Aphrodite Murray-Liddington (Vice President Science & Engineering) has met with the University Senior Executive Team to discuss that in the faculty of Science and Engineering students’ overall grade must reach a certain threshold (the threshold percentage can change yearly) to be eligible to do a research project in their third year.
Aphrodite had a meeting with Vice Principal Education, Stephanie Marshall, to explain that first year grades are not an equitable measure of how competent students will be regarding research in third year. Aphrodite has also discussed this issue with academics, a great majority of whom support the idea to decrease or even scrap the threshold.
The benefits to the BAME community and underrepresented demographics in postgraduate careers were also discussed, with Stephanie Marshall stating this project ‘would encourage these communities to pursue postgraduate and research vocations’.
Stephanie organised an introduction between Aphrodite and Andrew Livingstone (Vice President of Research & Innovation) which will occur in October to further action this project.
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