College of Business and LawGraduate School

A progress reportJune 6th, 2012

History

• 2005: Creation of the College of Business and Law

• Nov. 2010: creation of the post of head of the graduate school

• January 2011: creation of the graduate school• Since June 2012, 4 staff committee validates

decisions on the research side

Ambitions

• To provide support to the research programmes of the College, their students and the staff involved

• To actively organise events dedicated to Graduate Education and research

• To consolidate the research ethos of the CB&L disciplines

• To provide a platform for establishing a strong reputation for CB&L as a research entity

Activities

• Dedicated fact finding activities• Web site• Seminars / events• Support schemes• Participation in UCC level Graduate Studies

activities

Fact finding

• Surveys and round table events• research supervision (March & June 2011) • access to research funding (May & September

2011) • Excellent participation from staff• Reports on the web site

Supervision • The pool of supervisors at PhD level is still limited, especially in the

Business area, partly due to number of staff without PhDs.• Only a small proportion of supervisors have been supervising for more

than 5 years, and most have only supervised one to two students to completion.

• Average number of student per supervisor is around 2.5• A significant number of supervisors have more than 5 students• Staff are generally happy to supervise, but see obstacles: workload,

priorities / impact on other roles, funding, attracting and recruiting the right students.

• Solutions: better promotion of PhD opportunities in CB&L and UCC and availability of competitive scholarship opportunities.

• Concerted action at the level of CB&L is the most favoured solution

• Graduate studies development not straightforward: increase capacity + attract better students

Web site

• Ready to launch• Focal point for disciplinary material• Collaboration from all departments• Will be used to create added momentum

around research related events in the College at large

Events• Preparing the viva voce (March 25th, 2011) • The academic career (June 3rd, 2011)• Induction seminar 2011 / 2012 graduate students (October 6th, 2011)• Sven Carlsson (Lund Univ., Sweden) “Critical Realist Information Systems Research in

Action”, November 4th, 2011.• Writing the literature review (December 2nd, 2011)• Preparing the IRCHSS application January 19th, 2012 (co-organised with Grad School

CACSSS) – following on the seminar on Dec 13th, 2011.• Doctoral Showcase preparations • Daniel O’Leary (Univ. Southern California, USA), “Blog mining-review and extensions:

From each according to his opinion” (June 8th, 2012)• Graeme Shanks (Univ. Melbourne, Austraia) – PhD research: experiences from Australia

(June 20th 2012)• “staff working on their PhD” event – TBC (following up workshop on Dec. 16th, 2011)• Writing the literature review (2) – TBC• Preparing for the viva voce (TBC)• Patrick O’Donovan (UCC), Comparing in research (TBC)• Sebastian Green (UCC), Psychoanalysis as a method for research in Business (TBC)

Schemes 1&2: conference support for CB&L staff and PhD students

• 37 awards to 22 staff & 15 PhD students (or 17 and 20) across 7 departments

• 40 papers presented• Over 10 of these were PhD students’ first

research presentation• 9 in IRL. 13 UK, 14 Rest of Europe, 4 Rest of the

world• Several awards• Conversion rate conference to journal

Scheme 3: Invited Speakers

• 6 awards to 3 different departments• Most awards involve a number of speakers• Most funded events leveraged multiple

sources of funding

Graduate Studies at UCC

• Meeting with other Heads of Grad Schools• Staff writing PhD task force• Structured PhD task force

Conclusion

• The CB&L graduate school has momentum but it is starved for attention

• Strong response to events• Some response to traditional research metrics• Collaborative approach is paying off• But the platform is not being leveraged to the

full, particularly for the traditional GS agenda