoring”.
ISD
  • Target improving BAME participation at G8-10 in ISD by 10% by the end 2021-22, enabled by a strong focus on recruitment practices and progression opportunities
  • Partner with EDI to create a new online Equality Impact Assessment tool and pilot the use in ISD
  • Partner with HR/PS-Hub to try to collect more complete ethnicity data for UCL staff, and harness the data to creatively encourage more targeted involvement in UCL’s race equality programmes
Finance
  • Shortlists must have BAME candidate(s), particularly where participation is especially low and at more senior roles.
  • Every BAME applicant that satisfies the essential criteria in a role specification is guaranteed to move to the next stage of the selection process.
  • Every G10 member of FBA, will mentor a BAME member of FBS staff.
  • FBA commits to supporting the Inclusive Advocacy programme and to ensuring it becomes a standard feature of leadership roles in the division.
  • All organisational development programmes to have an agreed proportion (TBA but at least equivalent to the proportion of BAME staff in the division) of BAME staff attending.
  • Regular publication of data by organisational unit showing ethnicity mix at different grades, and a move to benchmarking and tracking trends over time.
Library Services

Staff Recruitment and progression

  • Increase racial diversity on recruitment panels for all posts
  • Reduce the potential for bias in the recruitment process through creating an environment whereby recruitment panel members can report any concerns
  • Transparency in career pathways within the department

Leadership and Governance culture

  • Senior colleagues to actively engage with the UCL Inclusive Advocacy scheme
  • EDI to be a standing item at Senior Management Team meetings
  • Equality impact assessments used in relation to policies, when making key decisions and when undertaking organisational change
  • Take action to acknowledge and address inherent historical bias and structural inequalities in the provenance, development and discoverability of UCL’s library collections. Engage with stakeholders, support UCL’s de-colonisation initiatives, and adopt best practice to future-proof the Library’s collecting strategy
Office of the Vice-President (Advancement)
  • Critically assess and tackle structural barriers that negatively impact colleagues of colour in OVPA (Office of the Vice-President (Advancement))

    • Ensure race equity is embedded within OVPA strategy alongside wider EDI ambitions with decision makers and line managers participating in activities to listen, learn and champion EDI issues in OVPA e.g., through a dedicated senior OVPA EDI representative; updates to Strategy, Development and Oversight Group from the EDI Committee; creating a data driven OVPA EDI action plan in partnership with central HR and EDI.
    • Ensure staff, particularly line managers, are aware of how to access information and confidential support from UCL’s policy towards harassment, intimidation, and bullying.
    • Work with HR Business Partner to review the recruitment, retention, and progression cycle to ensure there are no negative impacts on Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic groups and positive benefits are being maximised. Changes to include Fair Recruitment Specialist in each interview; peer review all job descriptions; ensure the exit interview process is a safe space and feedback is proactively considered and acted upon; always have a diverse pool of appointable candidates especially for roles at Grade 8 and above; build pipeline through internal talent development and career progression.
    • Regularly review and report progress towards these pledges, in line with wider OVPA and UCL EDI activities, e.g., REIG Interim Report and UCL Equity and Inclusion Plan.
  • Embed race equity, diversity, and inclusion as a core component of OVPA engagement with alumni and supporters

    • Diversify our global alumni engagement, advocacy, and volunteer pools, with a particular focus on flagship OVPA events, programmes, and activities.
    • Provide training for relationship managers, at all levels across fundraising and alumni relations, about how to build strong relationships with prospects, donors and advocates who are from different backgrounds to themselves and how to effectively communicate UCL and OVPA objectives regarding race equity.
    • Review language used in external materials and with external audiences to clarify who and what we mean when referencing race, ethnicity, and ‘underrepresented groups’, and be explicit about the racial and intersectional inequities we are trying to address.
    • Review the prospect classification and categorisation process to remove non-inclusive or harmful EDI practices, focusing on how alumni and supporter information is recorded in MySupporters and how prospects are assigned to relationship managers.
  • Continue building an environment where individuals feel comfortable to bring their whole selves to work

    • Improve OVPA colleagues’ race literacy e.g., by ensuring OVPA EDI learning groups represent race and issues affecting people of colour in an intersectional manner.
    • Provide safe spaces where colleagues can ask questions and raise issues, e.g., through an annual listening session, promoting and engaging with UCL Staff Equalities Networks and Steering Groups, and supporting OVPA staff to participate in these.
    • Facilitate an inclusive work environment where colleagues hold each other accountable. Signal the value of race equity through regular, formal, and informal conversations, e.g., an EDI standing agenda item in OVPA all staff meetings; information and guidance shared by the EDI Committee; training provided by the People team; continuing to include EDI objectives in all staff’s Supporting Success.
    • Acknowledge lack of racial diversity in senior grades within OVPA and communicate commitment to increasing representation of Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic staff in leadership roles through signposting to OVPA EDI and wider UCL race equity activities.