Written by Director of Wellbeing Louise Hallo
The Emmanuel Community is the heart of our College. It is often considered our greatest strength, our unassuming superpower. When you experience it (and for the majority of our community they do) it stays with you for life. But how do we ensure that all our students get to feel this, to feel not only included, but that they belong? No matter who you are, where you come from, or who you want to be. How do we foster a community that celebrates and welcomes equality, equity, diversity and builds safety, respect and belonging? This is what I went in search of when I travelled to Germany to learn from their Inclusion and Diversity Teams. Why Germany? Because they have been tasked with this for decades and have built strategic plans and programs around this very work… striving for equality and equity in their students and in their staff.
In a whirlwind week, I visited four universities across Bavaria in Frankfurt, Heidelberg and Nuremberg. Some were hundreds of years old, and some so technologically advanced I couldn’t even find the front door! But they all had the same mandate, and they were working towards the same goal. Gender Equality, Equity and Inclusion. All four teams generously shared their strategic plans, their goals and how they measure their outcomes.
Birgit Schulte, Head of Equality at Ohm University in Nuremberg highlights – “Diversity as Individuality: Make individuals visible”. Being a primarily STEM university, one of their main programs specialises in improving the gender balance, in both their staff and student cohorts. Building bridging programs between schools to encourage and support young girls into these career paths and then encouraging their female students into teaching and management positions and PHD programs. At Emmanuel, year on year we see low numbers of our female students running for and being appointed to leadership positions in the Student Club. How can we transfer some of their programs and strategies here at Emmanuel College?
At Goethe University Frankfurt they shared their plans and work in physical and mental health inclusion and how they create a more supportive environment through their facilities to ensure academic success for students that struggle with anxiety or stress as well as appropriate physical accessibility for all. In Heidelberg, anti-bias training and cultural awareness training for all members of the university has been a large part of their strategic plan over the last five years and will be built into the next as well. How can we look at incorporating these programs and strategies here at College?
Taking all these learnings and incorporating them into our philosophy is what now lies ahead! My goal this year is to work with the student leaders and our staff on what our strategy could look like and how we implement it. How we educate and grow our whole community to understand, to learn and to support every individual Blue Dog to be themselves and to know that the community they belong to, the incredible Emmanuel community, is with them all the way.
