During July 2023, staff and students from Warwick Medical School worked together on a project relating to Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI). As part of this work, four students collaborated with the Director of Student Experience to co-create a workshop discussing key considerations and challenges faced by underrepresented students in learning environments and their wider university experience.

A total of 176 colleagues from across WMS attended one of 17 small-group, three-hour sessions. Evaluation results indicate statistically significant shifts in participant knowledge and confidence levels in pre-post survey data, with qualitative feedback emphasising the strength of the student-led format.

Until this time, there had been no in-person EDI training exploring intersectionality or how policies and practices impact the student experience. The foundational aims of the training were to reflect the reality of students from marginalised communities, and to have a conversational-type training that brings colleagues from across the School together.

Next steps:

• Create a toolkit to expand this training reach to include all staff and students across the University of Warwick and potentially beyond.
• Explore opportunities for further partnership such as the local Trusts training and an event for alumni of the INSPIRE leadership academy.

• Present the project at conferences and consider publishing in a practice-oriented journal.
• Further design the training to be adaptable for replication in other educational institutions.
• Document methodologies, successes, and lessons learned for wider academic community insights.

The INspire programme is designed to support staff who face well documented barriers getting into top leadership positions.

Participants are given the opportunity to explore their unique identity as a leader and plan their career paths, through a combination of peer mentoring, coaching, sponsorship by University Executive Board members, as well as opportunities to converse with leaders from a various sectors.

Academic and professional services staff at grade 9 who identify as disabled, women, LGBTQUIA+ or from minority ethnic backgrounds are eligible to apply.

Learning outcomes include the development of participants' understanding of the evolving role and strategic context of higher education, while also supporting participants to develop their personal and professional awareness. This incorporates consistently reflective practice to enhance experiential leadership learning.

Outputs: Find out more about the INspire leadership development programmeLink opens in a new window.

This six-month programme combines workshops and group coaching to equip aspiring leaders with the knowledge and abilities they need to effectively address the unique challenges they face in predominantly non-diverse environments.

The programme also equips line managers to become catalysts for change by understanding and confronting systemic practices and personal behaviours that can perpetuate disadvantages.

EmpowerHer is open to academic and professional services women at grades 5, 6, and 7, who belong to minority ethnic groups and their managers.

The EmpowerHer programme aims to support the University's commitment to increase representation of BAME employees at senior levels and in leadership positions.

Output: Learn more about the EmpowerHer programmeLink opens in a new window.

Various reports on student attainment and experience at Warwick and across the higher education sector show a clear and substantial difference in the attainment, progression and experience of students of colour compared to those who identify as White.

As a means of addressing these issues, a group of staff and students based within WIHEA’s Anti-racist Pedagogy and Process in Higher Education Learning Circle have focused specifically on developing and delivering anti-racism staff training across the institution, through the Tackling Racial Inequality at Warwick staff development programme.

The programme addresses a need among Warwick staff for support in speaking about racism and eliminating the race-based degree awarding gaps. As a result, TRIW has been carefully designed to help academic and professional services staff better understand the social construction of race, the different operations of racism, and the variety of ways racism manifests itself in the sector and specifically at Warwick, both in learning and wider university spaces. The approach taken in TRIW is rooted in the principles of anti-racist pedagogy and its significance to all disciplines.

Above all, encouraging and facilitating self-reflection amongst staff vis-à-vis their own practice, context, social position and dynamics of power is at the heart of the approach.

Initially piloted with 53 academic and professional service staff in 2020/21, by 2023/24 the programme has attracted more than 400 participants from across the institution.

Outputs: Participating staff have learnt how to have thoughtful, open and rigorous conversations about racism, learning to continue talking and working well together when we disagree, when mistakes are made, and when we have to face our own complicity or help colleagues face theirs.

As a result, stronger relationships to further progress anti-racism work have been built which span the institution, reaching across the academic/professional services divide, our differences in lived experience of race and racism, generational and national differences, faculty differences, and more.

The impact of TRIW has also been witnessed by concrete actions/initiatives instigated directly as a result of participating on the programme. These have ranged from greater departmental engagement with Black students, to faculty events, to influencing the University’s Inclusive Education Model.

Read more about the TRIW programmeLink opens in a new window.

Next steps: The next step is to build a national network on anti-racism staff training in HE amongst universities across the country interested in adopting the Warwick TRIW model to their institutions.