The faculty are developing a series of once a month sessions to support our Early Career Staff. If you have suggestions for areas you would like to see covered please get in touch with Prof Simon Coles (s.j.coles@soton.ac.uk) who is coordinating efforts from Chemistry.
Online training in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion called Equality and Diversity Essentials is compulsory for all our staff and needs to be refreshed every four years.
If you are involved in any personnel recruitment for a post that is based in Chemistry (including Research Fellows and PGRs) you must also take the Managing Diversity online training course prior to undertaking interviews.
Safe and Supported is also mandatory for all staff and introduces our safeguarding policy and procedures, the importance of safeguarding and how to spot key signs where safeguarding may be a concern.
All modules can be accessed through our Blackboard course. When you first access the course, you will have to enrol by clicking on the '+ Enrol' button on the left. You must do this for your progress to be saved. You are free to log on as often as you like, and the courses can be completed in chunks - each section takes no more than 25 minutes.
The University also offers a LinkedIn Learning service which is a library of high-quality video tutorials on a wide range of software and business topics. LinkedIn Learning has over 5,000 courses and has its own dedicated website.
We offer all postdoctoral staff opportunities to teach subject to the conditions of their contract and funding body. If you have a particular area you would like to build your teaching experience discuss this with your supervisor and contact the head of teaching for your section.
Training is provided at various times throughout the year for small group teaching and laboratory demonstrating in the undergraduate labs and also through the professional development unit which can accessed through Staffbook.
Staffbook provides a central repository and booking system for professional development courses run by the University. The training ranges from research student supervision and management, maximising contribution, increasing your impact and teaching skills development. The sessions provided change regularly so check back regularly.
In addition to these a number of other training opportunities are available and these are generally advertised via email so please keep an eye out for these. In recent years, Chemistry and Research Innovation Services (RIS) have run mock panels for the research councils to give exposure to successful and unsuccessful proposals and an idea of how the assessment process works.
Develop from within is about raising your self-awareness. It involves you looking at your behaviour preferences, in the research environment and outside of work, and the implications these have on you fulfilling your own potential. In addition, it encourages conversations about how you build rapport with your colleagues and how this translates to good team work.
Self-awareness is a cornerstone of emotional intelligence, management of personal wellbeing and developing resilience. All of these are key to success in both your current and possible future working environments. As behaviours are based on your values, your way of thinking, Develop from within will also help in thinking about your strengths and motivations which will be helpful to you in taking proactive decisions on your career pathway.
Develop from within is supported by the academic community in the School of Chemistry, given its alignment with the Concordat and Athena Swan commitments and its potential to play into the research impact by supporting creativity and innovation.