College of Science & Engineering

Reflecting on the themes selected by the College EDI Committee

After much discussion, the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Committee has identified two core themes that will guide our efforts towards promoting equality, diversity, and inclusion within our community. These themes are Living University Values and Power and Privilege.

The first core theme focuses on Glasgow University's values. Glasgow University has four core values that underpin our institution's mission and vision for the future:

• Ambition and Excellence: Pursuing excellence in all we do, building the infrastructure in support of this and providing encouragement and development for everybody in the organisation.
• Curiosity and Discovery: Embracing new thinking and innovation in a spirit of open-minded collaboration that positively impacts on ourselves, our University, our city, society and the world.
• Integrity and Truth: Doing the right thing, not the easy thing and doing everything with integrity or not at all. Trusting people do what they’re skilled to do and taking responsibility.
• Inclusive community: Embracing diversity universally and putting people at the heart of everything we do, collaborating internally and externally in pursuit of our mission and uncompromising in achieving fairness and equity of opportunity for all.

Each of these values represents a fundamental aspect of the University's approach to education, research, and engagement with the wider community. They provide a framework for ethical behaviour, positive relationships, and collaboration across disciplines and sectors. You can find out more here.

Our second core theme, power and privilege, aims to delve into power dynamics and scrutinise privilege, taking into account the repercussions that come with them. We define privilege as unearned advantages that individuals with dominant social identities enjoy, as well as power that some groups wield over others. These might be associated with different staff groups or job families, or under-representation of certain groups of students and staff, such as those from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Therefore, while our initial focus will be on bullying, harassment, and gender-based violence recognising the findings from the independent report addressing gender-based-violence, we recognise that these themes intersect with other important topics such as race and gender.

Our aim is to engender a culture where we start to consider power imbalances and their implications, and where our University values are integrated into all aspects of our community.

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First published: 24 May 2023