Monthly Archives: August 2020

28Aug/20

Inspirational EDI Online Workshops for Staff, ECRs and Students!

Professor Averil Macdonald OBE, Diversity & Inclusion Consultant and former SEPnet Diversity Lead, has developed a set of 7 short (50 min max) inspirational online (Zoom) EDI workshops for students, ECRs, academics and professional staff respectively.

Trialled at Birmingham and Southampton with very positive feedback, these sessions are now available to other universities to roll out across departments and are a great way of developing stimulating discussion, sharing good practice and creating effective support communities between students, ECRs and staff across departments especially while working away from campus.

Sessions include:
• Micro-aggressions: a risk for everyone – UB workshop set in the academic context for all staff covering recruitment, teaching, research and staffing strategy.
• The Language Trap: how to recruit the best – this talk explains how language and vocabulary can make a difference – for all staff
• Taking the Chair – training offering tools to manage meetings well (and not to be overlooked)
• Top Tips for Success- it’s never too late! – workshop for anyone – academic & professional services staff- at any age.
• Making it Fair: navigating university and more in an unfair world – training for u/g & p/g students to see how to progress at uni and beyond
• Keeping it Fair: keeping your teaching fair for everyone – UB training for PhD students and ECRs covering teaching / supervision and job applications
• Top Tips – finding the job you were born to do – student workshop, especially effective for female students, covering how to take the next steps into a career.

For more information, please contact a.m.macdonald@bham.ac.uk

28Aug/20

Pros and cons of attending virtual GRADnet summer school

This year’s summer school at Herstmonceux Castle was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic. GRADnet in collaboration with Skillfluence was swiftly able to offer the Careers Accelerator Online Masterclass in August.

A Southampton final year PhD student gives his perspective on attending both and the pros and cons.

Why I decided to attend the Careers Accelerator Online Masterclass: As I am coming to the end of my 3rd year as a theory PhD from the University of Southampton theory group I now have a little over a year left of my PhD. I am now looking at what to pursue post my PhD. I had little to no idea what I want to pursue as a career and I was interested in the Skillfluence online course as it covered a lot of different aspects of choosing a career and how to transition into work in industry successfully.

How was this year’s online masterclass?: The course was very enjoyable and gave a good introduction to a lot of different aspects to consider when finishing a PhD and starting a non-academic career. Some parts such as the importance of networking and how best to prepare a presentation of a task for an interview were things I had not considered in so much depth and the course covered them well. I also enjoyed the regular Q&A sessions with employers as it gave me the opportunity to ask the exact questions I wanted to ask and get more information as they were former SEPnet PhD students. This included the relevance of Graduate Schemes for PhD graduates and the role/importance of coding for different sectors. I would definitely recommend the online course for the future if GRADnet offer it in 2021 due to the current coronavirus restrictions.

Physical summer school versus virtual: I attended the 2018 SEPnet summer school at Herstmonceux Castle at the end of my first year as I felt at the time it was good to explore all these options early in my PhD when I had fewer commitments and more ‘free-time’ as it were. Given the Careers Accelerator Online Masterclass was so different as it was online as a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic, I felt it was worth attending as being closer to the end of my PhD, there were different questions I wanted ask employers this time around.

There are pros and cons to hosting the course online and ‘in-person’ (for want of a better term). Attending the course in person gave me a better opportunity to meet other young PhD students and network and also it was exciting to stay at Herstmonceux Castle with the Observatory Science Centre on the doorstep. As the in-person conference was over several days the amount of time working on the subject of careers was a lot more intense than the weekly 1.5 hour sessions of the online course. However, as the online course was spread over four weeks I found it gave me the opportunity to really focus during the 1.5 hour sessions and also read through the online material on the Skillfluence learning platform at my own pace and remain focused.

Given the online courses were ‘attended’ at my PC it also meant that I could complete assignments and joint tasks using my PC which I feel is probably more relevant to actual interview preparation and general careers-related tasks.

I feel both are definitely worth attending and I have encouraged my younger PhD colleagues to attend the SEPnet professional skills schools in their first year if they can.

27Aug/20

Interact 2019 Evaluation Report Launched

The Interact 2019 Sympossium took place in Preston last year, in a world which now feels barely recognisable! It formed part of a biennial series of symposia which aim to foster a community of active public engagement practitioners across academia and industry in the physical sciences. The day itself was a valuable experience to share expertise, network and foster ideas to enrich public engagement practice.

The symposium was co-organised by SEPnet, the Science and Technology Facilities Council, the Institute of Physics, the Ogden Trust, the Royal Astronomical Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry and the University of Central Lancashire (who acted as the 2019 hosts). The organisers are carrying out a longitudinal evaluation of the symposium series to access it’s impact on the sector, and to better ascertain what is needed from our organisations to support academics and industry professionals in their roles as public engagement practitioners. The report from Interact 2019 has now been published and is available to download from the STFC website. Hard copies are also available on request – please email outreach@sepnet.ac.uk if you would like to some.

We will shortly be sending out a follow up survey to attendees of Interact 2019, to follow up on the impact the symposium has had on their work. We recognise that this has been a rather unusual year and would like to also find out the affect this has had on the sector, and the support that our organisations can provide in the current climate. Pandemic permitting Interact 2021 is scheduled to take place in Cardiff next September.

26Aug/20

Turning a negative into a positive!

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic this year’s GRADnet summer school in July at Herstmonceux Castle was cancelled. I was hugely disappointed as it had taken over six months of planning and organising the 4-day programme with employer-led workshops and talks.

I was determined to offer our final year PhD students an alternative with interactive online activities. By chance during lockdown I attended a webinar delivered by Skillfluence on “turning science into business”. I saw an opportunity to collaborate with Skillfluence and provide an innovative and novel online course over four weeks in August via Zoom: the GRADnet Careers Accelerator Online Masterclass!

From my employer network I invited former SEPnet PhD students with amazing careers and from diverse backgrounds to participate in this live online event and provide career path videos as a resource on the learning platform.  The course included interactive sessions:  Be a problem solver – learn how to ace interview challenges!; Understanding and communicating your value to industry; Your network is your net worth; an industry challenge on “the future of space travel” and a live careers panel.

One panellist said they were delighted to participate because the panel included “some fascinating guests” and they “really enjoyed listening to what they had to say” as they had “such cool jobs!”.

Over 60 postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers registered for the masterclass which is great engagement during these challenging and uncertain times.

Thank you to the employers: 4-Delta Group; Airbus; BBC R&D; Deloitte; GEOptic; InCrowd Sports; Kindred Group; NPL; QinetiQ; Reaction Engines and Santander and last but not least Zach Sorrells and his team at Skillfluence.

Cristobel Soares
SEPnet Graduate Network Manager