Call for placement ideas for the Masters in Conservation Leadership
A central component of the Masters in Conservation Leadership is the placement that students
undertake with an organisation engaged in conservation practice and/or research. Placements take
place between May and August, following detailed planning during the autumn and winter terms.
Students work on a specific and carefully defined project, which must address a conservation
leadership challenge. A few examples of successful previous projects are given in the next section,
but there is a lot of scope for creativity and all ideas are welcome. The aims of the placements are (i)
to give students the opportunity to solve an identified leadership challenge, (ii) to develop and
demonstrate conservation leadership skills by working alongside established conservation
professionals, and (iii) to put into practice some of the ideas and methods learned during the taught
component of the course.
The students on the course are experienced and of a high calibre. Consequently, they will often be
able to make an important contribution to the work of their host organisation and/or department,
and often at a senior level, through their placement. Some students come with their own ideas, or
existing institutional affiliations, which will guide their decisions over what placement to follow.
Others are open to ideas from conservation organisations, and we provide them with a list of
suggested placements proposed by potential hosts and supervisors. The purpose of this document is
to give you more details about what the placements entail, and to ask you to circulate this call within
your organisation for potential placement ideas.
Details of the placements
The placement should comprise a coherent body of work that addresses a clearly defined
conservation leadership challenge. Conservation Leadership is a broad concept, and we do not wish
to constrain the scope of placement projects by forcing them to fit a strict definition. As a general
rule, placement projects should address challenges that conservation leaders are likely to face in
their careers. These include conservation-specific challenges such as how to deal with an emerging
issue, and more general leadership challenges such as how to structure an organisation to deliver
results. If you have any questions about how to identify an appropriate conservation leadership
project please get in touch with Chris Sandbrook.
The following are examples of previous Conservation Leadership placement projects:
1. Enhancing synergies among the six biodiversity related conventions (with UNEP-WCMC)
2. Developing a mentoring framework for conservation organisations (with BirdLife
International)
3. Analysing the advantages and disadvantages of engaging with Citizen Science for a
knowledge-based organisation (with UNEP-WCMC)
4. Identifying options for the sustainable finance of a conservation project in Nicaragua (with
FFI)
5. What sells the conservation message? An analysis of negative and positive messages in
communicating and fundraising for nature conservation (with the Department of Zoology)
6. Improving the governance of the high seas (with IUCN)
Call for ideas
For the placements to work for both the students and the CCI collaborating organisations, it is
important that placements are well designed and genuinely useful to the host organisation. We are
therefore circulating this call for placement ideas to start the ball rolling on placement design. To
make it easier to compare the proposed projects and assess their suitability, we ask you to complete
the table at the end of this document for each proposed project. Ideas do not need to be given in
great detail – the aim is to present an outline project which attracts the interest of a student, and
which can then be fleshed out between the student and the supervisor at a later stage. We would
like to emphasise that this is different from calls for research ideas that have been circulated by
university academics – these placements are usually very applied in nature. Experience suggests that
the most attractive projects have been those which give the students real scope to develop and
demonstrate their leadership skills. These are often to be found outside of the ‘science’ departments
or teams that might normally host student projects. Projects which do not require the students to
find additional resources are also very popular.
Next steps
We are aiming to collect all placement ideas by the 31st October. They will then be shared with the
students so that they can think about their projects in time to begin contacting potential supervisors
in mid to late November.
We hope you are as excited as we are about these placements, and we’re sure the students and the
host organisations will get a lot out of them. The following pages give more details of the placement
process. If you have further questions, please get in touch with Chris Sandbrook, on either
chris.sandbrook@unep-wcmc.org or 01223 766574
Details of the placement process
Choice of placement
To help students identify their placement project, we give them a list of possible projects in
November. Students can then contact the relevant people in the proposed host organisation directly
to discuss the project idea, and to decide on its suitability. Should more than one student express
interest in the same project, the final decision over which student to take will lie with the proposed
host organisation. Students may, alternatively, wish to develop their own independent project. After
discussing their ideas with us, we will encourage them to approach relevant people in conservation
organisations or university departments.
Placements go through a detailed planning process. Students are asked to define the broad area of
enquiry over the Christmas vacation, and this will need to involve discussions with the proposed host
organisation and supervisor(s). Students provide an indication of the proposed subject of the
placement and 500-word abstract, with a deadline of 3rd February 2014. The abstract must include
the following elements:
i) A clear statement of the leadership challenge that the placement will address
ii) A description of the activities to be carried out during the placement
iii) A description of the leadership skills that are expected to be developed / demonstrated
through the placement
Plans for the placement will be presented during a placement presentation session on Wednesday
4th February 2015 (supervisor attendance is optional but encouraged). There is some flexibility over
the final title of the placement, provided it fits within the general topic area identified in February.
