This week the UWE Graduate School put on a welcome event for new doctoral students. The turnout was really good and it was great to see so many enthusiastic and excited doctoral students (or “PhDers” as they have affectionately become known!) eager to understand what lay before them.
In a tried and tested format we put on a number of short sessions interspersed with free food to settle the new arrivals into the world of doctoral study.
We began with a brief introduction and tour of the UWE Library and the support that researchers can expect from Jenni Crossley.
Following lunch I asked the Director of the Graduate School to give a brief overview and welcome to the new starters, here’s what he had to say:
We then moved on to what is probably the most useful section, I’d invited some current PhDers to talk about their experiences and to offer their advice to new starters; I only provided the title “What I know now that I wish I’d known when I started”.
Graeme Whitehall
Graeme’s presentation was followed by talks from Milena Popova (Twitter; blog) and Jackie Barker who gave frank and sometimes humorous accounts of what it is like to do a PhD. Milena has written her talk as a blog entry “I accidentally a PhD – one year on”
We moved on from there to present a picture of the overall support available to doctoral students across the institution beginning with a short presentation from Dr Tilly Line, a researcher and careers adviser (@UWECareers) about what Student Services can offer.
Next up was Lauren Conen (@vpeducation) , the Vice President for Education at the Students’ Union at UWE who gave an overview of the services and support offered by the Students’ Union.
Then it was the turn of Dr Paul Spencer (@paulspencer42) to give an overview of the UWE Graduate School skills development programme
I finished up sharing the thoughts of Matt Might using his excellent Illustrated Guide to the PhD
Let us know your thoughts, comments, questions about what we are doing at UWE with the graduate school. Why not follow @uwegradschool on twitter to keep up to date with all the things we are doing?
Further links that might be useful!
The UWE Graduate School website
UWE Researcher Skills Events Diary
The Digital Doctorate 