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Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland

Training

Training

The MASTS Graduate School is a pan-Scotland initiative which provides education and training to the MASTS student community. This training includes both technical and core skills to ensure that MASTS graduate students have the full complement of skills required to achieve the best in their future careers.

Find internal training opportunities here and external training here.

For more details about MASTS Graduate School training please contact [email protected].

 

Mentoring

MASTS & SUPER seek to provide a supportive and nurturing environment for postgraduate researchers (PGRs) to develop both personal and professional skills and attributes. Whilst we provide access to group training and learning activities, sometimes an individual’s needs are very specific and are best supported through bespoke activities such as mentoring. As such, our mentoring scheme aims to contribute towards a culture of support across our partnership and in the research environment, with specific benefits for different groups.


We aim to deliver mentoring for our PGRs through two routes:
1. Within PGR-to-Staff mentoring partnerships
2. Supporting PGR mentoring and other skills development and early-stage PGR transitions, via Peer-To-Peer mentoring where later stage PGRs mentor early stage PGRs.

Find out more here.

 

Graduate Retreat

Each year students of the MASTS/SUPER Graduate School come together for an annual retreat. The goal of the retreat is to bring together the geographically dispersed MASTS/SUPER postgraduate community and to create a tight-knit network while providing useful and informative training sessions and seminars.

Feedback includes – “It was a great chance to meet other PGRs, staff and scientists and have informal conversations. The guest talks were great and well chosen, it’s always fascinating to know how successful scientists got to where they are today”.

The 2024 retreat will be held in person at the MacDonald Highland Resort in Aviemore (11-13 March), and will be followed by a two day residential PGR writing retreat. Retreat training sessions will include storytelling, grant writing, and innovation and impact in action. Guest speakers will be Jacqui McElhiney (FSS), Tracy Shimmieled (Lyell Centre) and Ben Wilson (SAMS). There will also be plenty of networking opportunities, plus more besides!

Speakers from previous years have included:
Mark Batho (CEO of SFC); Jonathan Benjamin (Wessex Archeology); Joanne MacDonald (NERC KE Fellow); Andrew Brierley (Professor, St Andrews); Lyndsey Dodds (WWF);Phil Newton (NERC); Nick Owens (SAHFOS); Linda Rosborough (Director, Marine Scotland); David Raffaelii (Professor, York University); Mark Shields (DECC); Prof Frank Rennie (UHI), Colin Moffat (Head of Marine Science), Simon Merrywest (University of Manchester), Sam Ilingworth (MMU); Andy Watson (Professor, University of Exeter); Elle Sibthorpe (Mindfully Wired COmmunications); Kate Wade (JNCC); Mark Inall (Professor at SAMS) & Carol Sparling (Director of SMRU).

Example Student Comments

“I’m really grateful for this splendid opportunity. The Retreat was grand, extremely interesting, well organized and, mainly, plenty of wonderful people. MASTS community has a real power and we can feel it, especially during this kind of events.”
“The MASTS retreat gave us an exciting overview of several career pathways that will be available to us once we complete our PhDs. It was inspirational to hear the experiences of young professionals excelling in their fields, spanning from academia to policy and consultancy”.
“The MASTS retreat was a great opportunity to explore the career pathways following a PhD. The talks, discussions and exercises were relevant and very useful. On a personal level, this experience has also been really good. I’ve gotten to meet other PhD students from across the country who have similar interests to me and with whom collaborations may develop following the social enterprise event. I strongly recommend this experience to other students.”
“I found the MASTS postgraduate retreat to be extremely rewarding because it promoted not only sharing ideas within the MASTS community, but it also opened up our horizons towards policy makers, governmental departments, charities and funding bodies. I believe such gatherings are highly valuable for our personal development and for future networking opportunities.”
“The retreat has been a great opportunity to establish fruitful personal and professional links within the MASTS postgraduate community, which will hopefully set the scene for future collaborations and knowledge exchange”.
MASTS Graduate Retreat mountain biking

For further information on the MASTS Graduate Retreat, please contact the Dean of Graduate Studies

MASTS Resources

We’re working behind the scenes to bring you a suite of useful, and updateable, resources including: 

  • Find an expert
  • Find facilities & equipment
  • MASTS Publications

 

If you would like to be updated when the resources section is live please let us know.