Postgraduate Affairs Committee Meeting

Postgraduate Affairs Committee Meeting

Friday10th December 2010 in B09

Minutes

Present: Rosanna Keefe, Rob Hopkins, Daniel Viehoff, Joanne Elliott, Paniel Reyes Cardenas, Ayodeji Martins

Apologies: Chris Hookway, Steven Wright, Hilkje Haenel, Paul Giladi, Carlos Felippe

1)Matters arising from last meeting

It was agreed that we would trial a slightly different format for the Friday Departmental Seminars. There will be a 3-4 minute break after the talk and before the questions, with the aim of allowing potential questioners, in particular students, to plan their question and/or briefly discuss it with their neighbour.

2)Doctoral Development Programme

We discussed the experience of the new DDP for new research students and there were no particular complaints or problems to report. We considered the role that the Training Needs Analysis should play and it was agreed that it should be looked over at the first progress meeting of the year (around the end of the first semester) in the hope that any deficiencies could be caught and addressed in time for another review at the second progress meeting, before upgrading occurs.

3)Career Development and Transferable Skills Training Grants

RK reminded/informed the committee that the Faculty invited calls for funding for up to £1500 in relation to these grants. There seems to be a lot of flexibility with regards to how the funding may be used. The deadline is 31st January and there are details here:

It was agreed that it would be good if one or more students (with the support of staff, in particular RK) would be involved in putting together a bid for funding for some event or series of events that it was felt would benefit students. Some ideas were discussed, including an internal conference with short talks and/or poster presentations. The idea of co-operating with another (nearby) Philosophy department was also discussed, as had been suggested in the past. The event should not be purely a philosophical conference as a case must be made that it advances career development and/or research training, but this could be incorporated into, for example, a conference or seminars involving students giving papers on their research. RK will send round an email and hopefully receive expressions of interest/enthusiasm and/or some ideas.

4)Impact on postgraduates of changes to university funding.

RH spoke to this, explaining that the impact on postgraduate fees of the governmental cuts to university funding was unclear. There is no reason, at present, to assume that postgraduate fees – either home or overseas fees – will be significantly increased.

5)Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey

The results of the survey of last year’s MA students were discussed. It was felt that they were generally encouraging. One area where the figures were generally lower than in other sections was on the dissertation, but it was noted that the surveys were filled in May before most students will have had much supervision on the dissertation. The other two relatively weak areas were “Career and Professional Development” and (aspects of) “Skills and personal development”. (It was noted, however, that although the scores on specific questions about Careers and Professional Development were quite low, the general summary of whether students felt the department had met expectations in these matters were quite high.)

There was some discussion of how we might address these issues. The PHI6700 Seminars on Research and Research Methods are a natural place to do something towards this. For example, we could have a session on general skills and non-academic careers. In relation to the low score for “present myself with confidence”, it was felt that practice giving presentations in seminars could help. Although this is typically part of the research seminars, we should consider whether it should also be part of at least some of the other MA seminars.

In relation to knowledge of marking standards, it was agreed that the department would provide a greater range of sample essays online that could be consulted by MA students, and that the marks and comments from markers would be provided with the essays.

6)Funding opportunities for postgraduates and Learned Society Fund.

There is now a regular email sent round (via Joanne) to research students about funding opportunities for postgraduates. The process of applying to the Learned Society Fund for money to attend conferences was discussed, as this has recently changed. Applications should now go through the supervisor. RK will send round an email to all postgraduates about this. Paniel noted that with his own application, there had been a query about the difference between predicted expenditure and actual expenditure (in the break-down for different purposes, not in the overall amount); hopefully this will be resolved, but this is an issue to be monitored.

7)Other faculty initiatives under discussion: MA in Digital Humanities; faculty-wide work-placement module; virtual faculty graduate school.

RK briefly reported on faculty-wide initiatives such as the MA in Digital Humanities and the virtual faculty graduate school. There was a brief discussion of whether the department could make any use of a faculty-wide work-placement module, since it would include placements open to students from any department. Could this help in relation to some of the issues about career development raised from the survey? The module will be a 15-credit one, however, which would be very hard to fit into the structure of our MAs (where all modules are 30 credits). RK agreed to keep an eye on the development of the work-placement module, to see whether there was anything students in the department could gain from it or related facilities without, perhaps, actually registering for the module.

8)Any Other Business

Paniel raised the issue about the recent and substantial delay in payments to postgraduate tutors. The department was aware of the problem, is very sorry for the situation; it is putting mechanisms into place to ensure that the problem does not arise again.

Ayodeji raised an issue about whether MA students could take language courses across the university (which could be useful for, e.g., taking a module on Hegel). The university’s offering of language modules relevant for philosophical research is something under discussion in relation to PhD students and we hope that the provision will be improved. RK will look into whether any such modules are or will be open to MA students as well.