Message from the Students’ Unions’ Presidents

Creating a Diverse and Inclusive TU

CUA collaboration on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) has intensified this year. The three institutes are currently working on building in principles of equality, diversity and inclusion into all stages of organisational design and development of the new TU.

Athena SWAN Bronze Award

In October 2020, the three institutes came together and developed an agreed Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Principles and Values Framework. This framework informed the development of EDI Policies within the three institutes. Progress on gender equality has been scaffolded by the Athena SWAN Charter and the requisite institutional self-assessment required for Bronze award applications. To promote collaboration and share learning, colleagues from the partner institutes attended each other’s SelfAssessment Team meetings and had regular progress updates and informationsharing meetings in advance of the submission date.

Under the watchful eyes of the Owl of Athena, Dr Brendan McCormack (back left), President IT Sligo and the Self-Assessment Team celebrate their Athena Swan Bronze Award

The EDI function has an important role as an agent of culture change in the development of the new TU, to ease the transition into the new entity and ensure that an inclusive ethos based on equality is reflected in the organisational and governance structure, policy, and wider cultural initiatives. Merging Gender Action Plans

All three institutes submitted Institutional Bronze Award applications in November 2020 and were delighted to achieve Bronze Awards in March 2021. The virtual awards ceremony was held in October 2021.

The CUA partners have engaged with Athena SWAN Ireland to prepare a submission for a legacy award post TU designation. This process will include the merging of three Gender Action Plans into one cohesive plan for the TU, a process that will be made easier by the high degree of alignment of the three institute plans. This new action plan will set the gender equality priorities of the new TU for its first three years.

Paul Hannigan (front left), President of LYIT, together with members of Executive Board and the Athena SWAN Self-Assessment Team with the Institute’s Bronze Athena SWAN award.

Increasing EDI awareness across all campuses

The three institutes have also worked together over the last two years offering training to staff across the eight campuses. Training sessions delivered to staff include, Transgender Awareness, Unconscious Bias and specific training for recruiting managers in this area.

Each institute is also working with local Rape Crisis Centres to provide training on consent and receiving disclosures, with unfilled spaces on each other’s courses being made available to partners. In addition to gender equality other priorities for the coming year include issues relating to disability, race equality and sexual orientation. It is planned to offer training to staff on race equality, facilitating discussions on language and terminology on race, increasing awareness of the history and context of racism in Ireland and an understanding of white privilege.

All three TU partners achieving the Athena SWAN Bronze Award sends out a strong message that equality will be at the heart of our new TU. We now need to consolidate our action plans into one and get on with implementing it. There is plenty to be done. Tom Reilly,

EDI Manager, IT Sligo

Exciting new EDI Initiatives in 2021

IT Sligo have been providing free period products since September 2021. The practical arrangements around this exciting new initiative have been shared with EDI leads across the CUA with the aim of working together to roll this initiative out across the alliance. GMIT launched its period poverty/period stigma campaign in October 2021.

GMIT launched an LGBTQ + & Allies Staff Network in June 2021. CUA colleagues were invited and attended this launch. The learning from the establishment of this group is being shared with partners and will inform the development of such networks in the other campuses.

LYIT organised an online EDI talk for all CUA colleagues with Bashir Otukoya to celebrate Black History Month in October 2021. Bashir is a former LYIT Student, and currently an Assistant Professor of European Union Law at Dublin City University. He has written extensively on Irish identity and its intersectionality with citizenship, nationality, Irishness, race and social justice.

All three institutes recently launched the Speak Out iniative, an online and anonymous reporting platform for incidents of bullying, cyberbullying, harassment, discrimination, hate crime, coercive behaviour/control, stalking, assault, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape.

Dr Orla Flynn (front right), President of GMIT, pictured with members of the GMIT Athena SWAN Self-Assessment Team.

We are working closely with our CUA partners on various initiatives such as merging our Athena SWAN Gender Action Plans, Consent and developing new equality-related policies to ensure that values of equality are firmly embedded in the new TU.

Mary Nestor, EDI Officer, GMIT

We are proud that LYIT and our CUA partners, have each achieved the Athena Swan Bronze Award. As we travel on this journey together to become a TU, we as CUA partners are committed to creating a culture, in which staff and students work in partnership, to create and maintain an inclusive learning and working environment.

Helen McGrandles, HR Manager, LYIT