Postgraduate Research - ICS PGRC Reports
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13th February 2007
Report from Tom McGregor, new representative for Physics.
Recently, we had our first PGRC (postgraduate research committee) meeting for 2007. I have been tasked to report to you all the more interesting points to come out of that meeting. Of course, Anders and James were also in attendance. There were a few interesting points to arise from the meeting.
Some of you may remember the great email debates which took place last year when we were faced with the divisional requirement, obliging most of us to enter a submission to the event known as LUCID. This compulsory submission did not even guarantee acceptance! In its inaugural year, this event was viewed as a success by most involved and, as such it is slated to be an annual event!..................Dont start spitting chips though; taking part in this event will now be entirely on a voluntary basis.
Although this will only make many of you say “damn, why didn’t this happen when I started”, it does affect new PGs. ITEC 843 has been canned from the list of divisional requirements for first year research candidates. Departmental programs still apply, so I can say, in the case of Physics, PG’s must still do the PHYS 801 course. Departmental courses will most likely change to incorporate things like IP issues into their programs.
Smile everyone, this is nice, it appears the division has taken your grievances quite seriously on these issues.
Although, not discussed in the meeting there are still some items I would like to remind you of:
- Unfairly, APA holders unlike the lucky holders of most Macquarie University funded scholarships will not have 3.5 years of scholarship automatically. The extension of APA scholarships by 0.5 years can only be achieved by application, the success of which, is most definitely, not guaranteed. It seems that, although there was hinting this inequitable situation may have been rectified by the division or university (eg. By providing APA holders who were unsuccessful in gaining extension with university funded extension), that idea has stalled.
- Due to the above point, all govt funded scholarship holders are reminded to make clear all delays in your annual reports. It would seem, documented evidence will help vastly with your claim for extension. Make sure you are aware when your scholarship dries up, because extensions can take considerable time to process!
- Recently Agnieszka emailed all of us showing that we no longer required travel insurance as we are covered under the same agreement as staff. I am conferring with Agnieszka, it seems to me there exists some ambiguity as to whether or not we are fully covered if we take personal leave whist on a university trip. You will all be informed in the near future. I believe that students are not covered by the university travel insurance for the period taken as personal leave during research-related travel. So it’s imperative that you get your own insurance if you plan to take the personal leave! [See most recent information on insurance under Help:Travel Insurance.]
2nd November 2006
Report from James Howarth, Anders Tychsen and Anne Barnett.
Just a quick email to fill you in on the latest PGRC meeting. Most of what was discussed
came down to how to best make sure us postgraduate students are properly looked after. This
can be split into two points, out-of-time (OOT) candidature management and confidentiality
matters arising from the annual report. I will try and tackle these two as succinctly
as possible.
Before we move onto the individual points it must be said that most of the meeting consisted of
discussion on how to best assist postgraduate students who run into problems, how to solve these problems and how to limit their impact. Throughout our studies, most of us are going to run into some
problems, it's inevitable. We all agreed (postgrad reps and staff) that a lot of the time
having a quick chat to someone about the problem goes along way to solving it. I know
I do this as well, but we forget that we have plenty of people to talk to at various levels of
the University and the sooner we try to fix it, the better the outcome. Below is a
suggestion of some of the people you may want to share your problems with.
- Your supervisor, they should be one of the first ports of call.
- There are the student PGRC reps: James, Anders and Anne. Anders in particular has had experience as a student counsellor in his native Denmark and is more than happy to help. If we don't know the answer straight away, we will go and find it out for you, keeping you anonymous.
- The person who sits next to you or any other of your fellow postgrads
- Agnieszka
- The Postgraduate Research Directors in your department. A/Prof Karu Esselle for the Division, Prof Xuan Duong for Mathematics, Dr Annabelle McIver for Computing, Dr Charles Lee for Electronics and A/ Prof Judith Dawes from Physics. All these people are very friendly and helpful and are on our side.
- The Head of your department
- The Dean of the Division
- The Dean of Students. It is in fact the Dean's job to resolve student issues, so behind the title is a guy who is definitely there to help students with their problems: http://www.deanofstudents.mq.edu.au/
- The University Counseling service
OOT management
All divisions have been requested to develop a policy for the management of OOT. OOT is over
4 years for PhD full-time and 2 years for Masters full-time. A draft policy has been drawn
up to help OOT candidates complete their studies as soon as possible. As it stands, students
who are not able to finish on time will be required to prepare a (short) OOT Candidature Extension
Request (OOT-CER) along with their supervisors. This report should be submitted at least
3 months before the normal (on-time) thesis submission date do their Departmental Director.
The idea behind this policy is to help us postgraduate students complete our studies quickly and
in the most painless manner possible. To help us do this, we (the student, the supervisor,
the department and the division) need to find where the problems lie and how best to overcome
them. These problems could be as simple as we just need an extra month or maybe we need access
to some extra test equipment. This short OOT-CER is supposed to be short. All the members
of the PGRC (staff and postgrad reps) agree that increasing the load on an OOT candidate by making
them prepare a lengthy document is not an option - the priority is to look at how to get the thesis
completed.
Confidentiality of the annual report
There has been some discussion recently about the confidentiality of the annual report and so this
point was raised by Anders. It seems that they only reason that you would want your report
to be confidential is if you have a problem with your supervisor. Remember, anything
that you put on this report will go on your file in HDRU so you will be accountable for what you
write. After some discussion it seems that next year we should be able to have our section
handed directly into the division/HDRU without it going through the supervisors. In doing
this though, we have to think about who we don't/do want to see the report. At some stage,
we will have to confront the issue with our supervisors, they are going to have to find out
eventually.
While this issue is being discussed, you may want to consider this flow for dealing with your supervisor
associated problem.
- Firstly, it must be said that if at any time you have a problem with your supervisor/s you really should try and sort it out with them first.
- At any time, if you feel that the problem is unresolvable you can go to any of the people mentioned above for some advice or support in resolving the problem. You do not need to wait for a formal review.
- At the departmental review, you are given a means to give time for a confidential chat about your supervisor/s. If you have a problem, and you don't believe you can talk here, you have to think about who you are trying to keep the problem a secret from. Remember, the Academics have all been in our shoes before and are there as professionals. You can trust them.
- There is also the HDRU report. Keeping this confidential keeps both the department and the Division out of the loop. Remember at one stage, all these people are going to have to know and keeping HDRU out of things generally results in a better outcome for everyone. In keeping these reports confidential, you have to think exactly why you want this to occur. This report is really for academic related issues. For grievance issues, there are processes available to deal with these problems. Please see one of the above mentioned people to point you in the right direction. For some more information have a look at http://www.eeo.mq.edu.au/studgriev.htm.
Anyway, it turned out to be a little longer than expected. We hope this helps some of us out along the way.