{"id":14,"date":"2024-12-18T13:09:18","date_gmt":"2024-12-18T13:09:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/women-academics-can\/?p=14"},"modified":"2024-12-18T13:09:18","modified_gmt":"2024-12-18T13:09:18","slug":"getting-started-with-promotion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/women-academics-can\/2024\/12\/18\/getting-started-with-promotion\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting Started With Promotion!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our first networking event of the Women Academics Change Agents (WACA) Network took place on Mon 16th<\/sup> Dec. Being the first working day since term finished, it was a good time for people to pause and think about \u201cGetting started with promotion\u201d, the theme for this first event. Also being the first working day since term finished, the room we had booked in Chancellor\u2019s Building was locked! Not to be deterred we set up in adjacent rooms which were open.<\/p>\n

\"Figure<\/p>\n

Twenty six women academics attended to hear from Felicia Fai on \u2018It begins with a single step\u2019. Felicia is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Management and a Co-Chair for WACA Network. The proverb, attributed to Lao Tzu, is actually \"a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Felicia outlined that the first step, on a journey that might take up to two years before submitting an application, was to read\u00a0the University's\u00a0Career Progression in the Education and Research Job Family document<\/a>. The second \u00a0step is to read it again, carefully! Felicia detailed her own career and lessons she had learned along her \u2018journey of a thousand miles\u2019. In particular, Felicia highlighted the need to be able to evidence your own contribution against the criteria. Felicia recommended updating your PURE record every time you do something \u2013 it\u2019s a great way of keeping your CV up to date but also documenting all the things that you do in a busy academic career. She also suggested keeping emails from students or colleagues and other forms of recommendation that can act as evidence, alongside more traditional metrics of online unit evaluations for teaching or publication citation information. Importantly, Felicia emphasized the benefits of finding support to help you navigate the promotion criteria \u2013 this could be your Head of Department, a mentor, somebody who sits on Academic Staff Committee or Departmental promotions committee, or perhaps your reviewer for your annual appraisal, SDPR.<\/p>\n

The second speaker was Stephen Pavelin, Deputy Dean in the School of\u00a0 Management and long-standing former member of the University's Academic Staff Committee (ASC) which is responsible for decision making on career progression. Stephen began by outlining the current composition of the Academic Staff Committee . <\/a>Stephen highlighted the importance of recognizing the different voices that are involved in decision making about any case for promotion. In particular, he highlighted the cross-disciplinary nature of \u00a0ASC and the importance of articulating your promotion case for a non-specialist audience. He also spent some time considering the importance of identifying external referees who are the subject experts and play a very important role in the decision making process. Stephen\u2019s key recommendation was to create a narrative that evidences your contribution to addressing a particular problem, its importance and to consider what actions have been taken and reflect on whether that was successful. It is not sufficient to say \u201cI have had this role\u201d \u2013 you must say what impact or contribution you made in that role.<\/p>\n

The two \u2018short talks\u2019 ended up taking an hour with a lively and engaged audience asking many questions of the speakers along the way. There are some challenges in identifying external referees particularly for teaching only staff, who will need to consider how best to identify external colleagues that will understand their role and their contribution to the discipline. There are also challenges in getting good quality advice \u2013 successful promotion applications from others, as exemplars, can be useful and ensuring that any advice is grounded in the published career progression criteria.<\/p>\n

The session finished with an opportunity for coffee, biscuits and networking. People often face similar challenges in getting started with promotion and the uncertainties about how the process works. One thing that the WACA network can help with, might be finding somebody supportive from outside your discipline to read your promotion application \u2013 after all, if you can write a convincing narrative that is easily understood by a non-specialist, that is half the battle!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sarah Bailey, Co-Chair WACA Network<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our first networking event of the Women Academics Change Agents (WACA) Network took place on Mon 16th Dec. Being the first working day since term finished, it was a good time for people to pause and think about \u201cGetting started...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":547,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[6,4,5],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","tag-edi","tag-promotion","tag-women-academics"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/women-academics-can\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/women-academics-can\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/women-academics-can\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/women-academics-can\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/547"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/women-academics-can\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/women-academics-can\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/women-academics-can\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/women-academics-can\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/women-academics-can\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}