Researcher Development Programme

Aims

The RDP aims to:

• Assist you in the timely, successful completion of your research course
• Assist you in developing your interpersonal and employability-related skills, helping to improve your career prospects on graduation.

The programme is designed and structured so that you can pursue them without undue disruption to your normal day-to-day research work. We encourage you to make use of the programme throughout the entire period of your research course.

Support available

Mentoring

We offer a mentoring scheme that is open to all postgraduate researchers. We can pair you with a mentor who is in the later stages of their doctoral programme. They will become your mentor immediately, via email and Skype and can guide you through your first six months here. As a researcher at the University, you will be able to access our Employer Mentoring Programme as well, pairing you with employers from a variety of employment sectors, based on your individual career plans.

One-to-one coaching and advice

We offer one-to-one appointments in person or virtual appointments. These sessions provide an opportunity for you to meet with an experienced member of the team to get the advice or support you need to move your research and your professional development forward. These one-to-one appointments could cover presentation or fellowship interview practice, managing your time and research project, and academic writing or spoken fluency support, to name a few topics. For those who choose to study part-time or through distance learning, you can also have any of the workshops delivered through these individual appointments with supplemental online resources also available.

Training opportunities

Workshops

We offer a wide variety of workshops, many of which are self-contained and most are half a day's duration or less. You can access the training you need at the time when it will be most useful. Our workshops are offered on a repeating programme throughout the year. Every workshop is offered more than once within a given year and, according to demand, any given workshop can be offered on multiple occasions.

Details of the workshops schedule can be found on the postgraduate researcher workshops page.

Most of our workshops are offered to an interdisciplinary audience. We believe the opportunity to meet research students from outside your normal discipline who you might not otherwise encounter is extremely valuable. In delivering these workshops, we have seen repeatedly that differing perspectives on a general problem or issue can often lead to an interesting solution that you might not have considered.

Depending on the subject matter, some workshops are offered to specific disciplines or to a disciplinary range.

Bespoke training

The RDP is an elective programme, meaning you decide which training is suitable for you and when you should undertake this. There are some exceptions to the elective nature of the programme - certain faculties expect or recommend that students attend certain workshops. The RDE team can support researchers to develop a professional development plan.

Contact us

Email: rdp@surrey.ac.uk