Charlotte Teresa Weber (co-authors Melania Borit and Michaela Aschan)
Tromsø Doctoral Students (TODOS), Norway
We will present the innovative doctoral training model implemented through the European Training Network SAF21 – Social Science Aspects of Fisheries for the 21st Century, an EU funded Marie Skłodowska-Curie project (number 642080). The SAF21 training program has a special focus on training Early Stage Researchers (ESR) both in academic and transferable skills that will increase their rate of successful international, intersectoral and interdisciplinary mobility and, consequently, enhance their employability. The SAF21 doctoral training model has four pillars. All ESRs follow a Personal Career Development Plan (PCDP) whose aim is to identify career development objectives, map skills and competences and plan activities for reaching the career objectives. The PCDP integrates within-network and outside-network training to create effective and individually tailored training paths. Developing PCDPs additionally facilitates self-reflection as well as practicing core competencies such as personal effectiveness, research governance, career management and research impact. Through the mechanism of secondments (i.e. internships integrated in the doctoral training program), the SAF21 ESRs are exposed to three different work sectors relevant for their knowledge, training, skills and competences. A third pillar is mandatory training in a core group of transferable skills, relevant for a broad job market. Special training in inter-cultural communication sets the basis for successful international mobility. The fourth pillar is training and practice in science communication using a wide variety of platforms (e.g. Facebook, personal blog).The ESRs are integrated in an extensive network of academic and non-academic institutions through organized network meetings, workshops and training camps under the coordination of the SAF21 project.
