Allowing English-speaking PhD candidates and other English-speaking researchers to teach undergraduate students.
I am aware of the basis for the rule, which makes it obligatory to teach medical students in Norwegian (their patients’ language), but we should not forget that English is the customary language of science, and none of the medical doctors can possibly follow the progress of medicine without being accustomed to the medical terms in English.
Moreover, not allowing international PhD candidates to practice teaching is against the idea of the PhD title. By obtaining the PhD title one becomes certified to teach on the academical level. How come one can receive such certification without actually teaching anyone during their PhD? Therefore, it should be of common interest to allow English-speaking temporary employees to teach undergraduate students as parts of their study program.
Supporting and stimulating temporary employees to apply for research grants
One of the biggest problems of Norwegian research is the lack of small grants with high-success rate, which could cover temporary-employee’s salary. Everyone is forced to compete for grants which, although, provide you with huge amount of research money, have the success rate of around 10%.
It means that only 1 in 10 of the temporary employees, who apply for research grants, will keep their position. I am aware that the Medical Faculty cannot support salaries of these 9 in 10 temporary employees who have not received the grants, but I believe the Faculty can support them in other ways.
I am proposing that the Faculty could finance one month of the salary (preferentially) or small research money grants for temporary employees who want to submit NFR or ERC grant applications in a given year.
Such benefit would remove the tension from the conflict of interest between their current principal investigator, on whose project they are working, and the need for generating preliminary data and writing the project proposal for their own. Additionally, it should encourage more researchers in temporary positions to apply for their own grants, which would bring more external money to our institutes. Thus, even though the cost may initially appear large, this would definitely increase the number of successful grant applications at the Faculty.
Anonymous evaluation of PhD candidates’ supervisors
Currently, there is no system of evaluation for the PhD supervisors. Complaints are made only in extreme situations, but there is no feedback to the faculty if the supervisor’s performance is lacking merit.
The PhD candidates usually avoid reporting neglect or mistreatment out of fear of repercussions or problems with getting positive references for future jobs. At least what can be done is to establish an evaluation system of the supervisors’ performance, to prevent future failures or to help the supervisors’ growth into their role. Thus, assessing the supervisors might prevent future cases of severe neglect or lack of proper supervision on time.
A simple evaluation form with feedback on the supervisor’s performance could help the Faculty to identify the potential problems.
Realistic expectations towards the PhD dissertation
Current expectations for the PhD thesis are three manuscripts, out of which one should be published, and one should have the candidate as the first author. Although there are some fields of science, where one is able to generate enough data for three manuscripts in three years, there are other fields where it is basically impossible.
In the biological and medical wet labs, this amount of work is not expected even from 3-year postdoctoral fellowships. On top of that, PhD students have to write the PhD thesis and earn ECTS points, often enrolling in courses that are not helpful for their PhD projects. This can also take up a significant amount of their time.
Instead of pressing students to produce as many papers as possible, I propose that requirements are reduced to two manuscripts. Out of these two, the one with the candidate’s first authorship should have been at least submitted for publication.
Such a requirement might actually increase the amount of PhD candidates who finish their studies on time with a first-authored publication. This change could reduce the high number of PhD students who spend a few months or more without a salary in order to finish their theses.
Programming and data science for medical researchers
I will try to establish workshops aimed at training computer-programming skills designed especially for medical researchers in cooperation with, for example or our own Biostatistics department.
Supporting Open Science and Plan X
Current open science requirements are taking up an enormous amount of funds that could be otherwise spent on more research. The open access agreements have redistributed the costs but have not decreased them. I have recently proposed a feasible and practical reform of the current scholarly publishing system. The proposition was followed with a guide on how one can help achieve that systemic change with their everyday actions.
I am planning to put forward my plan for the faculty board, to gain the support necessary to present the case for the University Board.
Social events
Since 2019 I have been actively participating in the social forum (Social at MolMed) located at Domus Medica, organizing events for the employees. Additionally, I am active in the cross-departmental social forum (X-DEP), which organizes events for PhD and PostDocs from both the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences.
Such events are not only necessary for the employees’ well-being, but they also encourage or strengthen the interactions between researchers from different departments. They are seeding potential collaborations and research exchanges.
I will continue contributing in making our workplace even more friendly for everyone, and you are all welcome to join me in these efforts!