Action in support of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic staff and students

Imperial has many staff and students from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds, drawn from the UK and overseas.

Though race equality has made significant strides in the UK in recent decades, the government’s race disparity audit shows starkly that BAME people still face very significant barriers in education and employment. The effects of this can be seen in the staff and student profiles at Imperial, acutely so in some quarters, e.g. in senior academic and administrative appointments, or in the numbers of students from the UK who are of black African or Caribbean heritage.

We must be more proactive in eliminating these barriers. Although we already have dedicated initiatives to highlight and address the experiences of BAME staff and students (e.g. , the IMPACT talent and development programme), we need to do more.

As a first step, at the start of 2018 Imperial became a member of the Race Equality Charter. We see this as a valuable way to reinvigorate our ongoing efforts to recruit, retain and nurture talented staff and students from minority ethnic backgrounds.

Actions

Consult

We will survey all staff and students, to gather information on the particular experiences of BAME staff and students at Imperial and explore these in greater depth in focus groups.

We will identify institutional impediments to the inclusion, recruitment and progression of BAME people at Imperial and formulate an ambitious and specific action plan to tackle these.

Race Equality Charter

We will submit a full application for a university-wide Race Equality Charter Bronze award by the end of 2019.

We will use ongoing work on the Race Equality Charter to raise awareness of the problem of racial discrimination among students and staff at Imperial.

Support

We will support and promote the IMPACT training and development programme.

We will promote participation in the Imperial as One staff network.