Q+Promotion of early-career researchers The heiDOCS project
Quality assurance and quality development for early-career researchers
heiDOCS is being developed at Heidelberg University as an integrated quality program for supporting doctoral students and early postdocs. The over-arching goals of heiDOCS are:
- enhancing and optimizing outstanding conditions for research activity and career development of doctoral students and early-career postdocs by merging and sustainably strengthening all previous programs and instruments in the field of services, advice, career development and funding at every level of the university,
- establishing and consolidating a lively culture of quality in support for doctoral students and postdocs through specific quality programs held at both the institutional and faculty level,
- building a distinctive identity for doctoral students as a well-defined status group at the university. An essential basis for this is digital accompaniment and recording the progress of all doctoral students throughout their doctoral work,
- increasing the visibility of postdocs and their specific needs in the first years of orientating themselves after completing their doctorate.
Optimization by quality programs
The institutional involvement of doctoral students provides the framework for strategically oriented quality development in the area of doctoral support. The specific objectives in the university’s quality development for early-career researchers (ECR), i.e. doctoral students and postdocs, are:
- opening up the best career options worldwide,
- promoting innovative research projects and the transfer of results at the institutional level,
- heightening visibility and participation in the central strategic projects of the university (e.g., in the Excellence Strategy projects),
- sharpening the profile of doctoral students as a focal group with their own identity,
- promoting the visibility of postdocs and their needs
- expanding the role of Heidelberg University as a leading institution for career development and advancement with an international reputation, and as a springboard for ambitious careers both in academia and in all areas of industry, society and politics.
These goals are spelled out and applied in practice through hands-on quality programs devised and implemented in the interplay of faculties, graduate schools, the Graduate Academy and heiTRACKS. The required benchmark is comprehensive support for up-and-coming career researchers at the highest level, with consideration for the differing subject cultures.
Funding
Developing the heiDOCS 2.0 funding program was based on the funding measures of the original heiDOCS quality program, after subjecting them to comprehensive evaluation. It is informed by scientific criteria, addressing primarily doctoral students of all faculties, and particularly focusing on support options for the critical transfer between a master’s and a doctoral course, or between a doctorate and a postdoc. The funding program is accompanied strategically by the Council for Graduate Studies and its heiDOCS 2.0 commission. It is subject to regular evaluation and finances itself with funds from the University Financing Agreement II (HoFVII).
Further Information
Council for Graduate Studies
The Council for Graduate Studies (CfGS) is an advisory committee of the university which – mostly via the deans – brings together all 13 faculties through their professorial spokespersons and the four large graduate schools. Consequently, also with the assistance of the bodies representing the teaching staff, doctoral students and postdocs, it gathers up the views and requests of all stakeholders involved in comprehensive support for early-career researchers at Heidelberg University. Its primary task is to conceptionally accompany the design and continuing development of appropriate overarching conditions, structures and quality standards for the training and continuing qualification phase of doctoral students and early postdocs.