Athena Swan: the collation stage

Don't expect to read much about things other than Athena Swan on this blog for now! It is quite all-consuming, as I already mentioned. 

I thought I’d update on the process of asking six people to contribute, and then incorporating their contributions into one coherent narrative. It worked! At least, I think it did. We will, of course, only know whether it did when the whole thing has been submitted and judged, and we are informed on whether the submission was successful. I'm not sure how long that takes. But anyway; how did it go so far?

I had asked six people to look at one priority in our action plan. I had written a draft, and Alison from HR (although she does this as the Athena Swan officer, not as HR staff) had provided feedback. I had included all the data the draft was based on in the document. So then people were asked to see what I had done, make improvements if they saw fit, and provide 300 words of accompanying text. The application has to explain why the action plan is what it is.

I had asked for that to be delivered to me just short of a week before the deadline. I knew I would have to work hard to then incorporate it all into the greater narrative, but so be it.

Of course, that week, two of the six were ill. That didn't bode well. The other four delivered on time. And the ill ones managed to get it done before the end of the weekend. I had offered to write their bit too, but they didn't take me up on that. But these contributions meant that that Saturday, I could already incorporate most of their texts into the full document.

It was difficult to do the streamlining! I had asked for 300 words, but some people got a bit carried away and submitted considerably more. And the application has a fairly strict work limit. And the problem was, as well, that I had to make it all rather similar in format; that sometimes required me adding things. So I first had to make their texts longer, and then start culling and pruning. I have the feeling this might make me unpopular! But so be it. I'm not writing this application to become popular. The important thing is that we get the award. 

There are clear differences in style between these six. And also of approach. Some people had largely rewritten my action plan. Some had pretty much left it as was, and only written accompanying text. I don't know if that meant that they thought it was marvellous, or whether they wanted to spend a minimum amount of energy on it. But either way; by the end of the weekend I might not have had a full application, given that there are also contributions needed from the Head of School, but apart from that, I had something I was largely comfortable with. And I needed that; I had promised Alison the draft. Although I did some editing after I had sent it in. 

To my relief, she was largely positive about what I had sent her! That took a bit of the pressure off. Of course I still had things to sort. I was not at risk of getting bored! But it looked like that with this combined effort, we had broken the back of it…