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Things to consider…
How will you contact the researchers?
Do you or your colleagues have any previous contacts? Can you ask supervisors or Principal Investigators (PIs) to contact their students on your behalf? Are there other departments or groups you can ask to put you in touch with researchers who may be interested? For example, Outreach, Student Ambassadors, those offering engagement training, graduate schools.
Is a recruitment event appropriate? If so what will this look like and who are you targeting?
| How many researchers/academics are needed? |
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| What backgrounds or specialisms will they need? |
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| What academic level should they be? (See Glossary.) |
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| Do you have clearance or agreement from supervisors or other higher management? Is this necessary? |
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| How will you contact researchers? |
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Below are some of the questions you may be asked directly by the researchers you are trying to recruit. It would be useful to consider some of them in general when deciding which researchers to approach. If you have previously planned similar activities you will probably already have some colleagues in mind.
| Why me? |
Relevant expertise, experience or enthusiasm |
| What will I get out of it? |
– New skills, communication etc.
– Promotion prospects, CPD, CV
– Public awareness of your field
– Fun, job satisfaction
– Impact
– Dept. targets, required by some programmes
– Pay (?) |
| What will it involve? |
– Time
– Input (see below)
– Travel
– Assessment
– Funding (?) |
| What training will I need? (See Training) |
– Activity specific (briefing)
– Generic (e.g. ‘Meet the Scientist’)
– DBS
– Mentoring from experienced colleagues
– National Curriculum |
| What input will I have? |
– Planning (is activity bespoke or pre-planned?)
– Delivery (leading sessions or tours)
– General supervision |
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| Logistically it will probably be easier to leave the details of individual researcher recruitment to your main contact at the university. However, you may wish to be involved in deciding some of the details outlined below such as which level of ‘researcher’ (see Glossary) you would like to work with or what specialism they should ideally have. |
‘Everyone should have a chance and it is valid to not want to go to university. Why should pupils be denied inspiring and interesting experiences that might encourage them to work harder at school just because they’re not academic enough to come to university?’
Researcher from the UoS Waterfront Campus at the NOC
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Back to General Information…
…On to Making Contact.
