Dedicated to Providing Equal Opportunites
IGaD, the Integration Team – Human Resources, Gender und Diversity Management at RWTH Aachen University, is celebrating its 10-year anniversary. Since 2017, the IGaD staff unit has been one of the major drivers of an innovative, lively university culture which strives to offer equal opportunities for all and seeks to protect from discrimination. Moreover, access to rewarding careers should be open to all, regardless of personal characteristics and external circumstances. The staff unit has been established as part of the University’s first institutional strategy, developed under and funded by the Excellence Initiative of the federal and state governments.
In their welcoming speeches, both RWTH Rector Ernst Schmachtenberg and Professor Doris Klee, Vice Rector for Human Resources Management and Development, highlighted the importance of IGaD in working towards a sustainable equal opportunities culture. The most important steps, according to Manuela Aye, the director of IGaD, have been taken, for example, by raising the funds for and implementing the Female Professors Program, by expanding the TANDEM Mentoring Programs and by establishing– in partnership with the Equal Opportunities Office – the Equal Opportunities Strategy for RWTH Aachen University.
Professor Carmen Leicht-Scholten from the RWTH Gender and Diversity in Engineering Research Group, who established the IGaD in 2007 and headed it for a few years, discussed with other RWTH Aachen representatives the key challenges and necessary developments involved in achieving a science system based on equal opportunities values. On behalf of the rectorate, IGaD will continue to persistently advocate for an open university culture. The lecture series "A Changing University – Gender and Diversity from Different Perspectives," which has been offered for five years running now, can, among a multitude of other projects and activities, be seen as a contributing factor in reaching this goal.
Source: Press and Communications