The Management Board agreed to implement the recommendations resulting from the Strategic Education Committee’s Review of Professional Development for Postgraduate Students and Early Career Researchers.
These recommendations include a renewed focus for transferable skills programmes – they should help students to gain skills that they may not practice as part of the core academic programme, which equip them as leaders and innovators. Examples include teamwork and leadership skills and business awareness.
Among the other proposals agreed were that the Graduate Schools would support MSc coordinators in their efforts to embed transferable skills training in Master’s programmes; that the role of Mentor should be developed for research students to include responsibility for overseeing an individual student’s professional development; that an online tool should be introduced to enable students, with their mentor, to manage a personal development plan by setting targets and tracking progress; and that there should be more effective mechanisms of career advice for both postgraduate students and early career researchers.
A proposal to develop a professional development programme for undergraduate students will be presented at the next Management Board.