Over the course of the 2022-2023 academic year and as part of its quality and continuous improvement approach, the Quality Working Group (“Groupe de Travail Qualité” – GTQ) focused on formalising and optimising the “Managing doctoral contracts and amendments” process in the scope of the research unit’s calls for projects. This is a major undertaking for the institution, as it will serve to fund ten or so strategic scientific projects a year.
The GTQ’s objectives include:
- Improving the courses and the quality of service delivered to doctoral students
- Simplifying and optimising the flow of information between departments
- Controlling sources of financing
A number of internal and external stakeholders were involved throughout the project (doctoral students, thesis supervisors, internal department players) to challenge the current way of working, understand each other’s expectations and work together to set up a new process.
One key expectation of doctoral students and thesis supervisors was to have clearly identified contacts, and greater visibility over all the activities to be carried out for this kind of recruitment in order to reduce the onboarding time. This expectation led to the creation of two support documents:
- a memo entitled “Thesis supervisor recruits a contractual doctoral student” via the institution’s call for projects
- a “Checklist for doctoral students” recruited via the Centrale Lille call for projects
The “Recruitment authorisation request” form has also been overhauled to make it easier to complete for thesis supervisors. Consult the EDM system to discover all the documents.