A remote lecture series roadmap to equity, diversity, and inclusion in STEM

Within a year of the shutdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual meetings transformed from an auxiliary service to an essential work platform for hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Universities rapidly accelerated adoption of virtual platforms for remote conferences, classes, and seminars amidst a second crisis testing institutional commitment to the principles of equity, diversity, and inclusion. Here we present thorough guidelines for drawing out hope from the Pandora's box of virtual programming now open to the world. We review milestones from our first year organizing the Diversity and Science Lecture series (DASL) and explore insights into equity, diversity, and inclusion in STEM gleaned from hosted speakers' talk content. Nearly every speaker highlighted the importance of social or interpersonal support to their career progression, and three-fifths of speakers commented on race or ethnicity. Other recurring topics each received attention from a minority of speakers: immigrant identity, gender identity, mental health, sexual minorities, disability, and rural or agricultural background. We conclude with generalizable advice on creating new remote lecture series that benefit executive team members, speakers, and attendees. Our success with DASL demonstrates that community building and knowledge sharing can flourish under a remote lecture framework.

Deakin Launch Network: an employability network that improves engagement, graduate outcomes and wellbeing by connecting and leveraging the expertise of diverse students and alumni

Graduates require opportunities to gain experience and develop professional networks to enhance their employability and career progression. However, students’ access to relevant networks and opportunities to gain experience is not equitable, and this contributes to gaps in employment outcomes at graduation and beyond (Harvey et al., 2017; Tomaszewski et al., 2019). This paper showcases key principles underpinning the design and success of a student and alumni-led network designed to enhance employability. In addition to creating networks between students and alumni, Deakin Launch Network, leverages their skills and experience to identify and create opportunities to enhance the employability of Deakin graduates, especially for those more likely to face disadvantage in the graduate employment market. In doing so, the network provides students with valuable connections, experience, and knowledge relevant to employability. Students also report that the connections and collaborations supported by the network, contributed to their wellbeing and sense of belonging during remote learning, and satisfaction with their educational experience. For alumni, the network has provided motivation and opportunity to reconnect or remain connected to the university. Our case study shows that students and alumni are a valuable source of networks, experience and influence that can, and should, be better utilised by universities. Furthermore, distributed student-leadership and purposeful inclusion can positively impact the outcomes of student-staff partnerships, including project deliverables, the student experience and learning outcomes.

Women’s Skills and Aptitudes as Drivers of Organizational Resilience: An Italian Case Study

The economic system has experienced heavy consequences caused by the recent pandemic. This paper investigates the interaction between the crisis and organization reaction, focusing on the female managerial role and contribution to overcoming the crisis in male-owned and managed companies. To achieve the research objectives, we used a qualitative research method based on an explorative case study. The results show that female managerial skills have fostered organizational resilience in terms of: (i) the attitude to change; (ii) the ability to promote new initiatives; and (iii) the ability to have initiated, consolidated, and managed solid formal relationships with institutional stakeholders. Our results also highlight the decisive contribution of corporate governance (even if male-oriented) in favoring the growth and autonomy of women in positions of responsibility. This contribution is evidenced by (iv) increasing delegation of roles and responsibilities in managing relationships with institutional stakeholders to women managers; and (v) recognizing women managers’ talents in terms of career progression. The originality of this work is represented by the survey that aims to determine how the female management of businesses managed and owned by men can foster the resilience of companies. On the other hand, this paper investigates how female leadership drives organizational resilience during unexpected shocks, opening an interdisciplinary viewpoint.

Womens’ Career Progression in an Australian Regional University

This article examines the link between terms of employment (full time, part time and casual) at an Australian regional university and women’s career progression. The literature identifies lack of transparency in recruitment, promotion and retention; mobility and location; and management perceptions of women’s choice to work flexibly as factors impacting on career progression. However, the voices of women working in regional universities and particularly those of professional staff are often not present in current research. This study moves towards addressing this research deficit. Feminist institutionalism is used to analyse the relationship between national legislation, university policies and informal institutional practices in relation to women’s career progression In early 2020, twenty-one women provided written responses to questions on the link between terms of employment and career progression. The main findings tend to support other research about women working in universities; that is, carers need flexible work arrangements. But there are particular differences for women in regional universities who have to travel between dispersed campuses, which brings an added dimension of complexity to career progression. Their choices about terms of employment and fulfilling carer responsibilities resulted in insecure employment for some participants which had an impact on wellbeing and confidence. In addition, care/household responsibilities and the choice to work flexibly had a negative effect on career progression, and managers did not necessarily support flexible work options (despite national legislation that enables employees with child care responsibilities to negotiate flexible work arrangements with managers, and institutional gender equality policies).

