Developing researchers who’ll make a difference

Undertaking a graduate research degree should be exciting, after all, it is the chance to explore the frontiers of knowledge. There is also the luxury of dedicating 2-4 years of your life in pursuing a topic you love, challenging yourself and finding as yet unknown strengths and abilities. Unfortunately some of what is written about graduate research belies this sense of adventure and excitement. For example, an article in the Weekend Australian (19-20 September 1998) was called, "How to transform torture into a thesis". Does this make you shudder?

Of course all challenges have associated difficulties, and completing a research degree is not meant to be easy, but of concern is the perception that stress, unhappiness and stoicism define the research degree experience. Undoubtedly successful and experienced researchers will never say that their best research emerged by merely grinding their way tenaciously through problems and difficulties – the element of passion comes through in the accounts of groundbreaking science. The account of human evolution as revealed through sequencing of mitochondrial DNA, and told by Brian Sykes in the book The Seven Daughters of Eve, being a fairly recent example.

Intuition, a venturesome attitude, doubt, relaxation and writing have been described as essential mental processes to generate good ideas that engender excitement (Ladd, 1979).

The challenge then is how to facilitate the use of these processes as part of research training. This requires students to have good opportunities for networking that include vigorous, engaged and emotionally safe debate about the ideas and work that comprise their discipline.

Unfortunately it seems that Australia-wide, we are not doing particularly well in this regard. Data collected through the 2003 Postgraduate Research Experience Questionnaire showed that the area of least satisfaction among students at all universities was the intellectual climate encountered by research students. This included aspects such as opportunities for social contact with other postgraduate students, integration into the department’s community, involvement in the broader research culture, a good seminar programme and a stimulating research ambience. At UWA a number of good programmes designed to provide a stimulating intellectual environment are offered in Schools and elsewhere (eg. the Institute for Advanced Studies). The challenge is to see these programmes grow as postgraduate student numbers and the pressure for timely completion increase. It is interesting in this context, that students attending Research Skills and Thesis Writing Workshops facilitated by the UWA Graduate Education Officers often report that the greatest benefit of these workshops comes from opportunities to talk about their research with others.

• Richardson, J. (1998, 19-20 September) How to Transform Torture into a Thesis. Weekend Australian, p. 3.
• Ladd, G. W. (1979). Artistic Research Tools for Scientific Minds American Journal of Economics, 61(1), 1-11