# EDI focused REG placement scheme (a proposal)

## Motivation

CRS: This can serve us as inspiration https://lida.leeds.ac.uk/study-training/data-science-internship-scheme/

Things we could mention:
1) part of our efforts to become more visible to the younger members of the scientific community
2) expanding our radius outside consolidated partners (as specific departments / universities)
3) making young researchers aware of our career path (and of the importance of REG!) while they are still during their doctoral studies
4) reach out to people that:
a) could potentially become in the future permanent elements of our group, but
b) maybe would not apply to our current call
5) The scheme would provide mentoring opportunities that can function as proffesional develpment/career progression for non-senior REG staff.

(GM): Attract people from backgrounds and groups that are misrepresented and maybe do not yet have the qualifications/experience to apply for a permanent role? Use scheme to test EDI focused strategies?

## Description

### Potential candidates and REG capacity

Candidates could be paired with people, especially with non senior REG, if this could be considered a way for us to build up our line manager / mentoring skills.

CRS: For now only focus on PhD students in the last 2 years of their program. (?)

(GM): Do we want to extend this to cover MSc students or does this need to be PhD specific? Including them might help EDI focus (both in academic disciplines and with under-represented groups).

### Selection of the projects for placements

The first step for us would be to map all active projects that would be interested in integrating a 1.0 FTE enrichent REG student, instead of a 0.5 FTE normal REG. This is the point I see particularly difficult, because what projects like LwM need from REG are experienced data scientists / software engineers. So we might need to find a solution that works for REG, but does not scare the PIs in the projects. Maybe a gradual switch from 0.5 to 0.1 for the REG person (moving from coding to mentoring)?

I agree that this will be the most difficult and I think we should start reaching out now. Perhaps best step is just to speak to one of the PIs to establish what sort of thing they would expect.

I think the projects will need to have at least another member of REG staff currently on the team who can offer support.

(GM): Will raise this in next QUIPP meeting to understand if Martin and other PIs are open to it.

### Recruitment process

(CRS): If we want to run an established program we should standardise the number of times a call is publish (Maybe twice a year?). The number of places will depend of demand from projects that can have a student.

(Fede) Many important things have emerged from our meeting with Amy Gallimore. The core question, which we also might want to have an open discussion between ourselves, is if we want to implement directly some internal "rules" to have for instance 50/50 men and women, a good representation of different disciplines, etc. or if it is something we hope would emerge through our collaboration with the enrichment network.

(KX) thoughts on above: I think this can be difficult if we're starting with two placements as there may be larger variation between applications. In these cases there may be a bit of an uncomfortable tradeoff. I think one goal we should definitely have is to have a wider range of applications. Noted in Amy G's enrichment scheme the problem was often a lack of applications as opposed to necessarily the success rate. Also we should consider what variables our internal rules should be based on (even if targets). Presumably something like:

- Gender (more women)
- Ethnicity (more diversity in particular with black researchers)
- Discipline (more than just physics)
- Another I'd like us to consider is university backgrounds. I've been thinking how we might improve socio economic diversity, and I think university background might be one proxy.

I'd be reasonably open towards a **satisficing** approach to internal rules. We set a certain standard that we expect candidates to meet and modulo the rest. After that point we're standard-neutral and can focus primarily on these internal rules.

Amy also mentioned that offering opportunities on a part-time basis (and explicitly mentioning flexible working) widely increased the diversity of applications received. Would we be able to incoporate this into the placements for REG?

### Financing

Highly connected with the REG capacity, but as we would like to attract people from outside London we need to consider some top-up budget for the cost of living in London.

We could also have some of these placements virtually which might make them more accessible as well. We suspect that women and people from BAME backgrounds may be more likely to need more flexible working.

## Changes to REG processes

- Propose that REG includes in the project scoping process the question if a placement student would satisfy the PI as part of the REG offer.
- Make sure the metric suggesting "resources needed" reflects the number of students we can allocate (review this in a 3 month basis and communicate it to the Recruitment SA).

## Action plans

Maybe starting with something small, like 2 people paired with 2 big projects (LwM could be one of them) for 3 months (Oct / December or Jan/March)?

CRS:
After approval from REG leadeship:
- Equality impact assesment (from Amy Gallimore)
- Write a job add for recruiting the N students we will start with (https://jobs.leeds.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx?ref=PSLDA1000).
- Design an interview process.

I think the priority is to establish which kinds of projects would accept placement students.

Once we are confident that there will be placements we need to think about to what extent our application process might be different to existing processes. I.e. how will it lead to greater diversity of applications? Is it about a more accessible application, or more diversity of advertising?

(GM): I think it should be both of those things and any other findings from the recent race workshop, plus internal discussion. In terms of advertising, we could take particular care to share the ads to channels with EDI focus, e.g. particular mailing lists, EDI data science groups that have been identified, etc.

Do we expect our interview process to be significantly different to existing interview processes?

## Goals for the first 6 - 12 months