These activities are more traditional ways of learning, for example through attending training workshops, courses or enrolling on longer programmes and schemes with structured learning activities.
Example development activities include:
- Workshops and training courses:
- Face to face workshops
- Online training/webinars
- Self-paced learning
- Programmes and schemes:
- Leadership and management programmes
- Enterprise schemes
- Qualifications or accreditations e.g. project management, teaching
- Tailored one to one advice e.g. mock interview training or careers advice.
- Formal training and advice may be provided internally by the College, for example by:
- The Early Career Researcher Institute (ECRI)
- People and Organisational Development (POD)
- Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Centre (EDIC)
- Educational Development Unit (EDU)
- Imperial Consultants (ICON)
- Enterprise Lab
- The Careers Service
- Faculty Research Services Teams
- Library and information skills
- The Imperial Policy Forum
- Societal Engagement
- Centre for Academic English
- Adult Education Classes
- Or externally by a variety of providers, for example:
- Funders
- Learned societies and professional bodies
- Niche skills training and accredited programmes e.g. Media training and project management
- Publishers e.g. Nature masterclasses
- Public sector organisations and charities e.g. National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement
- Government/Parliament e.g. Parliament’s Knowledge Exchange Unit
- A huge range of providers outside academia and research e.g. The School of Life, Guardian masterclasses, LinkedIn Learning
Spotlight on formal development activities:
Formal development skills
Find out from other research staff about the kinds of activities that developed their skills formally.
Examples
"Looking online really has helped me a lot. Of course, there's a lot of filtering to be done in terms of finding the right material and I think another important thing is interacting with the right people and talking to people that have done it before you."
- Dr Dorian Haci, MintNeuro (former Postdoc in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering)
Throughout the College web pages you will find online toolkits, training and guides on a wide variety of topics. The self-paced nature enables your development activity to fit in around your other commitments. For example, our Researcher Wellbeing materials and The Academic’s Success Guide, and Researcher Networking resources can be worked through systematically as and when you have time.
As a starting point, take a look at:
"There is a three-day workshop at Imperial that takes you out in to the countryside in a nice hotel with good meals. They educate you on what the Postdoc will be like, and how you can make use of the opportunity to shape your career the way you want, and on your own terms. So be open to that experience. If you're not interested in all those resources, just meet people and get out of the city for three days and forget about everything that is going on in the lab, or in your life. Those three days are 100% worth it."
- Dr Pavani Cherukupally, MIT (former Postdoc in the Department of Chemical Engineering)
Find out more:
"I took part in the MedTech SuperConnector which is a programme for prospective entrepreneurs with a business idea in medical technology. It was 6 months of training in start-ups, entrepreneurship, how to build a company and how to build a business idea out of your research project. We also performed customer discovery, how to test a business idea, marketing, sales and so on.
The Enterprise Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering also gave me training on entrepreneurship, finance, accounting, marketing and sales. But, also very important, was the team building and company culture training and how you move from a team that is more based on research activity to a team that is based on a specific goal for a company. I also received mentoring and coaching that really helped."
- Dr Dorian Haci, MintNeuro (former Postdoc in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering)
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