Category: Statements and press releases

The Norwegian Government is proposing a new program, which among other highlights a research pilot program that aims to increase the labour market relevance of a PhD where the 4th year (“pliktåret” of a 4 year PhD with 25% work duties) can be used for more career oriented activities other than teaching. There are two ways of implementation of this goal:

a)       Practice in a business/organization/institution

b)      Work done on behalf of a business/organization/institution, doing project work for these.

Fall 2021 will see the implementation of this program.

The Norwegian Government is also in collaboration with the universities developing a strategy for research recruit and career ways, which will be public in Spring 2021. The strategy will serve as information which decisions on researcher recruitment and career development can be made by the universities. It will also focus on: temporal employment, unclear an diffuse career ways, low amount of Norwegians in technology.

DION was invited by the The Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (MH) to contribute to a supervisor seminar. The seminar targeted new supervisors at the MH faculty. DION was asked to summarize what PhD candidates could wish for from their supervisors. After meetings with over 30 participating supervisors we have written a report that summarizes our findings of the most central themes for being a good supervisor. The report looks at the relationship between supervisor and PhD candidate from a very general perspective and can hopefully give supervisors and impression what PhD candidates care and worry about.

The whole report can be found here, with the central themes being:

– Open door policy – be welcoming to your student.

– Clear expectations – and communicating them.

– Balancing freedom and guidance for the PhD-student.

To complete the report, the board and a sub-working group met several times and discussed from their own and their peers’ experiences what are best and worst practices regarding the supervisor to PhD candidate relationship. DIONs contribution at the seminar was held in an interactive manner. The 30 participating supervisors were encouraged to engage in group discussions regarding their own good and bad experiences as a PhD candidate.

Recently the DION webpage was taken down for security reasons. After a grueling couple of months, we’re proud to say that it’s finally back.