The first in the Graduate School’s ‘Meet the Team’ series, we’ve asked Justine Abbott, Graduate School Consultant leading on the PGR Lifecycle Project to tell us more about the project and what it means for PGRs.
What is the PGR Lifecycle Project?
The PGR Lifecycle Project aims to look at all aspects of the student journey of postgraduate research students (PGRs) between now and the start of the next academic year 2022/23. We’re working hard to improve the PGR Experience for all of our existing and future PGRs. Part of this is to make sure that postgraduate researchers have robust support services in place, and that clear information is available to all students and staff on where and how they can access these services.
We also need to be sure that processes are consistent across the University, so we’ll be checking that this is the case as we go through the different aspects of the student journey for PGR students.
How will the PGR Lifecycle Project work?
People from all across the University are going to be involved, which is fantastic. Faculties and teams across Professional Services are excited to be involved and to contribute to getting things right for PGR students. We want to make sure that the student voice is heard and PGRs will also be involved in these discussions. It’s a real team effort across the University.
When will we see results?
We hope to see results pretty soon hopefully. The aim is to have all our discussions finished and any updates made so that we can use the revised processes at the latest from the start of the next academic year in October 2022, and we can already see some quick wins we could achieve well ahead of October. PGRs should start to see new developments coming through over the next few months with any updates announced in the PGR Bulletins.
Anybody who wants to know more about the PGR Lifecycle Project and what it means for you can contact Justine at j.abbott@mmu.ac.uk.