PGR Faculty Forums – Guidelines and Objectives
Overall Purpose
1. Led, run and managed by PGRs (for PGRs), the purpose of the Faculty forums is to develop initiatives for
the benefit of both PGRs and the University. It enables PGRs to apply their doctoral skills in practice, to
enhance their skills as influencers and entrepreneurs. It also provides opportunities for PGRs to gain skills
and experience in event management, public engagement, budget management, business development,
general management, as well as leadership qualities and skills in cross-faculty networking and networking
with external colleagues/organisations. All of these will give you skills and experience that will enhance
your curriculum vitae, and promote your employability, whether that be in academia or in the wider
business or public sector world.
Objectives of the PGR Forum
1. To identify, set up and manage initiatives benefitting PGRs as well as the Faculty and University. These
may include and involve:
 Working with PGRs across faculties on projects e.g. the Engineering faculty is hoping to work with
Medicine, Dentistry and Health on running a conference, given that there are a number of areas
where research overlaps and each would benefit from sharing experiences and expertise, including
information about external speakers;
 Public and civic engagement – e.g. arranging to be involved in an external event which is of relevance
to the Faculty’s research areas, such as having a stand at a public event, which promotes this
research;
 Enterprise activities and knowledge exchange – e.g. working with local businesses (on particular
projects)
2. To quality assure the University’s provision for PGR students, giving PGRs a strong voice in stating
whether the PGR has a good quality experience throughout their journey as a research student, enabling
the University to learn from their experience, build on best practice, and learn from any negative
experiences.
3. To enable PGRs to contribute to the decision-making of the University and its governance (how it is run).
E.g. this could include enabling key issues arising from the student surveys to be discussed and explored
in detail, to identify how the University could best address them for the benefit of PGRs.
4. To enable the PGRs involved to develop skills, both as leading-edge researchers and as professionals in
non-academic careers.
5. To manage a small fund to support PGR-led initiatives.
6. To become more widely accessible, developing online facilities, enabling blogs between universities so
that researchers can readily get in touch with researchers at other universities engaged in research areas
relevant to them, thus widening the research community accessible to PGRs.
Membership
1.
2.
The Forum will comprise at least one member from each department in the Faculty.
The Forum will have a chair-person and a deputy chair-person.
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Benefits that PGRs have gained from both chairing and being involved as a member of a PGR forum.
As an active member of a Faculty PGR Forum you could gain skills and experience in the following areas,
which would be beneficial to you as your career goes forward, whether that be in academia or in industry or
other public sector bodies:
2. Experience in events management – setting up a conference event, organising speakers, determining the
programme of the event, advertising the event;
3. Profile raising – existing PGR forum members have said that their profile in the University has increased
considerably: people know who they are, both fellow PGRs and academics;
4. Networking - your ability to develop a network of contacts both across the University and with other
organisations, in organising events and identifying external speakers for these events, will undoubtedly
be beneficial as your career goes forward;
5. Leadership qualities - including skills such as in bringing people together in an inclusive way to achieve a
positive outcome, promoting the benefits of a particular task, networking with others, enhancing your
communication skills;
6. Experience in public engagement - you may be involved in activities that involve engaging with the public
to promote the benefits of the research you are doing e.g. organising an event which involves having a
stand in a public space in Sheffield, to share and communicate a particular research issue the faculty PGR
forum is involved with;
7. Experience in budget management - PGR forums currently have a budget of £5,000 for the year to
organise events and run the forum;
8. Some of the activities you get involved in with the PGR forum may identify and result in improvements
being made to the PGR provision across the University.
Guidelines for PGR forums to consider in both setting up and running their Forum
In running the PGR forum, PGRs may want to consider the following issues:
Communicating and broadcasting the work of the Forum:
It would be worth considering whether there are any key committees/bodies it would be beneficial for the
PGR forum to report to. If so, you may want to consider:
- Whether you want to provide the committee with a regular update of the forum’s activities e.g. a copy
of the action points from each meeting;
- Will the PGR forum report its activities and any recommendations to one of the Faculty’s committees on
either an annual or quarterly basis, or perhaps on an ad-hoc basis when there are particular issues it
wants to flag up?;
- You might want to consider inviting a member of a Faculty Committee to attend one of the PGR forum
meetings as an observer, if you feel this would be beneficial e.g. in promoting the activities of the forum.
