Ex­cel­lence Pro­gramme for Women in Acad­e­mia

Lachende Studentin neben Bücherregalen
© Universität des Saarlandes

The Excellence Programme offers talented early career women academics at Saarland University a varied range of specialist support services designed to help them achieve high-impact roles in the academic or business sectors.

 

The Excellence Programme for Women in Academia offers support and guidance to high-potential female academics at Saarland University and at the non-university research institutes on campus. Women who aim to take up leading roles in academia or in the private sector receive tailored support that will enable them to make full use of their skills and to realize their career potential.

The Excellence Programme offers opportunities for specialized training, mentoring and coaching, enabling participants to connect with other academics and researchers and thus broaden their professional networks at the regional, national and international levels.

The programme is aimed at doctoral students, post-docs, habilitation candidates, leaders of junior research groups, academics permitted to teach at professorial level (Privatdozentinnen) and junior professors. As a programme participant, you will join a select group of women academics and have the opportunity to make use of all that the programme has to offer for a period of three years.

Programme components

The Excellence Programme provides specialized training and support initiatives designed to advance the careers of early career women academics at Saarland University. The long-term goal of the programme is to increase the proportion of women holding leadership and other high-level positions in academia and the business sector. The programme aims to increase the proportion of women applying for professorial positions and to encourage them to plan and build their careers and to develop their professional networks.

The programme has four components:

    • 1. Skills de­vel­op­ment and train­ing

      In­for­ma­tion events, train­ing courses and work­shops en­able par­tic­i­pants to de­velop their skills and ex­per­tise in var­i­ous areas. The courses and events or­ga­nized by the uni­ver­sity's Gen­der Equal­ity Of­fice re­flect the spe­cific re­quire­ments and pref­er­ences of pro­gramme par­tic­i­pants and are con­ducted in col­lab­o­ra­tion with spe­cial­ists in the rel­e­vant field. Ex­am­ples of pre­vi­ous courses and events in­clude: – Find­ing your voice – Speak­ing with con­fi­dence – The­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal as­pects of the pro­fes­so­r­ial ap­point­ments process – Com­mit­tee work – Se­cur­ing ex­ter­nal fund­ing – Man­age­ment and lead­er­ship skills – Con­flict man­age­ment

    • 3. Men­tor­ing

      The goal of men­tor­ing pro­gramme is to es­tab­lish a fruit­ful in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary di­a­logue with se­nior pro­fes­so­r­ial staff and/or lead­ing fig­ures in the local and re­gional busi­ness com­mu­ni­ties. This type of in­ter­ac­tion en­ables par­tic­i­pants to gain new in­sights and new per­spec­tives and to im­prove their ca­reer ad­vance­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties. The peer men­tor­ing scheme at Saar­land Uni­ver­sity of­fers par­tic­i­pants on the Ex­cel­lence Pro­gramme the op­por­tu­nity to con­nect and forge links with each other. Ben­e­fits for the mentee: – Shar­ing ideas, ex­pe­ri­ences and knowl­edge with the men­tor – Iden­ti­fy­ing and de­vel­op­ing your per­sonal po­ten­tial – Ca­reer plan­ning ad­vice and guid­ance – For­mal and in­for­mal net­work­ing

    • 2. Coach­ing

      After first dis­cussing their needs with the pro­ject team, par­tic­i­pants may then be as­signed to a spe­cial­ist coach for more in-depth ad­vice and train­ing. Top­ics that could be ad­dressed in in­di­vid­ual coach­ing ses­sions in­clude: – Per­sonal ca­reer plan­ning – Sup­port when ap­ply­ing for a pro­fes­so­r­ial po­si­tion and ne­go­ti­at­ing terms – Find­ing re­al­is­tic so­lu­tions and ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion plans – Bal­anc­ing work and fam­ily com­mit­ments

    • 4. Net­work­ing

      The pro­gramme also en­cour­ages par­tic­i­pants to ex­pand their pro­fes­sional net­works. As each group con­tains aca­d­e­mics from dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines, par­tic­i­pants are en­cour­aged to share ideas across sub­ject bound­aries, po­ten­tially lead­ing to new and pro­duc­tive pro­fes­sional re­la­tion­ships. Net­work­ing pro­vides an op­por­tu­nity for early ca­reer fe­male re­searchers to: – share and ex­change knowl­edge and ideas with other women aca­d­e­mics at a sim­i­lar stage of their ca­reers – ex­change knowl­edge and ideas with ex­perts – share in­for­ma­tion on ex­ist­ing sub­ject-spe­cific and pro­fes­sional net­works

Contact

Project lead
Gender Equality Officer at Saarland University
Dr. Sybille Jung
Phone: +49 681 302-4795
Email: sybille.jung(at)uni-saarland.de

Coordination and project implementation
Svenja Burmann, Dipl. KuWi
Phone: +49 681 302-4966
Fax: +49 681 302-4794
Email: svenja.burmann(at)uni-saarland.de

Gender Equality Office at Saarland University
Building C3 1 (Annex)
Postfach 15 11 50