Personal development
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On-line training
The University provides two EDI relevant online training courses for students:
Training via IELLI
The University’s (IELLI) offers a range of training opportunities for undergraduate and postgraduate students.
Mentoring schemes
The Academic Intersectionality Mentoring in Medical Schools scheme (AIMMS) is a new national initiative that aims to support the career development of women from Black, Asian, and ethnic minority backgrounds towards equal and authentic leadership in academic medicine and health sciences.鈥� The School of Medicine is a founding member, along with eight other UK medical schools and the Academy of Medical Sciences. In the first phase, the aim is to鈥痗onnect鈥痺omen from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds through a鈥�.
Bute medical society
The Bute Medical society hosts both social and academic events throughout the year. It hosts events including academic talks which encourage speakers to expand and challenge students medical knowledge, on topics within and beyond the school’s curriculum. There are opportunities during your time with the School to be elected to the committee of the society and continue its good work.
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Equality and Diversity
The University has a Dignity and Inclusion portfolio of courses which cover a range of awareness, support and training sessions related to equality, diversity, inclusion and wellbeing issues in the workplace. The courses can be taken in stand-alone form or as part of a portfolio which secures a ‘certificate of recognition’ once all courses are completed. The courses are designed to be useful to all staff, with some being especially useful for those with responsibility for others.
Those interested in taking courses within the portfolio, and want to discuss the content further, can contact capod@st-andrews.ac.uk or a member of the EDI team on diversity@st-andrews.ac.uk.
The University also offers three short, online training courses for staff:
Mentoring and Coaching
The University has a coaching scheme for staff:
Training opportunities
The University’s (IELLI) provides pedagogical training opportunities for teaching staff, and the Organisational and Staff Development Services (OSDS) is the University’s central provider of professional development for all University staff. They offer a range of development courses to help staff boost their career, such as IT and teaching skills. These are open to both education focussed staff, and postgraduate researchers too.
The University supports female academic and professional services staff to attend the Leadership Foundation in Higher Education (LFHE) Aurora programme and Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) academic and professional services staff to attend the Advance HE Diversifying Leadership programme.
Within the school our focuses on high quality medical educational research and the development of medical educational researchers. We have an active Medical Education Research Group. Ongoing research examines various aspects of the training of tomorrow’s doctors and other health professionals. The school aims to help staff link in with research opportunities and projects that align with their interests as part of their continuing development.
Providing letters of recommendation
When writing letters of recommendation, the author's implicit biases can influence how they describe applicants and what they choose to emphasise about them.
For instance, the study reports that letters of recommendation for female applicants are more likely to include ‘doubt raisers’ (such as ‘even though’ or ‘despite’) than letters for male applicants.
Another study, reports that applicants from minority ethnic backgrounds are less likely than white applicants to be described using ‘stand-out’ adjectives (e.g., ‘exceptional’), regardless of academic ability.
Letters of recommendation should ideally emphasise accomplishments, as well as effort, and caution should be taken with adjectives that might evoke negative stereotypes (e.g., ‘hard-working’, ‘conscientious’ and ‘dependable’). Online text analysis software, such as the , can be used to test draft letters for biased language. Comments about an applicant’s personal life or individual circumstances (including disabilities or family situations) should only be mentioned at the request of the applicant.
Additional advice and tips are available: