This morning (or I should say ‘evening’ for those in Australia) I took part in a webinar hosted by Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE). First the SAGE team asked me about my experience of leading Edinburgh Napier University to successful achievement on the institutional bronze Athena SWAN award at first attempt in 2014. Continue reading
Today is Ada Lovelace Day, the international celebration of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). At Edinburgh Napier University we’re marking the day with a public lecture to be delivered by Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock this evening at our Craiglockhart campus. In her presentation Dr Aderin-Pocock will address the question of why so few girls take up careers in science, technology engineering and maths. She will explain why we need more women in these areas and propose strategies to encourage girls to study the STEM subjects at school so that these career routes are open to them. Continue reading
An unwelcome question
At a party recently another guest kindly asked me how I felt about “returning to work in the autumn” after my “long summer vacation”. I held my breath for a few seconds, then carefully replied that my annual leave entitlement is 27 days plus 14 fixed/public holidays. (This may be fewer than his – I didn’t ask). To get the conversation back on track, I then enthused about my fabulous two-week holiday in the far north west of Scotland in August, and the events that I managed to catch during the Edinburgh Festival and the Fringe. In response he told me about his own summer break. We were both able to enjoy this pleasant, yet insignificant, conversation ending on a happy discussion of the best British summer weather in years.
In early July I wrote a blog post about Macedonian intern student Dushko Staneoski. Dushko joined us over the summer 2013 to design, implement and evaluate a WordPress site for Connect, the network for women studying computing, engineering and the built environment at Edinburgh Napier University.
Dushko with his summer 2013 colleagues Tracey Binnie (L) and Cheryl Cairns (R)
Dushko Stanoeski joined us this week at Edinburgh Napier University to help complete a summer project.
Dushko is a final year student at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technologies at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Macedonia where he specialises in Informatics and Computer Engineering.
Hazel Hall 