The heads of the universities’ doctoral schools meet at the URV to exchange good practices

Almost thirty representatives of doctoral schools from the universities and research centres that make up the SGroup European network met at the URV to share successful experiences in the training of doctoral students. During the working session they laid the groundwork for preparing an action plan for 2018 focused on improving research productivity, funding opportunities and strategic alliances in doctoral training.

The first action point on the plan is to promote training courses for thesis directors using a common methodology that focuses on the nature of the cooperative working relationship between doctoral students and supervisors. The method has been in place for some time at the URV and has helped train 125 thesis supervisors. It has also been adopted in Sweden and the idea is to export it to other countries in the SGroup network.

The universities and research centres in the network decided to focus on doctoral training because results at this level are very mixed across Europe. For this reason they aim to work together on aspects that will lead to improvement. During the meeting, entitled “Good Practices in Doctoral Education ‐ Collaborative Approaches within SGroup Network”, a working group was created to focus specifically on this area and with a view to future work on improving the employability of doctoral graduates.

The URV organised the meeting and is a founding member of the SGroup European Universities’ Network.