University of Kent Department of Psychology Research Committee ...

University of Kent
Department of Psychology
Research Committee
Friday, 23 rd February 2007 KS9 at 12 noon
Minutes
Present:
Mark van Vugt (Chair)
Perry Bhatarah (Research Fellow rep), James Cane (PhD rep),
Theresa Gannon, Roger Giner-Sorolla, Diane Houston (HoD),
Katja Rüdell, Gary Samson (Senior Experimental Officer)
Jo Dunn, minutes
1. Apologies
Perry and James were welcomed to the committee and the meeting.
Dominic Abrams (RAE Co-ordinator), Lynne Curran (Departmental
Administrator), Toby Lloyd-Jones (Director of Graduate Studies)
2. Minutes of previous meeting held on 22 nd November 2006
The minutes were agreed as a true record
3. Matters arising
None
4. ACTION POINTS:
• ACTION: MvV to ask RG-S to announce the deadline for RPS
submissions in good time for the deadline of the 3 rd week in July. Done.
RPS is on the agenda for this meeting.
• ACTION: MvV to draft Terms of Reference and circulate for comment.
Done and Terms of Reference is an item for the agenda of this meeting.
• ACTION: JAD to ask for PhD student and Research Fellow reps. Done
• ACTION: MvV to remind staff to send their esteem indicators to Lisa
Price. Done. Esteem indicators are now on the RAE database.
• ACTION: DMH and LC to discuss the possibility of developing a formula
for returning money to staff for their personal use with the change to
fEC. Done. The formula will be based on one third of overheads and
will be announced at the next Departmental meeting on 9 th March.
• ACTION: MvV to ensure that the Research Office keeps copies of all
grant applications. Done. The Research Office keeps records of all
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applications and MvV has circulated a PowerPoint presentation to all
academic staff from Jackie Aldridge.
• ACTION: MvV to remind staff to be helpful when asked for advice on
grant applications and to explain the informal procedures that could be
used. Done.
• ACTION: MvV to ask the project convenor about including a resource
sheet with the project outline submission. Done. Students will be asked
to make a note of resources required when they submit their project
proposal together with their ethics submission in November. GBS will
provide an A4 sheet for students to use when compiling this.
• ACTION: MvV to remind staff to apply for ESRC grants from both the
small and normal grants schemes. Done. This is an ongoing issue
• ACTION: JAD to ask student reps to canvas for views on the RPS emails.
Done. No--one expressed any views on this at all.
• ACTION: MvV to speak to RAJ and RGS about notice period for nonparticipation
in RPS. Done. It was decided to support the 24-hour
notice period but to be flexible when dealing with students’ excuses for
failing to participate, as some may be unavoidable.
• ACTION: GBS to produce a paper for circulation based on Option 3 of
his paper on the University-wide RPS scheme. Ongoing. GBS circulated
an email about the demographics of the scheme which he will circulate
to members of this committee together with his paper, once it is finished.
It is not possible to integrate the scheme with our current RPS scheme at
the moment so they will run in parallel as an entirely separate database
for the time being. GBS has talked to Communications and Development
and the University Job-Shop about using University email lists. Students
can access the University-Wide scheme via the Department’s web-site
and the Student Portal. This will also be advertised in the Kent
Newsletter. A single-screen web-based form will be placed on the server
and it is hoped that this will go live on 30 th March. GBS reminded the
meeting that there needed to be studies on RPS before this could be done
and that this scheme could only attract studies where the participants
were paid money. ACTION: GBS to circulate his paper on Universitywide
RPS scheme once completed.
• ACTION: GBS to alert staff to the upgrade of existing computers and
the existence of the equipment budget. The PCs in all the extension
laboratories will shortly be upgraded. KLT4 (b) is being reviewed and
may not be included in this upgrade. As there is little money in the
equipment budget at present, it was decided not to have a Departmentwide
call for equipment bids for this financial year .
5. Chair’s communications
• Research Committee terms of reference
These had been circulated amongst committee members prior to the meeting
and any comments had been incorporated in to the document circulated with
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the agenda for this meeting. The terms of reference were agreed with these
amendments and are now on the server and the web.
MvV wanted clarification on the role this committee has on postgraduate
research students and related issues. DMH explained that the Graduate
Studies Committee dealt with all aspects of MSc and PhD teaching, focussing
on the academic requirements of reading for a postgraduate degree. As some
of those issues need to be resolved at Faculty and University level there
needs to be a good channel of communication between the chairs of both
these Departmental Committees.
• Faculty Research Committee
Departments have been asked to come up with proposals to ensure that PhDs
are completed in three years. Concerns had been raised over the impact of
other duties, such as teaching, on PhD submission rates. MvV was advised
to seek views from his colleagues and report to the next Faculty Meeting. It
was noted that this was not specifically a problem in the Psychology
Department. It was generally thought that this issue should be taken up by
the Graduate Studies Committee and that MvV should liaise with the chair of
that committee.
