EmpowHer for Female Professors and Managers

The empowHer Network sustainably promotes the visibility and representation of female leaders in academia and administration at Osnabrück University. During regularly held networking evenings, female professors and administrative unit managers get to know each other and have the opportunity to exchange experiences and strategies for managing their leadership roles and the associated opportunities and challenges. This allows network members to benefit from one another’s experiences, gain mutual support, and work toward identifying and ultimately reducing structural barriers for women in leadership positions. In addition to supporting individual career paths, the network also contributes to a positive cultural shift at Osnabrück University.

If you have any ideas or comments on the network activities, please contact us at  empowHer@uni-osnabrueck.de!

The regularly held NetWalking events provide members of the empowHer Network with an opportunity to deepen their network connections in a dynamic format. They explore various locations across the university and introduce themselves to the network as academics or administrative experts in an informal setting. These events also allow members to explore possibilities for cooperation and collaboration within the network.

During a shared NetWalk across campus, participants introduce themselves and their workplaces to their network colleagues within thirty minutes. The structure of the presentation is flexible, but it may include the following aspects:

• Working environment: Team members or work group; laboratory tour or workplace presentation; special technologies and workflows
• Research content and work focus: Important research findings and upcoming research projects; structures and projects in central administration; unique opportunities or challenges in your field; brief experiments or insights into larger experiments
• Collaborations and opportunities for collaboration: Previous interdisciplinary cooperation; potential for future collaboration; significant points of contact between academia and administration
• Projects in the field of science communication, social transfer and social responsibility

Are you interested in introducing yourself and your workplace? Contact us at  empowHer@uos.de and we will organize the rest!

Goals and Content

The goals of the empowHer Leadership Program are to raise awareness among women in leadership roles at the university about their own leadership competencies and strategies, deepen these skills, and apply them effectively in their leadership practice. Through the workshops offered in the Leadership Program, participants learn various coaching tools and strategies they can use in their daily interactions with students, staff, and colleagues, and importantly, for their own personal development. They engage with other participants, gaining fresh insights into developing a coaching culture as part of a supportive and appreciative leadership environment.

In collaboration with internationally certified Canadian trainer Cristine Saxon, target-specific, multi-day leadership training sessions are conducted twice a year in English. Throughout the year, the program is complemented by various online workshops and self-organized activities within the empowHer Network. Osnabrück University views networking among female academics across all status groups as an important tool for empowerment and support on the career path. The empowHer Leadership Program also focuses on providing specific qualifactions for (future) leadership positions.

Trainer

Cristine Saxon is a Canada-based career coach and leadership consultant with over 25 years of experience as a coach, trainer, moderator, and leadership consultant across various sectors, especially in higher education and the nonprofit sector. Her focus is primarily on coaching and mentoring, leadership, emotional intelligence, and motivation.

In 2015, during a workshop at the University of Regina—a partner university of Osnabrück University—she met the central Equal Opportunity Representative Dr.ⁱⁿ Sabine Jösting. Together, they conceived the idea of a leadership program for women in leadership positions at Osnabrück University. Since 2016, the empowHer Program, developed through this collaboration, has been continually refined and, since 2018, it is being funded by the "Professorinnen-Programm", a joint initiative of the federal government and the federal states to increase the numbers of female professors at German universities.

Testimonials

"Christine's workshop was a wonderful opportunity to reflect on my different roles, my style, my strengths and weaknesses and to develop myself further, and with a good dose of humor. A great week."

"I very much enjoyed working with someone so experienced and professional, looking at us and how we work from another cultural perspective - a highly enriching experience!"

"I was completely clueless and am now annoyed that I didn't do this earlier. Cristine Saxon is so experienced in that Anglo-Saxon way that you don't even notice when it gets serious - and it gets very serious."

"The workshop was better than any didactics training course I've ever attended."