Career development and training

All our fellows complete a start-up form during the first few months of their employment. This form serves as a basis for initial discussions with their supervisory group and can flag any specific needs or concerns and starts everyone on the same page. 

The PCDP is a more in-depth assessment of the progress of the fellow's research and covers their activities, training and future aspirations. This is routinely updated throughout their fellowship as their research progresses and needs change, and is signed by both the fellow and their supervisor(s). 

We ask the fellows to also complete a general well-being questionnaire alongside each iteration of their PCDP. This questionnaire remains confidential between the SEAS office and the fellow and allows them to flag any concerns or worries and to ask for help or support. They can provide feedback on the programme itself and their supervision.

UiB opened a Career Center for Early Stage Researchers (FERD) in 2021. We have worked closely with the amazing team here to provide training and support for our fellows. Courses here include anything from CV writing for industry, presentation skills and research management, to one-on-one career guidance conversations. They have also helped us curate and develop specific courses for our fellows during our annual meetings. 

One of the outcomes of the 2023 Annual Meeting was the desire to have regular semi-formal meetings which could generate more interdisciplinary collaborations and provide a space for more specific discussions or training. The SEAS Office facilitates the meetings but the fellows are free to fill the content as they see fit, including bringing in invited speakers etc.

The fellows are grouped into five key themes, with one theme being responsible for each meeting, working in rotation. One part of the meeting will also be dedicated to communication training, with different fellows presenting some aspect of their research, whether a scientific talk, a trial lecture they would like feedback on, or even a problem they'd like fresh eyes on.

This meeting creates the perfect environment for developing their own soft skills, as well as an opportunity to focus on more specific hard skills, all whilst building a greater sense of cohesion among the group as a whole.

This year we also added an afternoon to celebrate the diversity of SEAS at a point when the largest number are employed. We had an afternoon of keynote talks and shorter pitches to invited members of the University and our industry partners. The afternoon was filmed and is under development for a SEAS promotional film and individual shorts for the fellows to use.

This year delved deeper into some more important aspects of SEAS - in particular, Interdisciplinarity: what is it, how to achieve it and how to maintain it. We also revistied important themes about leadership, communication and innovation.

The posters from 2023 were such a success we repeated this, with open lunch sessions for the wider university to attend.

The full programme is here.

As the common theme of the programme is marine sustainability, this year the fellows asked to include more on this topic, as well as more general career-building training, including leadership, teamwork and diversity.

Presentation skills: each fellow was asked to produce a poster designed to introduce themselves to the wider community. These sessions were open to the university as a whole to attend. The content had to be accessible to the non-specialist. The posters can all be viewed here.

You can see the full programme here!

General sessions included: Curating a strong online profile; building your career; skills auditing; academia vs non-academia; working in a team

Presentation skills: each fellow gave a 15 minute presentation of their background and their research project, filmed and with a general audience

Writing skills: The annual meeting was followed by the writing retreat in Os

Our 2022 writing retreat to Os with Mathew was a huge success. It set up the basis for the weekly "Clam up and dive in" writing sessions and initiated a dialogue between the fellows regarding writing, feedback, and community that has continued. 

This lead to a repeat event in 2024 - this time to the local island of Osterøy, and another in 2025 to Rosendal.