ACTION: MvV to liaise with AR and to ask colleagues for proposals on how
to ensure that PhDs are completed in 3 years and report to the Faculty
Meeting.
• Money to support external speakers from Research Centres.
HvH asked that this be raised at Research Committee. She wanted to know if
there was any money to support external speakers from Research Centres.
This has opened up some other issues and will be discussed at a future Senior
Staff Meeting.
• RPS – email from Anni (circulated with these minutes)
Anni has had complaints from some Stage 1 students about the RPS
requirement that students have to meet. Some students, particularly those
with child care and those who do not live on campus are finding it difficult to
meet their RPS requirement. Students are not made aware of this
requirement in the degree literature for prospective students and it was
decided that some mention of this should be put on the Departmental web
pages immediately and in future published literature, such as the prospectus
entry and psychology degree literature.
The RPS credit requirement is constantly monitored and it may be reviewed
once the introduction of the Psychology course and the generic unviesitywide
participant pool takes off.
The current rule is that anyone who feels they are unable to complete the
RPS requirement can complete a concessions form, in the same way students
do if they are unable to submit a piece of coursework on time. RG-S was
asked to let Anni know this so that she could let students know.
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ACTION: RG-S to let Anni know of the concessions procedure for noncompletion
of RPS credits.
The RPS deadline for this academic year will extended to the end of the year,
i.e. the end of the summer term and this will be publicised forthwith.
ACTION: RG-S to ask Faye to update the web pages on RPS with details of
the new deadline for completion of RPS credits for this year.
GBS informed the meeting that 24 new studies had been posted to the RPS
web site in the last couple of weeks and the approximately one quarter of the
students had already completed their RPS requirement. GBS will remove any
ambiguities from the web-site.
ACTION: GBS to remove any ambiguities from the RPS web-site.
6. RAE 2008: update
DMH spoke to this item in DA’s absence.
• The RAE documentation is now with the University and with the
Department’s Critical Friends. There is a meeting scheduled to take place
at the end of next month to discuss the draft submission.
• DMH attended the AHPD meeting, but there was nothing relevant or
informative to report to this committee. It was agreed that the definition
of ‘early career’ was vague. It would seem that people appointed near to
the early career deadline would still be expected to have more than two
publications. A decision on this will be made by the PVC (Research) and
Departments will heed his advice once this is available. This was thought
to be in April 2007.
• Two of our Honorary Staff members, John Levine and Norb Kerr will be
visiting the Department in the summer. DA and MvV will be making
arrangements for them.
7. Postgraduate matters (MvV)
• University PhD studentships 2007
An email has already been sent out reminding staff about CASE awards and it
is hoped that applications will be made. The deadline is Wednesday, 28 th
February. KR pointed out that the external organisation was expected to
provide the project proposal and that the Department only had to complete
the relevant paperwork once this had been done. The funding is confusing,
but it is thought that out of the £4,000 allocated per year, £2,000 goes to the
student and £2,000 goes to the Department.
It was agreed that it would be useful to have more notice next year in order
to give more time for investigation. Everyone should be checking for
possible partners for collaboration, especially if they already have a link.
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MvV will ensure that this information is disseminated to all academics.
Information on CASE awards could be put on the Departmental web site.
MvV will write something for the web. The number of PhD research students
in this Department is low in comparison with other similar Psychology
Departments and CASE awards are seen as a good way to increase PhD
numbers.
A discussion developed on the issues surrounding 1+3 studentships and the
necessity of having an MSc in order to apply for Departmental studentships. It
was agreed that the Department may need to be somewhat flexible in this
area.
ACTION: MvV to write something about CASE awards for the
Departmental web site.
8. Colour printing for research projects (DMH)
This will be resolved by the procedure outline above regarding a resources list
when producing the project outline (Item 4. Action Points – point 8)
9. AOB
None
ACTION POINTS:
• ACTION: GBS to circulate his paper on University-wide RPS scheme once
completed.
• ACTION: MvV to liaise with TLJ and to ask colleagues for proposals on how
to ensure that PhDs are completed in 3 years and report to the
Departmental Meeting.
• ACTION: MvV to liaise with TLJ on canvassing PhD students on ethics
applications to external bodies.
• ACTION: RG-S to let Anni know of the concessions procedure for noncompletion
of RPS credits.
• ACTION: RG-S to ask Faye to update the web pages on RPS with details of
the new deadline for completion of RPS credits for this year.
• ACTION: GBS to remove any ambiguities from the RPS web-site.
• ACTION: MvV to write something about CASE awards for the
Departmental web site.
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