Are you teaching your students these core skills?

Article
Signe Elisabeth Ã…sberg
13 days ago

There are countless skills you will pick up during your research career. Some are highly useful (like how to organize 300 references) while others are just weird (how to collect urin from mice).

Unfortunately, there are key skills that seem to continuously slip beneath the radars of both supervisors and institutions. Here are the top 3 skills that I wish every every young researcher learnt and perfected throughout their careers:

Writing ​

Writing will make or break an academic career. You can’t produce papers or win grants if you’re not a great writer. In fact, I tell all my students that being a scientist, means being a writer.

Still, most universities provide few courses in academic writing. Hardly any have courses on how to build a sustainable writing practice.

As a supervisor, don’t rely on osmosis. Make sure your students become great writers.

Economy and finances ​

Do NOT shield your students from the boring tasks of budgeting and managing the group’s finances. The more they understand of the academic financial mayhem, grant cycles, what person-months mean and who the project economist actually is - the better. Teaching them economy means you are setting them up for success! In turn, you get a research group that dosen’t think reagents grow on trees.

Data management and governance ​

This key skill is often reduced to the mandatory DMP - which you click through in a hurry and never look at again. I see research groups struggling with this every day. Keeping a digital lab organized is surprisingly difficult. You don’t want to rely on one single post doc’s internalized map of the folders. Educate your PhDs in data management and governance, and it will make everyone’s lives easier.

What would you add to this list?

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