School of Nursing and Midwifery Scholarly Impact Report 2021

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CATHERINE MCAULEY SCHOOL OF NURSING AND MIDWIFERY, UCC

AWARDS

School of Nursing and Midwifery achieves its first Athena SWAN Award

Lead and Team Members:

Dr Aine O’Donovan (Chair of SAT at time of application) Dr Vera McCarthy Deputy Chair of SAT Dr Mohamad Saab Deputy Chair of SAT Dr Angela Flynn current Chair of SAT Dr Geraldine McLoughlin Ms Therese Ahern Professional support Dr Brendan Noonan Lecturer Practitioner Prof Josephine Hegarty Head of School Mr Sean McCloskey Student Placement Allocations Officer

The School’s commitment to promoting gender equality has been recognised with a Bronze departmental-level Athena SWAN Award, following a submission process involving detailed self- assessment that identified gender and other equality challenges and opportunities in the School. The Athena SWAN Charter recognises and celebrates good employment practices for women working in higher education. It aims to improve the recruitment, retention, and promotion of women through tackling gender inequalities and addressing unequal gender representation across academic disciplines. The assessment panel unanimously agreed that the application met the award criteria and commendedtheSchool for the two-week ‘quiet time’ duringthesummerwhenstaff areencouraged to limit emails and only host urgent meetings. They also commended the application for the clear data-presentation (including thoughtful disaggregation where needed), student membership on the Self-Assessment Team (SAT), the recognition of SAT member workload, that SAT members attended an Athena SWAN event at Queen’s University Belfast, that a SAT member sits on the Athena SWAN Nursing & Midwifery Network (ASNNaM), and the dedicated staff survey on remote working during Covid-19. They also pointed to the excellent analysis on the caring responsibilities of undergraduate students, including the development of practical actions, such as a named contact person for these students. Commenting on the achievement, Dr Aine O’Donovan stated, “This success would not have been possible without key contributions from Dr Vera McCarthy, Dr Mohamad Saab, Ms Regina Murphy, Professor Eileen Savage, as well as the entire School. UCC’s Athena SWAN success continues to rest on excellent data support from HR’s HRIS team, and colleagues in Academic Systems Administration. Thanks also to the Athena SWAN team in the EDI Unit for their support to UCC’s Athena SWAN applicants, Ms Madison Bick (Equality Data Analyst) and Ms Ann King (Project Officer).

Mr Mohammad Saleh PhD student Ms Regina Murphy School Manager Dr Noeleen Brady Post-doc researcher Dr Margaret Murphy Lecturer Practitioner Prof Jonathan Drennan

More information on Athena SWAN and UCC is available here: https://www.ucc.ie/en/athenaswan/

Highlights

• The School’s commitment to promoting gender equality has been recognised with a Bronze Athena SWAN Award. • Building on this success, we will continue to expand our engagement with Athena SWAN and the wider EDI agenda and look forward to implementing our School level action plan.