Aurora is Advance HE's leadership development initiative for women. It is run as a unique partnership bringing together leadership experts, higher education providers and research institutes to take positive action to address the under-representation of women in leadership positions in the sector.
Since its launch in 2013, more than 8,300 women from nearly 200 institutions across the UK and Ireland have participated in Aurora. As the programme reaches its 10-year anniversary and is expected to reach the landmark of 10,000 alumnae, Advance HE thought it timely to present key findings from an evaluation conducted by our Insights team in 2022. The evaluation explored the perceptions and experiences of programme alumnae with the overarching aim of describing Aurora’s individual-level impact.
The evaluation followed a mixed-methods approach, combining an online survey with follow-up focus group discussions. The relevant call for participation was sent out to all Aurora alumnae graduating between 2013-2021. The call was received by almost 2,000 alumnae. 110 responded to the survey (6% response rate) between May-July 2022, and 19 of those also took part in five online focus group discussions in October 2022.
The results showed that Aurora participants come from diverse backgrounds, in terms of both personal characteristics and career type and stage. Alumnae found the programme engaging, inspirational – sometimes even ‘transformational’- and would recommend it to fellow peers. Importantly, the benefits of participating in Aurora were independent of whether or not alumnae had engaged with other leadership development activities – in other words, the impact of Aurora was unique.
