What is Research Staff Development at UofG?

Our programmes and initiatives for Research Staff at UofG are designed to enrich your skills and working relationships, foster your talents, and accelerate your professional prospects. They are underpinned by six priority themes:

  • Career Direction
  • Connection and Belonging
  • Researcher Integrity
  • Engaged Communication
  • Constructive Conversations
  • Innovative Ideas

These themes are strongly influenced by key strategic messages from the university and by the UK's Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers.

The Researcher Development Concordat is a national policy document that sets out expectations, roles and responsibilities for how we recruit, support, and develop Research Staff. Our UofG commitment to the Researcher Development Concordat, and a living action plan of progress against its aims can be found on our Concordat webpages.

6 Steps to Successfully Navigating Your Development

Step 1

You are in control of your development. Reflecting on your prior experience, considering what your career aspirations are, planning and setting goals can help you identify and select opportunities that support your development and align with your career stage, and aspirations.

Step 2

The Researcher Development Concordat sets out an expectation that researchers will engage in 10 days a year of continuing professional development. You choose how best to use your time in pursuit of your priorities. Having a conversation about your development can help you identify areas that you wish to focus on.

Step 3

Be aware that you need to think broadly about how you develop, it’s not all about doing courses. Engaging with training, workshops and courses comprises the smaller part of the total development you will experience during your time at UofG.

Step 4

In complement to training, embedding and contextualising your learning comes though working with others in the UofG community via workshop discussions, networks, communities, events, groups, mentoring, and peer-to-peer conversations. Find them all here

Step 5

The remaining, and very important part of your development is derived from direct experience in your field. Working with others, presenting, publishing, and collaborating, all offer you learning experiences. Look all around you for development opportunities.

Step 6

Reflection on your progress, what you are learning, and what you need to learn is a very important part of the process. You can find support for reflecting on progress through conversations with your PI or line manager, your peers, mentors, and specialist services such as Careers, Employability and Opportunity.

 

An Introduction to Research Staff Development Opportunities

It's worth noting that your development opportunities are not all in one place and are not all accessed through one system! As a guide, you will need to:

  • Be aware of your College, School, or Institute requirements for staff training, development, mentoring, or onboarding processes.
  • Complete the UofG mandatory online training courses for new staff.
  • Choose what you need from the Researcher Development Team’s programmes and initiatives, which all link from this page.
  • Engage with the Researcher Development Team’s self-paced learning (online courses).
  • Find specialist courses through the Library and IT Services.
  • Know where to go for large repositories of online courses on a full variety of topics.
  • Keep an eye out for courses, opportunities, mentoring or events offered through your funder or professional body or learned society.

For a more detailed guide, view our dedicated Your Professional Development webpage.