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Report and Pictures

The director of Eucor, Janosch Nieden, welcomed the EduDay participants to a multinational event, the first of its kind. He quoted the EduDay as exemplary for initiatives that will be run in the legal framework of the European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC) acquired by the Universities of Basel, Freiburg, Haute-Alsace, Strasbourg and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology; the first EGTC to include solely universities. These Upper Rhine region universities amass a total of 115’000 students, 15’000 researchers and 11’000 PhD candidates. Whereas the education of PhD candidates has been considered in all places, the approaches taken by each individual university vary greatly.

During, what we called “Grad School Pitches”, the running models of hand-picked graduate schools were presented by their directors or coordinators. Prof. Christoph Borner, the director of the Spemann Graduate School of Biology and Medicine (SGBM) in Freiburg explained the structure of the school as leaning on four pillars: recruitment, curriculum, supervision and career mentoring. While creativity is needed “at the bench” for life scientists, graduate school should offer structure; but how much structure is needed? The mix of freedom and structure becomes evident in the entry process of a candidate – the applicant, selected by a school board on quality and motivation, undergoes rotations in different laboratories before picking his favorite laboratory and drafting a thesis proposal. SGBM not only educates the students but also monitors the supervising performance of their PIs that might become “dormant” and then will have to re-apply if they are not involved enough with the school’s program. The most recent addition to the program “Academia Meets Industry” is jointly organized by SGBM and some major pharmaceutical companies and intends to expose the PhD candidates as early as possible to an industrial work environment.

Marcus Rockoff, PR Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics (MPI-IE) in Freiburg, explained the International Max Planck Research School for Molecular and Cellular Biology (IMPRS-MCB) of the Max Planck Society, a non-profit organization. The IMPRS’s three pillars (scientific training, transferable skills, career development) are designed to prepare their PhD candidates also for alternative non-academic careers. This focus is substantiated by the 2 growing gap between the number of awarded PhDs and available tenure track professorships or permanent academic positions in general. In 2019, IMPRS-MCB will be renamed to IMPRS-IEM to feature and include the disciplines immunology, epigenetics and metabolism – all highly relevant in an ageing society and its health burdens. Marcus Rockoff acknowledged the value of soft skill courses but stated that these skills have to be mastered to an expert level not achievable by just theoretical courses. Therefore, the IMPRS includes four to six weeks long Experience-based Training Programs with various non-academic partners.

Prof. Karen DePauw, Vice President and Dean for Graduate Education at Virginia Tech (USA), is responsible for 7’000 graduate students. In 2016, the Council of Graduate Schools’ (CGS) Board of Directors honored Prof. DePauw with the first Debra W. Stewart Award for outstanding leadership in graduate education; just the latest addition to the many awards she won for her engagement and leading role in graduate education. During her career – and only giving two examples –, she established the national award-winning innovative Graduate Life Center (GLC) and implemented the signature academic initiative known as Transformative Graduate Education (TGE), that includes the global perspectives and preparing the future professoriate programs. Prof. DePauw calls “soft skills” “career critical skills” because in her opinion they are the “hardest” to learn. She advertises and promotes interdisciplinary and international programs to foster intercultural exchange and thinking outside the box. One of my notes to her talk reads: “Is the PhD of the future a PhD in problem solving?”. And once we have solved the problem, how do we inform a lay audience about it? Science communication is a big topic in the more outreach-oriented American graduate education and at Virginia Tech run by the theatre department. It cannot get more interdepartmental than pairing up sociology and life science faculty to teach and train public speaking.

Akiko Keller from the Novartis Next Generation Scientist (NGS) program explained her company’s incentive to locally contribute to third world country development by training researchers of the developing world. Very few clinical trials are conducted outside the US and EU whereas the majority of humanity lives in developing countries. Their health needs and predispositions for drugs likely do not correspond to the ones in developed countries. So, Novartis teaches NGS participants research skills transferable to third world countries and also to the local equipment. Weekly, NGS participants get to meet in interdisciplinary teams with a Novartis expert of a corporate division and become experts themselves. A major focus of the NGS program is to reintegrate the participants and their newly acquired knowledge back home by giving them a perspective. Akiko Keller stressed several times the “Importance of having a perspective!”. Surely, this statement holds true for any type of career path.

PD Dr. Christian Imdorf, as a sociologist, researches gendered school-to-work transitions, pathways to higher education and the consequences of experiencing job insecurity. He is also involved in 3 the global perspectives program already mentioned by Prof. DePauw. The statistics and statements he presented from a survey that had been conducted amongst former participants of the global perspectives program impressively emphasizes the impact such a “career critical skill” program can have on its alumni. Half of the American and one third of the Swiss alumni decided their future career based on information and/or skills gained by the program. This should raise the awareness of program coordinators to integrate, extend, and perfect transferable skills courses in their graduate schools – also in the context of the upcoming restructuring of the doctorate according to the “Bologna reform”. And this is also the motivation for people behind the Higher Education and Research (HEAR) program, Erich Thaler from the International Office of the University of Basel, and the Graduate Center of the University of Basel (GRACE), Dr. Sina Henrichs Head of GRACE, to outperform in their job to educate future brains and leaders. HEAR and GRACE are open or about to be opened to students from all Eucor universities. Prof. Véronique Bulach, Deputy Vice-President research and doctoral training as well as director of the Doctoral School of Chemical Sciences at the University of Strasbourg, depicted the hierarchal organization of the French graduate schools. Their accreditation has to be renewed every four years and is awarded by the French ministry of education. This external audit assures good corporate governance of the ten doctoral schools under the roof of the Doctoral College. The Doctoral College develops the doctoral training policy by coordinating and pooling the doctoral schools' skills and activities in line with national regulations while the doctoral schools are in charge of doctoral scientific training. These schools include the Doctoral School of Theology and Religious Sciences, a disciplinary exception among graduate schools. Surprising is also the number of awarded dual degrees that tops ten percent and the short three years’ duration of a PhD.

The diversity among the graduate schools already in the comparatively small Upper Rhine region amazes me and surely even more so the students that might want to choose one of them for the next phase of their lives. And so vivid discussions emerged at the booths where the students grasped the opportunity to talk to the directors, coordinators, and decision makers of the respective graduate schools. Rarely, the students get to ask these people in person. Additionally, Freiburg is represented by Dr. Tina Lampe of the International Graduate Academy (IGA). The IGA principally is the equivalent of the GRACE in Basel and the Doctoral College in Strasbourg. Over the course of the interchange, the students started to understand their structural differences and individual benefits. Still, some questions remained; their nature being more personal “Do I qualify for a PhD program?” or more futuristic “Is the context of a PhD position really negotiable?”. In the final panel discussion, it became clear that more transparency and informing is needed from 4 the graduate schools whereas more self-awareness and open-mindedness is key for the future PhD students.