Athena SWAN Bronze awarded to Department

The Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering (EEE) is pleased to announce that it has retained the Athena SWAN Bronze award in recognition of its work to ensure gender equality in the workplace.

Athena Swan Bronze Award logo 2021

The Athena Swan Charter is a framework which is used across the globe to support and transform gender equality within higher education and research. It was established in 2005 to encourage and recognise commitment to advancing the careers of women in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM) employment.  The Department was awarded Bronze in 2016 and has retained it ever since.

As part of its commitment to  improve gender representation and diversity Professor Dan Gladwin was appointed as the Director of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (ED&I) Committee for the Department which brings together members of EEE across all areas including undergraduate students, postgraduate students, academics and professional services.  Dan worked with the Committee as well as other members of the academic body to demonstrate the steps the Department has put in place to improve equality in areas such as work allocation, leadership roles and student representation. 

On receiving the award Dan said “I am delighted that our work on gender equality has been recognised with this award. We are committed to further improving gender representation and diversity within our community and have developed a comprehensive plan to ensure this is achieved. For example, our plan will see us increasing our outreach activities where we will engage with more school children to introduce them to EEE. We are going to provide further mentoring opportunities, networking and events to our undergraduate and postgraduate students to encourage academic career progression.

For our existing staff we are encouraging more uptake of training and use of mentoring provision for career development. There are many interventions in our plan that will improve the equality and wellbeing of the department.”

Professor Chee Hing Tan, Head of the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, added “We are highly committed to equality, diversity and inclusion in our department to ensure that everyone is provided with the opportunities to thrive. Over the last few years, our action plans from Athena Swan have not only helped us to ensure that we have a supportive environment for female students and staff, but also directly improve our environment for everyone in the department. I am very pleased with the award, which recognised the good work that we have done to champion gender equality in our department.”

For more information on ED&I in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering please visit sheffield.ac.uk/eee/about/equality-diversity-inclusion.

Top 10 in the UK

We're in the top 10 UK Electronic and Electrical Engineering Departments (QS World University Rankings 2021).

A global reputation

Sheffield is a research university with a global reputation for excellence. We're a member of the Russell Group: one of the 24 leading UK universities for research and teaching.