University of St Andrews

The Aurora Leadership Programme is a 12-month long programme combining instructor-led development activities, self-directed learning, action learning sets, and mentoring designed to develop participants in leadership skills. The programme consists of the following elements:

• An in-person programme welcome session
• An online programme induction session
• Four, 5-hour, online ‘Development days’ sessions
• Two, 5-hour, online Action Learning Set days
• An in-person ‘Your future in HE’ career session
• Self-directed study between development days
• Mentoring from an employee in a leadership role within the University

The AdvanceHE run development activities will take place between October and March. The mentoring provision of the programme will run from November for a 12-month period.

To be eligible to participate in the programme, applicants must be:

• a woman,

• working in either an academic, research, technical, or a professional services role,

• working in a role that is either grade 5 (professional services only), 6, 7, or 8,

• employed directly by the University on a University of St Andrews employment contract, and

• on a permanent or open-ended contract or has a fixed-term contract with an end date after the end date of the programme (i.e., date of last session).

This programme is not suitable for colleagues working as a Head of School or Head/Director of Service Unit.

Agency workers, contractors, and ScotGEM General Clinical Mentors are not eligible to apply to join the St Andrews cohort of the AdvanceHE Aurora Leadership Programme.

The Aurora Leadership Programme is a prestigious and competitive development programme that bears a considerable funding cost for the University. As such, participants are expected to commit to the full programme.

Therefore, programme participants are expected to:

• Commit to managing your own workload in such a way as to allow you to fully participate in the programme,
• Commit to attending the programme induction,
• Commit to attending all four Advance HE development days,
• Commit to attending both action learning sets days,
• Commit to completing all assigned pre-work and self-directed learning, and
• Commit to engaging with their mentor for the 12-month period of mentorship.

Given the considerable commitment for the participants in terms of time and resource to participant in the programme, there is an expectation on the participant’s line manager to support their colleague in fully participating in the programme.

Therefore, line managers of programme participants are expected to:

• Include participation in the programme in the participant’s RDS/ARDS record,
• Commit to allowing the participant to attend all required scheduled development events and activities,
• Commit to taking all reasonable steps, alongside the participant, to ensure that the participant workload or duties does not prevent them from participating in programme’s activities and events, and
• Commit to supporting the participant in finding opportunities for them to practice their learning and development from the programme, where possible.

The Aurora programme consists of seven, interlinked developmental activity days with additional self-directed learning throughout the programme. Participants will join the Scottish cohort by default for their development activities throughout the programme. In the event that a participant is foreseeably unable to attend one or more activity dates for the Scottish cohort, them may request to be allocated to another cohort with different scheduled activity dates, with sufficient notice and subject to availability.

Participants are required to attend all four development days and both action learning set days. Participants who are unable to participate in scheduled activity dates due to unforeseen, exceptional circumstances, may be granted a deferral to the following year. This will be at the discretion of AdvanceHE, if authorised by OSDS.

It is recommended that participants block out the whole day for each development activity day to allow time for completion of any pre-work before each session, and reflection on learning at the end of each session.

Here are the dates of the Aurora 2025/26 cohort programme activities.

Mandatory sessions

Introduction

Venue: Online (Zoom)

Date/time: Tuesday 16 September 2025, 10am-12.30pm.

Development day #1 – Theme: Identity, impact, and voice

Venue: Online (Zoom)

Date/time: Tuesday 23 September 2025, 10am-3pm.

Development day #2 – Theme: Core leadership

Venue: Online (Zoom)

Date/time: Tuesday 7 October 2025, 10am-3pm.

Action learning set #1

Venue: Online (Zoom)

Date/time: Tuesday 28 October 2025, 10am-3pm.

Development day #3 – Theme: Politics and influence

Venue: Online (Zoom)

Date/time: Tuesday 11 November 2025, 10am-3pm

Development day #4 – Theme: Adaptive leadership

Venue: Online (Zoom)

Date/time: Friday 12 December 2025, 10am-3pm

Your future in higher education career session

Venue: Delegates self-host

Date/time: Friday 16 January 2025, 9.30am-4pm

Action learning set #2

Venue: Delegates self-host

Date/time: Tuesday 27 January 2025, 10am-3pm

The application window for the 2025/26 cohort of the Advance HE Aurora Leadership Programme will open in June.

Once the application window has closed, the applications will be collated and reviewed by a panel. This panel is convened by the Vice-Principal (People and Diversity) and will include colleagues from Organisational and Staff Development Services and at least one Aurora Champion.

The University’s Aurora Champions are:

Professor Dame Sally Mapstone FRSE, Principal and Vice-Chancellor

Dr Rebekah Widdowfield, Vice-Principal (People and Diversity)

Avery Hawkins, Organisational Development Adviser

How much does it cost to participate?

The University pays £1,100 per placement (as of 2024) in the programme. This is centrally funded from the University’s employee professional development budget and is paid by OSDS. Individuals and their respective schools or units are not required to reimburse this cost to OSDS.

The University will reimburse programme participants for travel and subsistence expenses incurred from attending in-person programme events and activities that are compliant with the University’s Travel Policy and Expenses Policy respectively. Travel and subsistence expenses are funded from the participant’s school or unit cost centre.

Is a development programme which is exclusively for women legal in the UK?

The Aurora programme is an externally run development initiative created by AdvanceHE, a member-led charity of and for the Higher Education sector that works with partners across the globe to improve higher education for employees, students, and society.

Under UK legislation and the Scottish Specific Duties (2012) resulting from the Equality Act (2010), it is lawful to take positive action to address under representation and minimise workplace disadvantage.

Are there previous participants that I can speak to about their experience?

Previous applicants for the programme have had the benefit of speaking to previous participants to ask about their experience and understand whether the programme is right for them.

To help you make contact with previous participants in the programme, below is a list of participants from the two previous years that the programme has run.

2023/24 Cohort

2022/23 Cohort