Before we start looking forward
though, I just want to back-track a little to September 2012. At the start of
that month I attended the Vitae
Researcher Development International Conference in Manchester. This is an
annual event focussing on professional and career development for researchers
in higher education. Earlier in the year I had submitted a workshop proposal
for the one of the breakout sessions. And guess what theme of the workshop was…
yes, correct, ‘mentoring’.
Vitae, the organisation hosting
the conference asked me to partner up with another Scottish HE colleague who
had proposed a similar workshop theme. I duly met up with Gillian Johnstone
from the University of Strathclyde, and together we developed an 80 minute
workshop session about setting up mentoring schemes, based on the experiences
from our own institutions.
I am pleased to say that the
workshop was well attended and was great fun – and even better, we got terrific
feedback from participants. This workshop was a great opportunity for Gillian
and I to share some of what we have learned about setting up and managing
mentoring schemes to other colleagues in higher education, and to try to
communicate our enthusiasm for mentoring as a really effective way to support
staff in their career and professional development. As well as pointing out how
mentoring schemes are cost effective and can achieve profoundly positive
outcomes for participants, we were able to provide some simple ‘top tips’ for
setting up and maintaining mentoring schemes. I was also able to include a
brief section about data handling and management, which as you know is a
subject close to my (and this blog's) heart.
Gillian and I noticed that
throughout the conference other contributors repeatedly referenced mentoring as
something that we (in Higher Education) should be doing more of to support
researchers. This observation, together with the high level of interest and
positive reaction to our own contribution, gave us (or more truthfully Gillian)
a great idea – what we need is a dedicated conference specifically about mentoring in the
Scottish HE sector. And thus was born the concept of Mentoring Scotland 2013.
We have subsequently developed a
conference proposal and sought reactions from our colleagues in other
institutions. Based on their very encouraging responses we have now gained
support from both Vitae and
the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education
and are delighted to announce that the conference will take place on 7 May 2013 at the Stirling Management
Centre.
The conference fee will be £62.00
and it is open to practitioners in researcher development, support staff and
academic development from across the Scottish HE sector, and booking will soon
be available via the Vitae website.
We are also calling for
contributors, so if you have expertise or experience in any aspect of
mentoring, including development of mentoring skills, running different types
of mentoring initiatives, mentoring in other sectors, evaluating mentoring or
mentoring qualifications that you could share - or anything else you think will
be a helpful addition - then please get in touch.
See you there.
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