Diversity and Career Progression in Dental School Staff in the UK and Ireland

IntroductionDiversity is known to be important but diversity of staff working in dental schools in the UK and Ireland is low in comparison with the dental profession and the overall population. AimsTo provide a detailed snapshot of the diversity of dental academic staff in 2021 including staff working in academic and clinical roles.MethodsAn online survey was circulated to dental schools by Dental Schools Council. Questions included dates of graduation and key career milestones, demographics and indicators of esteem. Free text questions were also included.ResultsThere was a high degree of variability in dental academic careers which made direct comparisons difficult. Neither gender nor race appeared to be associated with a faster career progression. Females and those of racialised minority were less represented at the most senior grades. For those who had completed specialty training, racialised minority staff were far less likely to be working at consultant grade than their White equivalents.ConclusionThere are differences in career progression between staff in dental schools. The high amount of individual variability makes these difficult to quantify except at the most senior positions. Qualitative information is needed to contextualise the results and provide additional information.

English Career Terms Synonymy

Synonymy is a linguistic phenomenon which reflects the complexity of reality representation in a linguistic worldview. Terminological synonymy poses certain difficulties for specialists who perform practical tasks in application areas such as translation and education. Career development , career advancement , career growth , career progression , career progress , career enhancement are among the most frequently used terms with similar semantics which indicates a certain degree of indefiniteness in the terminology in the correspondent professional field. The aim of this paper is to conduct comparative linguistic analysis of these terms. The material is presented by research article titles from eight scientific databases. Methods include quantitative and qualitative study of frequency, semantic fields by semantically related concepts, keywords, syntagmatic collocability and componential analysis. The results show that career development can be currently considered a hyperonym as it is the most frequent and time-proved term with the widest semantic coverage and indication to professional spheres in the dictionaries. Despite its obvious prevalence, career advancement , career progression , career growth and career progress are gaining momentum as alternative terms highlighting a lack of important semantic nuances in career development . Though the general number of career advancement and career progression across research papers is considerably lower, their presence in article titles is almost the same as that of career development . Title is arguably the most demonstrative part of a research paper; therefore, it can be presumed that the career terms might acquire lexical meanings which will clearly differentiate vertical career growth from horizontal organizational movement.

SP2.1.16Prognostic significance of Drivers at Work and Learning Styles in surgical training

Aims Drivers at Work (DW) and Learning Styles (LS) refer to a range of contentious theories that aim to account for differences in career progression, yet seldom feature in training assessment. This study aimed to quantify the influence of Core Surgical Trainees’ (CST) DW and LS on career progression. Methods Kolb LS inventories were distributed to 168 CSTs during five consecutive induction boot camps in a single Statutory Education Body. Primary outcome measures were MRCS and National Training Number (NTN) success. Results Of 108 responses received (response rate 64.3%), 64.8% were male and 35.2% female (p = 0.003). The spectrum of DW was: Please People (25%), Be Perfect (21.3%), Hurry Up (18.5%), Be Strong (13.9%), and Try Hard (0%, p < 0.001). DW was either unequivocal or not provided by 23 CSTs (21.3%). The spectrum of LS was: Converging (34.3%), Accommodating (28.7%), Diverging (23.1%), and Assimilating (13.9%, p = 0.021). MRCS success was not associated with DW (p = 0.703) or LS (p = 0.598). Men were more likely to have Converging LS (29/70, 41.4%), and women Diverging LS (15/38, 39.5%, p = 0.018) and to have team-based LS (Accommodating / Diverging, 26/38 vs. 30/70, p = 0.010). NTN success was associated with LS (p = 0.038) with Convergers achieving most NTNs (65.4%). Conclusions LS are associated with important differences in career progression with Converging LS three-fold more likely to achieve NTNs than Diverging LS.