Diversity and Inclusion Award

This Award recognises individuals or societies who reach out to every member of the University community, going above and beyond to ensure everyone is equally involved and represented. Their actions are changing the culture of the University and instilling the values of equality, diversity and inclusion in the foundations of their society.

One of the most important parts of running a society is ensuring that everyone is included. Who do you know, either society or individual, who goes above and beyond to reach out to people and get them involved?  Perhaps selecting a diverse range of guest speakers or running regular non-drinking socials, campaigning for change or championing inclusivity across the student body. These society members actively encourage a wide variety of people with a huge range of interests to participate at every event.

Individuals, sub-committees and entire societies can be nominated for this Award.

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See an example of a great nomination:

PPS: Poynting Physical Society are current holders of the Diversity and Inclusion Award: 

PPS made it their goal to become a more inclusive society and foster a culture of inclusivity in the School of Physics and Astronomy. They recognised they represent many different types of people and set out to lay a new foundation for the Society. This began with introducing a zero-tolerance hate speech policy to their constitution, an ethos they will carry forevermore. They acknowledged university can be a daunting prospect and launched a new Family Scheme to welcome students joining in September. They wrote letters to everyone, personally welcoming them to the University and included personality surveys to aid the Family Scheme and ensure everyone was assigned an appropriate student buddy, or ‘parent’ and diverse families. Their parent not only acted as a mentor but a guaranteed person who would attend events with them. PPS then went on to organise 22 different events in 20 weeks, answering as many interests as they possibly could to make sure no one was left out. Their first LGBTQ+ Allies and Friends event inspired and empowered people who identify as LGBTQ+, educated on how to be a good ally, stamped out casual homophobia and encouraged everyone to feel confident in themselves. PPS also built inclusivity as a core theme into the National Student Space Conference, providing gender pronoun badges and stickers indicating how comfortable each attendee was with being approached. The entire committee made it their mission to make PPS more inclusive, but special mention must go to Lucy Millins for ensuring these important

More strong examples can be found in the 2020 Shortlist brochure (PDF).