Making the Most of Masters
Making the Most of Masters (MMM) is a three-year Scottish Funding Council funded initiative across the Universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Stirling.
This is a curriculum development project that focuses on introducing and embedding ‘work based projects’ as an optional alternative to the more traditional research projects within Taught Postgraduate (PGT) programmes. This is a means of strengthening participating programmes in terms of facilitating increased ‘work-readiness’ and employability of PGT students.
The main objectives of the project are to identify the best ways of supporting programmes, to create resources to facilitate these, and to undertake project sourcing whilst ensuring a long term and sustainable input from employers and organisations of all sizes. Making the Most of Masters can help to further your network of employer links, and provides the supporting infrastructure and documentation to deliver viable projects. There are a number of benefits of delivering projects in this way.
Presently we have a range of documentation, marketing material, employer networks, dedicated events, database management software, student’s educational support workshops and tools, and a breadth of other tools, or resources, available for University of Aberdeen PGT programmes. Our dedicated website and social media strategy has vastly increased awareness of this initiative amongst employers and organisations, as well as other HEIs and organisations with whom we now have established agreements in place (University of Strathclyde, Edinburgh Napier, Marine Alliance for Science & Technology for Scotland (MASTS), Challenges Worldwide, Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance (SULSA), and Energy Technology Partnership (ETP)).
At the University of Aberdeen we engaged with eight PGT programmes in 2011-12 and sourced a total of 92 projects from a range of employers and organisations. Our employer engagement activities outside of project sourcing resulted in a wide variety of dedicated events such as the 120 person ‘Opportunity for Industry’ event in collaboration with the Energy Institute held in Elphinstone Hall, and the ‘Recruitment using Social Media’ event in collaboration with the Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce held on the seventh floor of the new library, which aimed to introduce SMEs to University engagement.
The College of Life Sciences & Medicine Graduate School has been a strong supporter of this initiative, and with its support we undertook an initial trial run with three School of Biological Sciences PGT programmes in 2011-12:
- MSc Applied Marine & Fisheries Ecology
- MSc Ecology & Environmental Sustainability
- MSc Environmental Science
We sourced a total of 23 project suggestions for these three programmes from organisations such as the Marine Conservation Society, Marine Scotland, Black & Veatch, Aberdeen City Council, and Environmental Research Institute (please email Dr Zachary Hickman if you would like to see some of these). A number of projects went ahead this year and we are currently gaining feedback from all parties to ensure the future smooth running of the processes we already have in place, and to ensure continued good practice.
As part of our commitment to bringing external organisations in contact with academia, we organised a series of speakers for the MSc Ecology & Environmental Sustainability programme. One aim was to allow students to develop a relationship with these speakers and organisations and to allow a student-led research project to develop. This is a great way to develop a student’s skills and employability, and one project developed in this way was the Natural Trust for Scotland’s project titled ‘damselfly habitat and changes to their habitat with woodland management’.
Above comments sourced by MMM’s online electronic questionnaire feedback. Just one of the tools available for uptake by PGT programmes.
The external speakers you arranged for Wednesday afternoon sessions were really one of the most useful/interesting parts of the course, and I appreciate your efforts in organising them!
Jennifer Aungier, Ecology & Environmental Sustainability student
For the academic year 2012-13, we are additionally engaging with the MSc Global Health, and the MSc Biobusiness programmes within the College of Life Sciences & Medicine and continuing to engage and establish long-term sustainable industry partners.
To find out what resources, tools and support we have, please contact either the Project Coordinator Dr Zachary Hickman, or the Careers Educational Developer Wendy Rudland.
Author: Dr Zac Hickman
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