PhD supervisors will receive more training
Right now, only supervisors who are just starting out receive training on how to coach students. The current number of workshops is also limited to approximately forty a year. Over the next few months, intervision sessions and workshops for more experienced supervisors will be added to the roster.
‘We want to eventually make sure that everyone who’s starting out as a supervisor can take one of these workshops’, says dean of Graduate Studies Petra Rudolf.
Cultural differences
The university intends to incorporate cultural differences as well as the insights from ‘Recognition and rewards’, a project that aims to alleviate the pressure to perform in science, into this ‘new way of supervising’.
They will also set up a digital version of the workshop for new supervisors. ‘There are currently supervisors who aren’t able to free up two or four days in a row to attend a workshop’, says Rudolf. ‘Then, we might consider making these workshops mandatory. But we have to make sure the workshops are in place first.’
The online course should be available by next year at the latest.
Academic ethics
UKrant recently published a three-part series about the difficult situation many PhD candidates are in. A significant number was dealing with supervisors who wouldn’t leave them alone, humiliated them, or flaunted academic ethics.
The UG advises these PhD candidates to get help if they’re in a situation like that. However, many candidates stay quiet. When someone does speak up, it doesn’t always turn out the way they’d hoped, the series showed.