Obtaining further qualifications after completing their degree is a matter of course for a large proportion of doctoral students. Many doctoral candidates are members of one of the university's two Graduate Schools. They attend colloquia and seminars, and quite a few even collect credit points in the process, just as they did during their studies.

"Through these programmes, we support our doctoral students in completing their doctorates successfully and within an appropriate time frame, and we prepare them for their future academic appointments," explains Prof. Dr Thorsten Dittmar, Director of the Graduate School of Natural Sciences, Medicine and Technology (OLTECH). Institutions such as OLTECH are becoming increasingly important.

The background: In the course of the Bologna reform in the early 2000s, it was recognised that there were advantages to spreading the qualification of doctoral students over more shoulders. "Many doctorates took a very long time and the drop-out rate was high," reports Christine Steinseifer-Jeske, "this is where we provide support with our programmes." Together with Dr Ferdinand Esser, she is the managing director and coordinator of OLTECH, which was founded in 2009 and is open to doctoral students in the natural sciences, medicine and Computing Science.

Since 2011, the university has also had a Graduate School for Social Sciences and Humanities (3GO), which looks after doctoral students from School I, III and IV as well as the Department of Economics and Law. The tasks of the two institutions: "We offer services such as workshops on various topics and counselling in difficult situations," explains Rea Kodalle, Managing Director and Coordinator of 3GO. She and her team also advise researchers when they apply for funding to support early career researchers as part of a larger project and work closely with the coordinators of the doctoral programmes.

In principle, all doctoral candidates at the university can take advantage of the programmes. With 3GO, it is sufficient to apply for informal membership. At OLTECH, doctoral candidates must either officially register for a doctoral degree programme or take part in a so-called structured doctoral programme.

Doing a doctorate with team spirit

The programmes offered by both schools range from workshops on good academic practice to introductory courses on specific software and the teaching of interdisciplinary skills. 3GO and OLTECH each offer between 20 and 30 events per year, with most doctoral students attending one workshop per semester on average. They can also receive credit points for achievements that are part of the doctorate anyway, such as attending conferences or supervising a Bachelor's or Master's thesis.

"Highlights for me were, for example, the events on time management and scientific writing," reports Christopher Dibke, who is doing his doctorate at the Institute of Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment. Katharina Gärtner, who is taking part in the Environmental Economics and Sustainability Management doctoral programme, particularly enjoyed the courses on publishing and the Python programming language. "The seminar on science management was also interesting in terms of learning about other academic appointments after the doctorate," she reports.

Marine ecologist Tabea Hildebrand benefited from the doctoral candidate days that the two Graduate Schools organise once a year together with the Graduate Academy. These meetings with lectures, discussion rounds and individual counselling sessions were always inspiring for her: "As I am doing my doctorate at the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity and am rarely physically present in my working groups at the university, it helped me a lot to exchange ideas with others on these occasions."

Contemporary promotion of young researchers

Ferdinand Esser also sees networking as an important advantage of the Graduate Schools: "The doctoral candidates have the opportunity to connect across disciplinary boundaries." In addition, there is the specialist support from the lecturers, says Rea Kodalle: "It is much easier to explore the advantages and disadvantages of a new method in a discussion than to learn it from a book alone." Both Graduate Schools often rely on lecturers from the university who can pass on their expertise outside of their own working group.

Currently, just under half of the university's 1,200 or so doctoral students use the programmes offered by the Graduate Schools - a figure that Thorsten Dittmar is not yet satisfied with: "We want to increase our enrolment figures significantly," he says. In order to further develop the programmes and structure, the OLTECH team is focusing on transparent quality management and an even broader range of workshops. "Both Graduate Schools have worked very well together since their establishment and benefit mutually from their different experiences and offerings," emphasises Prof. Dr Gisela Schulze, Director of 3GO. "They therefore make a significant contribution to the contemporary promotion of young researchers - a fact that is also recognised by scholarship sponsors."

The doctoral students also appreciate the targeted support for their independent research - without being left to their own devices. "One major advantage is that a team spirit develops that motivates them to work together in depth in a field of research," says Christopher Dibke. A team spirit that - he hopes - could also last after the doctorate.

This text was first published in UNI INFO 1/2022 published.