Choose to Challenge
Earlier this year, the University hosted award ceremonies to celebrate the positive impact created from across our University community.
After two years of online celebrations, the Making a Difference Awards returned on 10 May with in-person and a livestreamed event from our Whitworth Hall. The Awards highlighted the extensive range of social responsibility initiatives of our staff, students, alumni and external partners, and covered categories such as benefit to research; widening participation; environmental sustainability and equality, diversity and inclusion. Nearly 160 entries were submitted this year, with judges recognising 16 winners and 23 highly commended. Winners included a project addressing period poverty; an engagement initiative translating biodiversity into new music in Colombia and a model for teaching LGBT+ History to secondary school students.
The Better World Awards, the Faculty of Science and Engineering’s (FSE) social responsibility awards, took place on 22 June 2022. They celebrated staff and students who are ‘making a difference’ through projects which benefit society or the environment. The event was hosted by Dean of the Faculty, Professor Martin Schröder and the Vice Dean for Social Responsibility, Paul Mativenga. They praised the number and variety of projects and the commitment of those involved to social responsibility. Many of the judges commented on the significant number of strong and varied entries, which made the judging process a challenge! In total 27 outstanding projects were recognised, with 13 winners, 12 highly commended and 2 special awards
FSE’s #ChooseToChallenge project, as part of International Women’s Day (IWD) 2021, was an initiative that received awards in both ceremonies.
The IWD 2021 theme #ChooseToChallenge focused on how collectively, we can all help create an inclusive world by choosing to challenge and call out gender bias and inequity and by seeking out and celebrate women’s achievements
FSE wanted to show how the women and men of the University were #Choose[ing]ToChallenge the status quo and are making our University and society a fairer place for all.
They did this through an online magazine-style campaign that focused on highlighting personal stories of gender inequality from staff and students at the University. To ensure this campaign stood out from their usual campaigns, they chose not to talk about their research but instead, the campaign demonstrated its important message through its novel and honest content. It told the human stories of our staff and students through striking visuals and editorial-style storytelling. With support from colleagues across the University 18 stories were published across the websites.
The campaign attracted very positive feedback and high engagement rates, with 180,000 social media impressions and nearly 10,000 web page views across the IWD pages. Additionally, the campaign was used to support FSE’s Athena Swan applications for 2022 to demonstrate the visibility of female role models.
Enna Bartlett, project lead, spoke of gaining recognition in both awards: “We were delighted to be recognised in both the Making a Difference Awards and the Better World Showcase. Equality and equity are something that really matter here and while we may be taking big strides forwards, we also realise there is always more we can do. This project wanted to firstly celebrate our women colleagues and students but to also raise awareness of the biases they still face in academia today. Our project did this through striking images and honest stories, told by the women themselves, and we are proud to share them so we might help those entering academia now and in the future.”
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