Staff Training Courses

The Staff Training Course Professional Supervision of International Doctoral Candidates will take place at the University of Göttingen from 4 to 5 December 2015.

In academia, the supervision of doctoral candidates proves to be a daily challenge. Whether a PhD project turns out to be a success or a failure is not only influenced by the skills and the motivation of the doctoral candidates, but rather the professionalism of the supervisor plays an essential role. The latter is augmented in the international context, e.g., the cultural and/or academic background of the candidate, the supervisor, or the institution they work for, differ substantially.

From 3 to 6 February the workshop 'Manchu language intensive course for post-graduates, funded by the U4 network, took place at the Department for East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen.

The lecturer, PD Dr. Johannes Reckel, is not only one of the rare specialists for Altaic languages, of which the Manchu language is part, but he is also responsible for the Special Collection on Altaistic and Palaeoasiatic Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the Göttingen State and University Library (SUB). He thus has an expert knowledge of Manchu texts and sources, from which all workshop participants profited.

The mentioned Special Collection has been built in Göttingen since the 1950s. Among many other materials, it holds a huge number of Manchu source material, which awaits more scholars to work with it. It is with dismay that the workshop participants had to learn that the financing of this unique Special Collection will be terminated at the end of this year.

From 12 till 14 November 2014 a new cycle of the Academic Leadership programme for senior university managers will be launched in Groningen with an opening session on 'Developing Academic Talent'.

The U4 Academic Leadership programme is a programme for top-level executives in university management in one of our four co-operative (U4) universities.

The programme allows university leaders (both from academia and administration) to strengthen their skills in leadership and to learn more about university management in today's increasingly international, complex and competitive environment.

From 15th to 17th January 2014 the staff training workshop 'Focus on Social Media Marketing' toke place in Göttingen. During the workshop the partcipants shared their experiences and discussed the potential cooperation in joint international student recruitment.

The main topic for the meeting in Göttingen was the use of social media. Colleagues from Uppsala and Groningen with several years of experience in the usage of social media presented the workshop and several other colleagues shared best practices.

Since its foundation in 2008, U4 network has established itself as a brand and attracted a great deal of interest from other European Universities. In order to further increase the visibility of the network within and outside Europe, the universities agreed to foster joint marketing activities and make U4 better known among academic staff and students.

The group discussed the following marketing tools:

From 4th to 7th November 2013 the staff training workshop 'MoveOn4' was held in Göttingen.

The group discussed the following topics:

• Scope of application moveon software in general
• Development of an efficient structure in moveon
• Accesses moveon database
• Harmonisation of database
• Experiences with moveon4
• Task force, U4-moveon-handbook etc.