PhD Conference at NTNU University, Norway

On the 30^th of March this year the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), held a conference titled: ‘The added value of a PhD – for all sectors of working life’. The audience were mainly: PhD candidates, supervisors and alumni, employees from all sectors including NTNU and other interested parties.

The stated goals of the conference were

• Raise awareness of the added value of a doctoral degree in all sectors of working life.
• Help to boost recruitment of PhDs in the job market through increased insight into the added value of a doctoral degree.
• Strengthen the reputation of our PhDs as highly relevant to society.
• Increase PhDs’ awareness of their own skills, what they can bring to the workplace and the challenges they can help solve.
• Help PhDs improve their ability to market their expertise and the advantage of a doctoral degree over a first degree.

The conference reflected the main focus of the university well. It is a university with a long technical tradition; hence, engineering and science took centre stage. For creatives, you had to look under the radar to connect to the relevance. For me, hearing people’s stories of how their research has influenced the directions their careers have taken; and mingling with others, were the main outcomes. Amongst the attendees there were also people who were doing education research. Mingling was accelerated by dividing the (pretty huge) number of attendees into groups towards the end of the conference for round table discussions. Different tables dealt with different questions. The outcome of the discussions was written down, collected and presented to the whole room towards the end. The tables I attended were composed both of very seasoned people in the higher part of the age-bracket, and younger people. This worked particularly well to widen the perspective of the groups.

What would I like to see in similar conferences in the future? I would love to see a better inclusion of arts and humanities. I do not mean to trouble neither artists nor engineers with the particulars of each other’s interest fields. But people who study learning have something to teach engineers who manage organisations, historians have things to teach anyone who digs deep into any matter, and so forth. And perhaps a final note for a conference in English would be to find a keynote speaker somewhat more fluent in English? ;-)

At any rate, a day well spent by the river in Trondheim while meeting old and new friends over food and round-table discussions.

The conference was held at Royal Garden Hotel Trondheim.
(Image Credit)