Education and development

Good supervision is crucial for a successful PhD track. But optimal supervision is also important for the supervisors themselves: it provides positive energy, makes it possible to work more efficiently and it contributes to their own development. To facilitate supervisors in this and to improve the quality of supervision, the UU requires a supervisor course and recommends intervision.

Educational Consultancy & Professional Development offers the course "Supervising PhD research". Questions that are addressed in this course include: how do you help the PhD candidate to become an independent researcher, how do you identify problem behaviour and how do you deal with this?

From 1 September 2022, this course will be compulsory for researchers who start supervising PhD candidates. Completion of the course is a prerequisite for obtaining the SKOz. The Faculty of Geosciences will adjust its promotion policy accordingly. The transitional arrangement within Geosciences is as follows:

After completion of the course you will receive a certificate of participation. Save this certificate in your personnel file and attach it to any application for promotion. The course dates are listed on the course website. The course fee will be paid in the usual way (analogous to courses such as Academic Leadership).

Through intervision you learn from each other, you let each other look at things from a different angle and you can help each other solve problems. You will be introduced to intervision during the course "Supervising PhD research". Download an intervision guide (basic intervision model) here (Dutch) and here (pdf). You can use this to organise your own intervision meetings with a group, for example with colleagues who have followed the course in the past six months. This intervision is not compulsory within Geosciences.

The UU Development Guide offers such programmes as the Research Leadership programme and Academic Leadership for senior lecturers.

Educational Consultancy & Professional Development, part of the Utrecht University Centre for Academic Teaching,offers various courses for PhD supervisors, for example Supervising PhD Research and Supervising PhD Research: Next Level (the latter one for experienced supervisors).

Some external organisations also organise courses for PhD supervisors, for example, Hertz Training for Scientists provides training programmes that are especially developed for PhD candidates, postdocs and professors.