Student support program

[Tim Grant]

Student support program

 

Introduction

Because LCA is a recent development in academic terms and is a multi-disciplinary study it does not neatly fit into the discipline structure of many universities.   This leads to many students in working in LCA predominantly in post graduate degrees, isolated with little support on how to undertake LCA or what common practice looks like.  They will often have no other students working in LCA and at time no supervisor with LCA experience.

The outcome of this is frustration from the student’s perspective, poor quality LCA studies due to isolation, extensive duplication of effort with student having little knowledge of what has already been done by other students and practitioners.

 

Proposal

A student support program would be developed to support and encourage students in their study in LCA and to increase the number of students choosing to apply LCA in their studies.  The program would consist of:

• Student membership rate for FSLCI
• Web page of resources including links to list servers, documents, main journals and so forth
• Online Monthly forum on LCA where Practitioners provide short presentations of critical issues on LCA and students are able to present their work/ topics for discussion.
• Student program at LCA conferences- a student prize and student event similar to what is done by SETAC to promote communication between the LCA student bodies.

 

Student membership rate for FSLCI

This already exists but would be promoted and included as part of the student program

 

Student section of website

The student section of the website would outline the student program and have list of resources on LCA.  The aim here would be to link to many existing resources (for example Gabor Doka’s Link page) without having to recreate a resource page which needs extensive maintenance.   The categorisation however would be focused on beginner level, teaching resources and then more expert resources.

 

Online Monthly forum on LCA

This would be a live online webinar which would see an LCA practitioner or company person of interest make a short presentation on an LCA or related topic.   Topics could be many and varied but would not constitute any course as such, but be of value to the students above and beyond the theoretical studies they are taking at university.   It would be open only to FSLCI members.  An optional second presentation from a student on their work. This would give the student an opportunities to practice presenting their work to a small user friendly LCA audience giving them feedback and confidence to make presentations at conferences.  Goto Webinar software would be used to manage these events which would be kept short to avoid them becoming onerous on the presenters and organisers.  The session could be recorded to allow student to view after the webinar for those in challenging time zones or prior commitments.

 

. Student program at LCA conferences

At the LCM conference and associated national conference from aligned countries (ALCAS, ALCA etc) a student prize and special student social event could be held similar to what is done by SETAC.  This could be open to all student at the conference not just FSLCI members, but would be sponsored by FSLCI and would be used to recruit student members.

 

Resources

Assume it to be revenue earning from new student memberships.  Webinar software is free to use and we have access to GoTo Webinar already.

Presenters would be voluntary so no cost there.   Maybe minor costs in web development and a sponsor could be sort for the student prize

 

[Anonymous]

This is a really great idea. Are there any academic members that could help this happen… or student members?

[Martina Prox]

I also really think it is a great idea, as I can observe thaat especially in Universities where the Life Cycle Topics are just starting the Students are rather left alone and sometime get tasks in there research which are way to big to be completed in such a short time of a master thesis. i could be a type of a mentoring program.

[Philip Strothmann]

Dear Tim,

I think this is a brilliant idea. Now, based on my experience at the conferences, I’m wondering whether our student membership fee is maybe still to high? I’ll bring this up during the next board call, because I guess if we really want to make this a useful resource for students, probably the entry barrier needs to be lower. What do you guys think?

In addition to what you propose, I think it would be good if we could come up with a directory of universities/professors that actually offer courses on Life Cycle related subjects. That way we could help interested students to better identify universities that offer what they are looking for. Obviously this directory should be made public and accessible to everyone.

On the technical side of things, I think I would go maybe with a directory of either institutes or professors, as this would be more useful than having an overview of actual classes which obviously change rather frequently. We could also use this as an opportunity to engage with the larger academic community and proactively ask them to submit their institutes to be listed. What do guys think?

Kind regards,
Philip

[Philip Strothmann]

Dear all,

This morning I had another idea: Maybe we could also organize some kind of student project mentoring program. So if a student is tasked with a specific project, we could see whether someone from our community would be willing to support him with this project. I’ve heard during the conferences that students sometimes are left hanging and/or tasked with too big projects.

Or maybe we could organize something like what PHD students do, as in, having some sort of a online peer group. And if possible, we could have a more senior member of our community support that peer group.

Thoughts?

Kind regards,
Philip

 

[Philip Strothmann]

Dear @timothy-grant,

the Board of Directors discussed your idea of a student support programme today. Generally, there was good support for the idea! Would you be interested to work with me on the student section of the website that you mention above? I’m happy to help on the technical side of things, if you could point me to resources that we should link to etc. 🙂

Also, the Board welcomed the idea of a more concrete mentoring programme. I’ve started to work a bit on the technical end of this idea. If you now edit your FSLCI profile, there’s a new section specifically asking you, whether you would like to mentor or be mentored. In addition, there’s a new search field on our members page, which lets you then search for members that filled out these new profile fields (so far obviously no one but me, but you can for example search for me and the key word ‘test’ to see how it works… 🙂

I also like the webinar idea, though I guess we might want to take a look at this at a later point in time when we’ve more student members?!

Kind regards,
Philip

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