Students are required to submit a log-frame and Gantt chart at the beginning of the placement
period in early May. This ensures that the placement is clearly planned at the beginning, and helps to
ensure clarity for both the student and supervisors in terms of the intended outputs of the project.
Supervision
Where placements are undertaken within a University department, they are supervised by a
member of academic staff from within that department. Where placements are undertaken at a
host organisation outside the University, they are supervised by one member of academic staff from
the University, plus a co-supervisor who is a member of staff at the host organisation. Both academic
and host co-supervisors should agree to supervise the relevant student by, and preferably well
before, the beginning of February 2015. We recognise that some potential supervisors are extremely
busy, and may not be able to supervise if they do not feel able to commit to the requirements of
supervisors. The role of supervisors is to support students in the design, implementation and
reporting of their placement project. To do so, supervisors should make themselves available to
meet the student up to 10 times during the academic year, including at least one meeting to discuss
project design, project implementation and project reporting. Where placements take place in host
organisations, it is expected that the co-supervisor(s) will be available to provide supervisory support
and guidance to the student during their placement. Host organisations can be paid for up to ten
hours of supervision at the University’s standard hourly rate for teaching. Supervisory meetings are
recorded using a form which we provide to the students.
It is important that co-supervisors should inform the course team at once if, at any point during the
placement period, they are unaware of the location of their student and/or are unable to get in
contact with them. Co-supervisors are encouraged to stay in very regular contact with their student,
ideally at least once per week.
Supervisors and co-supervisors are appointed to help students with their placement work (and not
for other components of the course). Supervisors may not read drafts of the placement report.
However, supervisors can be expected to read chapter headings and brief outlines of placement
material in meetings with students.
After submission of the final placement report in late August, supervisors are required to complete,
within ten days, a short online questionnaire regarding the performance of the student. This takes
no more than 10 minutes. The information given is used to help the examiners to judge the quality
of the students’ performance, and to help identify areas for improvement in the design of the
placement process.
Location of placements
Placements can be either within a department of the University of Cambridge, or with a nonUniversity organisation. Work undertaken for the placement can be done within Cambridge, or
outside Cambridge, including abroad. However, placements outside Cambridge must be limited in
duration and cannot include time away during the summer term. This means that fieldwork away
from Cambridge cannot begin until mid June, and should not last longer than 6 weeks in order to
leave sufficient time for writing up. Placements must therefore be designed to include a meaningful
period of work in Cambridge for May and early June.Depending on the nature and location of the
student placement, the host organisation may need to provide suitable workspace for the student to
undertake the agreed project work. For some placements this will require dedicated desk space and
appropriate facilities, such as a computer, internet access etc.
Timing
Students will be available to work full time on their placements from the end of April 2014 when
they will have completed all of their assessed coursework. The final deadline for submission of the
placement report is at the end of August. Students are likely to need all of August to complete any
analysis and writing up, meaning that the main body of work will need to be completed in the
months of May-July.
The placement report
The Placement report is an independent piece of work that must not exceed 10,000 words in length.
The aim of the placement report is to permit students to engage in a piece of substantial, focused
investigation within the broad themes of the course, integrating the substantive knowledge
obtained from the core modules and the placement period. In some cases the work involved in a
placement will lead to an output of value to the host organisation, such as a report or portfolio of
communications material, written with the host organisation as the intended audience. We
encourage the submission of such outputs as part of the placement report. There are two options
for submission of such material:
(i) Include it as a self-contained section or chapter within the report, separate from the rest of
the report that is written with the course examiners as the intended audience
(ii) Submit it as an appendix to the placement report
Students are advised that their first priority must be to submit the best possible placement report,
and that they should not spend excessive time on the preparation of outputs that will not be
submitted as assessed work. To this end it is advised that any such outputs should be kept to below
5,000 words in length, or equivalent for non-text material. If the student wishes to prepare a more
substantial output for the host organisation, this should be done after submission of the placement
report. The detailed marking criteria used to assess the placement reports are available on request.
Host organisation(s)
Host supervisor(s) &
contact email address
Proposed placement title /
topic
General description
What is the conservation
leadership challenge that
the placement will address?
This should be a single
sentence, phrased as a
generic challenge
What leadership skills will
the student develop /
demonstrate in this
placement?
Are there any specific skills
or characteristics required
for this placement?
How will the host
organisation benefit from
the placement? Please
detail any anticipated
outputs for the host
Location(s) of the
placement
Facilities that will be made
available to the student
Estimated total budget (£)
Host organisation
contribution to budget (£)
Shortfall that the student
would need to find (£)