Graduate Schools honoured at the Times Higher Awards
20 November 2006
Imperial has been praised for its innovative and integrated approach to supporting young academics within its two graduate schools after winning the award for outstanding support for early-career researchers at this year's Times Higher Education Supplement Awards, held on 15th November.
The two graduate schools are focused on ensuring excellence in both research and taught courses and in developing a high quality skills training programme. Since the establishment of the Graduate School of Life Sciences and Medicine (GSLSM) in 1999 and the Graduate School of Engineering and Physical Sciences (GSEPS) in 2002, over 70 workshops and courses have been set up to address a broad range of skills development.
A significant achievement of the graduate schools has been to implement this provision through the involvement of academic staff, integrating existing resources and expertise.
More recently, the graduate schools have set up an innovative three-day residential Research Skills Development (RSD) course. The RSD has been specifically designed for first-year research students and addresses skills relating to research and personal effectiveness. Members of the postdoctoral staff are also trained to teach on the course, giving them the additional opportunity to use their RSD experience as part of a more formal teaching qualification.
Professor Bernie Morley, Director of GSLSM explains, "Integrated skills development programmes have arisen from the commitment and drive of the graduate schools' teams to promote the skills development ethos - these efforts have led to fundamental changes in the College culture, whereby skills development is no longer viewed as something that is bought in or tagged on, but rather something that staff across the College work together to produce."
"The university has been innovative in using postdoctoral staff to tutor the postgraduate students and in awarding bursaries for research purposes," said Sir Gareth Roberts, president of Wolfson College, Oxford, who was one of the judges on the panel at the awards.
One RSD course involved research students from the Royal College of Art, with emphasis given to cross-subject communication and collaboration. Subsequently this has led to joint skills-development initiatives between the RCA and Imperial for the next academic year, fostering interdisciplinarity.
PhD students at the College also have the opportunity to take a two-day course on preparing for their thesis and examinations, which includes careers awareness advice to help them with the transition from PhD completion to full-time work.
Dame Julia Higgins, founder and past Director of GSEPS and now Principal of the Faculty of Engineering, said, "We are delighted to have won this award. When we set up the graduate schools we aimed for something very different from most of the existing graduate schools where postgraduate admissions and examination matters take precedence. The high-quality provision of skills development has been a principal concern of the schools here and our major success."
Research Councils UK and UK GRAD sponsored the award.
