From the Technician Commitment launch event
Our technical staff play an important part in our ongoing success, so we're proud to be supporting our technical community through the Technician Commitment.
What is the Technician Commitment?
It's a sector-wide, collaborative initiative aimed at ensuring visibility, recognition, career development and sustainability for technical staff working in higher education and research, across all subjects.
It's led by the Science Council and supported by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation's Technicians Make It Happen campaign. We're one of many universities and other institutions that have signed up.
What's happening at Durham?
We signed the Technician Commitment in late 2018 and since then a Steering Group has been working to develop an Action Plan, including conducting a survey of technical staff.
On Wednesday 20 November, around 100 staff attended a launch event, celebrating the work of technical research and teaching support staff and bringing together our technical community across the University.
We had guest speakers, including from the Gatsby Foundation and the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the event was chaired Professor Stefan Przyborski, our Executive Dean (Science) and Chair of our Technician Commitment Steering Group.
Professor Colin Bain, our Vice-Provost (Research), spoke about how technicians make a valuable and important contribution to the achievement of our University Strategy, and several of our technicians spoke about their careers and experiences.
There was also time for technicians from different Departments to meet one another, discuss their work and share ideas.
What now?
The Steering Group will continue to develop our Action Plan, aiming to embed the values of the Technician Commitment right across the University.
