Graduate School Director briefings

Posted on behalf of Dr Lindsay O'Dell, Graduate School Director

This is the first of a new briefing from the Graduate School Director that will be sent out monthly to update you on issues relevant to you as a research degree student at the University.

Poster Competition

Earlier this month, I was proud to be Head Judge in the first fully online PGR poster competition, along with the OU’s Vice Chancellor Tim Blackman who awarded the prizes. The standard of submissions was   excellent and brought home the important contribution which all research students make to the research community at the Open University. A record 452 votes were cast in the Community Choice part of the   competition. You can read about the competition and its winners in this news story. I want to take this opportunity to thank and congratulate not just the incredible winners, but also all the entrants who put time   and energy into explaining their research to the community in such vivid and imaginative ways.

The next event of this kind will be our annual Bake your Research competition – more details to follow.

Black Lives Matter

I share the views expressed in the Vice Chancellor’s statement of solidarity and rejection of complacency around the issue of racial discrimination and inequality (email to colleagues, 5 June). We in the Graduate School are educating ourselves and taking time to consider what we can do. For example we know that there is work to do to improve the experiences of Black and Minority Ethnic students studying with the University on a Tier 4 visa where monitoring can damage these students’ sense of belonging at the University. Over the coming period, you will hear more about what is being done here but do let us know if there are particular initiatives you would like to see.

Covid-19 disruption

The disruption we are experiencing in relation to the pandemic is ongoing, and I know that some pressures particularly affect research students; some are far from their loved ones geographically and some are having to move critical events like vivas and mini-vivas online. If you haven’t already do take a look at our Student Wellbeing page which links to our Coronavirus FAQs, tips for remote vivas from students who’ve done them, social events that are going on online, and other sources of support. For those of you who are finding it difficult to research away from campus, do keep talking to your supervisor about options.

We welcome your feedback and any suggestions about things that you would like to be included in this briefing or that you would like to know more about; email Graduate-School-Communications.

Best wishes, 

Lindsay