The Division of Medicine is proud to support its students and staff who are parents or about to become parents.
Athena SWAN has an award scheme in place that supports staff and students about to go on, on or recently returned from parental leave, for example through funding for maternity leave research support and training courses. To date it has disbursed over £160,000. The award is open to all staff, including professional, technical, and administrative staff, and the calls go out twice a year, in February and July.
This scheme applies to all staff in the Division taking any kind of parental leave, including current PhD students, academic/research staff, professional/support/administrative staff, and technical staff. This reflects the expanded scope of the new Athena SWAN charter.
Requests up to £5,500 will be considered for this call. Examples of the funding support that can be applied for include:
- Salary/consumables to allow a piece of research to be pursued/completed
- Funding for a training course to maintain skills
- Funding for costs to facilitate students/staff keeping in touch with work during their leave
- Funding of costs to aid staff presenting their work at scientific conferences after or during parental leave. In this case, details of the conference and abstract of the work to be presented should be provided as part of the application form attached.
Priority will be given where there are no alternative sources of funding to support the proposal and where it will help the member of staff to complete/sustain their work or contribute to their career development. We will also prioritize those who have not previously received one of these awards.
Any personnel from the Division of Medicine may apply, including administrative and technical staff (PhD Students, Research Assistants and Post-Docs should discuss applications with their supervisor) and should do so by completing the attached form and e-mailing it to m.plate@ucl.ac.uk.
Athena Swan Parental Leave Application Form
Parental leave award scheme
In 2013, the Parental leave award scheme was set up and administered by the SAT team to support during maternity-related leave. It is available to all staff (ARS and PSS) and PhD students. The funds are allocated in addition to the usual maternity, paternity and adoption leave salary entitlement to all eligible staff. They may cover:
- consumables to continue a project
- support so that the applicant can attend a conference or facilitate a keeping-in-touch (KIT) day
- training to maintain or update skills
- short periods of salary for additional researcher time to keep a project moving in the interim.
How the award helps
My award was used for a salary to carry on work my project during my absence. This meant the project could move forward while I was on leave and allowed me not to fall behind. It also gave me opportunities to keep in touch with project meetings, lab visits, and a push to keep me up to date. The fact that I could keep engaging with science while on leave gave me the confidence to also travel abroad with my child to participate as a speaker in an international conference.
Manuela Plate, Non-clinical research
