Spark! December Newsletter
Professor/Associate Professor applications
You may be aware that the deadline for Professor and Associate Professor applications is fast approaching, a statement of intent to apply must be submitted by the deadline of 5pm on Monday 13th December. At Hallam we have reasonable representation of disabled staff across all levels of academia, 5.4% of all academics and around 6% of all current Profs and Associate Profs/Readers have declared a disability, and the Spark network truly believe that disability shouldn’t be a barrier to progression. We have asked a number of our current Professors and Associate Professors to share their story on the Career Profiles page. Professor Elizabeth Laycock, Professor Cristina Cerulli and Dr. David Smith have all talked about how they have progressed their career whilst managing a disability.
The grand opening of the Virtual “Disabili-tea” Room.
We are hosting our first virtual “Disabili-tea” Room at 12-1pm on Wednesday 12th January. This will be a relaxed session where disabled staff can come and chat about anything they like with other disabled staff. We hope to make this a regular session every second Wednesday of the month. To join the session, use the following link or email the Spark inbox to ask for a calendar invite. Join the Disabili-tea room.
Rights at work event
At the end of November, the Spark network, along with the other staff networks, hosted a series of events around Rights at Work, this included what an employee’s rights are in law, what this means in practice at Hallam for both academic and professional services staff, how you can support the rights of your colleagues and what to do if you think yours or anyone else’s rights aren’t being respected. If you missed the event then the recordings can be viewed on the Rights At Work page. This page also includes some articles about flexible working and links to useful resources including Hallam policies and Unison guidance. You can provide feedback on the event through our feedback form. We can then use this feedback for planning future events.
World Braille Day/Vision impairment awareness campaign
World Braille Day is celebrated on the 4th January, which is the birthdate of Louis Braille who developed the Braille system. As a network, we’d like to do something to commemorate this date and expand the campaign throughout the rest of January to look at raising awareness of vision impairments in general. If you would like to be involved and have a story to share, then please email the Spark inbox before the Christmas break. Any links to support or guidance for vision impaired staff would be much appreciated also.
Call for new committee members
The network is in need of more committee members in order to help sustain Spark and continue to grow the work that the network can do.
Please email Spark at Sparksdn@shu.ac.uk if you might be interested in joining the network committee and wish to know more about the roles available.
Best wishes and Seasons Greetings
Holly and the Spark! Network Committee