Perspectives on working with postgraduate students

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This was the first session of what may become a VicTeach strand focusing on the postgraduate experience.

The panel at this session consisted of:

Kate Nickelchock the student advocate described her role at Victoria. The video she showed is here. The video is intended to introduce students to the advocate's role in a friendly way. Kate explained that she works with post-grads to work on issues such as break downs of the student-supervisor relationship.

Wendy Kelly has recently completed her PhD studying part time while also working as an academic in the School of Psychology clinical programme. Wendy discussed the challenges of studying part time and of being a post-experience PhD student.

Jo Walton from the school of nursing and midwifery discussed her role working with post-experience nursing students completing masters. She underlined the importance of developing personal relationships and understanding the context of students' lives and working with them to complete their qualifications while they are also working... and not sweating the small stuff.... like margin sizes!

Stuart Brock the Associate Dean (Postgraduate Research) for FHSS discussed the importance of placing Victoria graduates with postgraduate degrees in employment. Stuart discussed Victoria's upcoming goals of increasing student numbers both in research degree programmes and taut mastes. He presented results of a recent graduate destinations survey that indicates that Victoria PhD graduates have markedly improved career success.

Thank you to everyone who attended and contributed!!

If you would like to become part of VicTeach's nascent research cluster focused on the post-graduate experience or if you have an idea for a 2016 follow up session digging deeper into an important issue relating to the postgraduate experience at Victoria contact Anne at anne.macaskill@vuw.ac.nz