Rapport annuel sur le programme doctoral de l’Université de Strasbourg

Chers membres et externes,

En juin 2017, l’Université de Strasbourg, à travers ses représentantes Mesdames Bulach et Hubbé, a demandé à notre Association de receuillir l’avis des doctorants membres sur les formations proposées dans le cadre du programme doctoral de l’année 2016-2017.

Suite au sondage auquel vous avez participé, voici les réponses que nous avons rassemblé:


Satisfaction survey for the PhD programme

University of Strasbourg

Year 2016-2017

 

  1. Would you say that you are satisfied with the PhD courses proposed by the University of Strasbourg ?

  1. Are you satisfied with the number of courses proposed ?

  1. Are you satisfied with the diversity of the themes proposed with the PhD programme ?

  1. How accessible would you say that the courses are to international students ?

  1. Which courses are you interested in the most ?

 

  1. Can you name the courses proposed by the University that you were the most interested in ?
  • statistics
  • Emergency care formation
  • Programming courses
  • Project management
  • Interviewing skills, every courses from the IGBMC
  • How to write a CV
  • Mise en forme de la thèse
  • animal experimentation surgery and statistic
  • Imaging techniques, chip-seq, model organism research (mouse)
  • communicate science
  • Programming in R
  • Effective Writing / Formation 1ers secours
  • Francais pour etrangeres
  • How to write a thesis
  • Entrepreneuriat
  • Develop your interviewing skills + Notions de bases en marketing
  • Finance, Calcul parallèle, FLE
  • Training for the Interview with Merck Millipore, How to build up your profile for the job
  • project management, writting articles
  • Chemdraw
  • those in my field, but there are none in English
  • Nouveau Chapitre de la Thèse, valorisation des compétences
  • Présentation des essais cliniques

 

  1. Are there courses that you wanted to attend but did not have the chance to?
  • Mostly all as they are in french
  • yes
  • Yes
  • project management, thesis writing
  • Premiers Secours, write the thesis
  • Effective writing
  • yes because they are in French and my level is not sufficient
  • no
  • Yes
  • Allemand
  • yes, because I was away
  • Thesis preparation with Word
  • no
  • No
  • Yes, because there are only in French
  • no
  • R Programming & biostatistics

 

  1. How would you overall improve the PhD programme of the University?
  • Couses in english please
  • More place or more courses session
  • Making more courses in English
  • Have an online portal for registering for courses and limit the number of courses students can register for in a year/semester. The email system is frustrating and inefficient ; it makes it very hard to plan activities as often my schedule is already full for the days the courses are announced. Additionally, as I rarely work in front of a computer, I often do not see an email until too late. I do not understand why the university is not capable of creating a calendar of doctoral courses at the beginning of the year and having students register for all courses at once. This is a hugely inefficient system. Also, the university should be ashamed of its lack of support for international, non-french speaking students. For a university which is trying to emphasize its international connection, the lack of actual support and guidance, be it by administrative officers, written documents, or online resources for masters and doctoral students is shameful.
  • Separate courses between the doctoral schools and propose new courses each year so that 2nd and 3rd years can acquire new knowledge
  • I think that maybe the place where the clases are taught could be rotating between the different centers which are part of the program
  • to separate the courses according to the doctoral schools;a student from life sciences is not so interested about courses of human sciences
  • Il semblerait que l’administration soit débordée (plusieurs formations jamais validées, pas eu accès à la formation chirurgie malgré de nombreuses relances, des questions sans réponses etc)
  • Make it more international
  • Il manque des cours sur la gestion du projet scientifique qui auraient aidé à cadrer les 3 années de thèse
  • En ajoutant des UE/formations obligatoires dans les disciplines citées ci-dessus pour permettre une meilleure intégration des doctorants dans le monde de l’entreprise…
  • Make courses for more practical points, more courses in English, and make them interesting!
  • Increase the diversity in proposed courses from one year to another
  • not just employ international students, but also provide an infrastructure for them
  • Some courses provide only superficial information, programs need to be well designed & prepared by instructors, some tests should be included to give certificates. Participation is not enough to prove skill aquisition

 

Conclusion from Addal

Only 35 participants for this survey, which is to be kept in mind when analyzing the data. There should be more doctoral candidates willing to give their opinion on the current PhD programme as it directly impacts us. We can ask more and better to the University by giving them relevant feedback (especially when the feedback is kindly requested !) and advices on what to keep and what to improve concerning the PhD courses.

Looking at the data we’ve got, it seems that overall the PhD candidates are satisfied with the PhD programme ! The major concern the community seems to have is international accessibility of the PhD courses. More courses need to be in English and more guidance/help should be provided by the administration concerning the PhD programme. International students are an asset to the University of Strasbourg. For sure the University needs to improve on that to maintain its current attractiveness, perhaps even improve on it.

To summarize the proposition that were made by doctoral candidates, it appears that the University should emphasize on these following points :

  • English-speaking courses
  • Targeted courses to the audience
  • Diversity/novelty of the courses from one year to another (to allow 2nd and 3rd year candidates to acquire new knowledge)
  • Planification of the courses in the beginning of the year (creating a yearly calendar is necessary, the current system only favors the few firsts to read the emails)
  • Propose more statistics, bioinformatics, project management and careers after PhD courses

 

Suite à ce sondage, l’Université a entendu notre voix par le biais de notre Président, Alexandre Hardy. Lors d’une réunion avec les responsables du programme doctoral de l’Université, notre association a pu remonter les difficultés rencontrées par les doctorants strasbourgeois de toute discipline, français et internationaux. Nous avons permis à l’Université de mieux comprendre l’attente des doctorants et nous avons pu faire de nombreuses propositions d’améliorations sur la base des réponses à ce sondage.

Les représentants de l’Université réfléchissent à une amélioration globale du système. Ils ont entendu les doctorants internationaux et vont introduire plus de cours en anglais. Par ailleurs ils se sont engagés sur la mise en place d’un planning trimestriel qui simplifiera la vie des doctorants sur le plan organisationnel.

Nous sommes convaincus qu’une réévaluation annuelle du programme doctoral est nécessaire afin que celui-ci réponde au mieux aux attentes des doctorants, nous sommes ravis d’avoir été la seule association à participer de façon concrète à l’amélioration de la vie de l’Université.

 

Bujamin & Paul, Community Managers

L’Association des Doctorants et Docteurs et d’Alsace