As a university we are delighted to have achieved our institutional Bronze Athena Swan award. The University of Suffolk (UoS) has robustly maintained its commitment to gender equality and we are very proud of the significant achievements we have made since gaining our independence in 2016.
UoS is a diverse and vibrant community committed to providing equality of opportunity to all staff and students. In 2021, we committed to adopt the Athena Swan principles and develop our first submission, because we recognised how the Athena Swan journey can help us achieve greater equity and equality for all genders and intersecting identities institution wide. Our senior leadership team agreed our institutional commitment to the Athena Swan principles which are reflected in our values.
Our commitment to gender equality does not, however, start there. Our Vice Chancellor, Professor Helen Langton, made equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) her ‘focus topic’ for the year 2020-2021 in which we revised and refreshed the University’s EDI approach, including the EDI Committee and its Terms of Reference, with the strong intent to make engagement more action oriented. This has been highly successful, and our recent submission for the Athena Swan Bronze award and the subsequent action plan is testament to our revised approach.