- You may also want to consider having a webpage on your Faculty’s area of the University’s website to
advertise the PGR forum.
- You may also want to ask that information on the PGR forum be included in Faculty and department
inductions.
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Meeting of the PGR Forum
It is suggested that the forum agrees the frequency of its meetings and how it is run, and you may want to
think about the following issues:
- Whether you agree at the outset a regular time for the Forum to meet across the year, and the
frequency of the meetings e.g. meeting on a quarterly basis on the third Wednesday of the month, or
on a monthly basis on a specific day of the month;
- Whether you want to make it clear at the outset that the frequency of meetings may increase or
decrease during the year to be flexible to accommodate peaks in workload e.g. in setting up and
running an event;
- Whether, for certain tasks e.g. to assist in the detailed planning of an event, you want to consider
having sub-groups each with a specific remit, thus sub-dividing the tasks, and then reporting back to the
overall PGR forum;
- Having brief minutes/action points from each meeting, so everyone is clear what has been agreed, and
who it has been agreed will take forward particular issues. These can then be used as to update
progress and highlight any issues at the next meeting;
- You may want to consider how the PGR forum makes decisions on issues e.g. on its work programme for
the year, in identifying an event to run. Should a given number of the PGR forum be present at a
meeting so that a fair decision can be made? E.g. members of the PGR forum may think it unfair if
things have been decided at a meeting when only three out of ten members were present.
Continuity and Inclusivity of the Forum
To ensure that the PGR forums continue their valuable work, as PGRs progress along their PGR journey and
eventually move on in their careers once they graduate, it would be worth the PGR forum considering how it
recruits to the PGR forum and how it sustains it and ensures its continuity,. as well as ensuring an effective
hand-over from the outgoing to the incoming chair-person;
Examples of how to do this include:
1. Documenting the working practices of the PGR forum, which may include issues outlined in these
guidance notes – frequency of the meetings, examples of activities and results that the PGR forum has
achieved to date;
2. Promoting the good work of the Forum e.g. attending Faculty PGR [xxxx] Committees to report on
activities and successes achieved, perhaps on a six monthly basis;
3. Having a process for identifying someone to take over chairing the PGR forum well in advance;
4. Having a shadowing arrangement in place for chairing the PGR forum so the current PGR chair-person
works with the incoming chair-person for about three-six months before they take over, putting together
agenda for meetings together, drawing up the action points of the meeting jointly so the new chairperson gets a feel for how things work;
5. Perhaps considering having some informal guidance notes on experiences that the Forum has learned e.g.
in setting up an event;
6. Having a directory of contact names and numbers, both across the University and details of external
speakers who have been used in the past, which could be useful at a later date, as well as useful event
venues and contact details for these;The forum should aim to be all-inclusive, having an equal
opportunities policy both for membership of the forum, and for generating fresh ideas which benefit all
sections of the population;
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7. The forum should aim to recruit new members in an open and inclusive way, ensuring all PGRs have an
equal and fair opportunity to be involved, both as a member and as the chair-person of forum. It may be
helpful to document the recruitment process and think about where to advertise the PGR forum and
recruitment of members that ensures that all those who may want to be involved have an opportunity to
be considered.
Review Arrangements by the Research & Innovation Services
In order for the University to benefit from the running of PGR forums and to share best practice across the
Forums, Research & Innovation Services might ask for certain information about the Forum’s activities. This
could include:
1. Reviewing the purpose of the Forum;
2. Evaluating the Forum’s activities e.g. on a yearly or three-yearly basis, to celebrate successes, inform
future activities, learn from experiences, including those that may not have gone so well.
This may include the learning methods of the forum, its structure and an analysis of the activities
undertaken.
3. As a result of this, it may be that experiences are shared across the Faculties, having a dedicated webpage on the University website. In addition, the Forum may decide to develop its own procedures,
tailored to their Faculty, to ensure experiences are learned from, and to aid the continuity and
sustainability of the Forum.
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