PhD track : Academic career

Activity 2 : Academic Careers

Overview. 
The aim of this class is to help/orientate students with their master thesis and more generally to prepare them to an academic career. The class is divided into two parts. 
We want to present to students the academic system (research system (in particular in France), the career opportunities in the academics, the funding possibilities, etc.) and provide them some methodological tools to write their master thesis (how to make a literature review, write an abstract, an introduction, etc.). 
Additionally, students will present their master thesis project to the classroom. Each student will be paired with another student (from the other discipline if possible) and students will have to criticize, advise, etc. each other. Additionally, students will have to provide a CV and a cover letter as if they were applying for a PhD grant. The goal is to help students for their master thesis and to train them in the perspective of a PhD application. 

Table of contents. 
Each class lasts 3 hours. 

Class 1 will be used to present the course and some methodological tools for the presentations. Additionally, students will have 5 minutes each to present themselves (their educational background, their research interests, their master thesis project and their project of academic career). We will also use this session to form the pairs. 

In class 2 to 6, most of the time (more than 2 hours) will be dedicated to students’ presentation of their master thesis project. Depending on the number of students choosing the PhD track, students will do either one or two presentations during the semester. In case of two presentations (if the classroom is small enough), only the second presentation will be graded and the first one will only be a practice round. Less than 1 hour per class will be dedicated to the presentation of the academic system or research methodology. 

.