It’s been a busy year so far! Zoë Bell and myself (Arlind Reuter) took over as your IHS student representatives in January. Since then, we’ve been involved with a range of different activities across the institute and faculty. In this blogpost we want to give you a quick overview of what we are doing and remind you to come and speak to us if there is anything you need help with, changes you want to see in the institute or any other fun (or not so fun) stuff!
Student Staff Committee
These are held twice a year (we’ve already had one) to provide an opportunity for students to raise concerns and get involved with the institute. We are happy that we are supported by a great team of reps. We have representatives for each year group (first, second and third year), international, European, full-time and part-time studies, as well as Elaine’s support as our PGR coordinator. Some things we discussed in our first meeting this year were internship opportunities for PhD students, peer mentoring in IHS and desk space in Baddiley Clark Building.
Step Challenge
Thanks to Eftychia, we were inspired to organise a 4 week step challenge throughout May. Eight teams took part in the challenge and together we walked over 10.000.000 steps – WOW! Well done to everyone who took part and used this opportunity to get their step count up. The team winners donated money to the charity of their choice.
Systematic Reviews
We continue to support you in searching for a second reviewer for your systematic review. Just e-mail us and we are happy to send out a message to see if anybody else needs a second reviewer too. It’s worth a shot.
PGR Support Groups
As you might know, we organise regular PGR support groups with talks that cover topics such as “writing your thesis” or “preparing for your viva/APR”. These are useful two-hour sessions where you can ask questions and get support from the speaker. Let us know if there are things you want to suggest for those. Otherwise, we will have one more session – our christmas party!
The postgraduate conference
With help from the best conference committee (you can see there’s lots of ways to get involved in our institute!), we organised the yearly IHS PGR conference. The theme was ‘building bridges’ and we aimed to strengthen our PGR community, by showcasing the great (interdisciplinary) work we as IHS PhD students do, but also learn from a PhD coach and try our networking skills at different interactive sessions. The annual cake competition was a hit once again too!
Networking
We also worked alongside Paul, from the Business Boost, to have our very own networking session. Aimed specifically at PhD students from our institute we had a big turnout, with people from different charities, NGOs and industry. Over lunch, we spent a good two hours meeting new people and making new connections.
Graduate School Committee
As you are aware, the Faculty is undergoing a restructuring. We have been sitting in with the graduate school committee to represent you and have your voice heard as part of the conversation. With the restructuring, the role of PGR reps will change slightly, but we made sure that adequate student representation will be in place. From October we will hopefully appoint two more reps alongside us until December, guaranteeing a smooth transition period. Please let us know if there is anything you want to know, or fancy taking up the role of PGR rep for next year.
This is just a quick overview of thing that we have been involved with – of course there is a lot of stuff going on in the background, so if you want to know more, just grab Zoë and me for a chat or e-mail us (z.bell2@ncl.ac.uk & a.reuter2@ncl.ac.uk). We are always happy to hear your thoughts!