Monthly update from the HDR Student Representatives on the University HDR Committee (Terms of Reference). UHDRC is a sub-Committee of Academic Senate.

June 2024

 Hi everyone,

I’m excited to kick off the first update from your student representatives on the University Higher Degrees by Research Committee (UHDRC). You might not have heard too much about it, but the UHDRC is there behind the scenes, as an important governance sub-committee of the Academic Senate. Its official role is to assist the Academic Senate with regards to the accreditation, quality and compliance of HDR education and training.

Importantly, the UHDRC has student representation embedded in its membership to enhance its student-centred approach and voice for the governance of HDR students. Student representation is embedded in the UHDRC’s Member Composition.

Sharing our UHDRC experiences

We’ve also found the opportunity to serve as student members to be of real value to our HDR experience (and professional development more generally – something we hope you’ll consider when the next call for self-nominations comes up early next year!). Our 2023-24 representatives (Amandi, Sarah, and Hamid) gave a presentation at the recent Quality in Postgraduate Research Conference, sharing reflections and recommendations as part of the Doctoral Student Experience stream. You can check out the presentation slides at this link (‘The Role of Student Representation in the University Higher Degree by Research Committee: Reflections and recommendations’).

We wanted to be able to share more about what we had been learning as part of the UHDRC with the broader HDR student community, and we’re grateful for the encouragement from the Office of Graduate Research team to use this channel. So that’s where we are now – you will be hearing from your current reps (Lisa, Sarita, Safeyn, and myself) in this newsletter over the coming months, and we look forward to engaging and communicating with you. Here’s a quick taste of the sorts of things we will be sharing:

Course awards

In May, the UHDRC considered recommendations from Internal Course Accreditation for continuous improvement and delivery over the next 12 months. A working group was also formed (again, including student representation) to identify and overcome barriers to cross-college supervision.

Governance: Policy / legislation, and Candidature Management

In recent months, the UHDRC has been discussing and considering how the University is considering the Universities Australia Educating for Equality model, and how HDR-related data is reported within the Flinders systems.

And finally, a fun fact: every meeting ends with the UHDRC celebrating a publication from a recent PhD graduate (in recent months, these have included papers led by Maoge Zang from CSE and Nyoli Valentine from CMPH. Congratulations!)

 If you have any questions, you can always contact us via email at: UHDRC.studentreps@flinders.edu.au.

Nathan Harrison and the UHDRC Student Representatives