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The courses and workshops outlined in our programme are designed to meet the needs of all groups of staff within the College and offer a wide variety of development opportunities in five key areas:

 

• Health & Safety

• Information Technology

• Leadership & Management

• Skills & Knowledge

• Wellbeing

 

In our 2009/10 training programme, we introduced a section specific to the development of researchers, in response to principle 4 of the Concordat. This section has continued to develop following feedback received from research staff, line managers and principal investigators.

 

Research staff may also attend any of the other Staff Training & Development courses offered in the programme.

The Postgraduate Enterprise Summer School, now in its sixth year, is a week long course that has been designed to teach skills in enterprise and entrepreneurship to postgraduate students at the University of Birmingham. Topics covered include innovation, marketing, business planning, financing, commercialisation and presentation skills. By the end of the course participants will: develop a business idea from the concept stage to a fully fledged business proposition; know the steps required to set up their own business; be aware of the requirements to commercialise research in an academic environment; be able to work effectively in a team environment; and identify which role they are best suited to in a business team. The Entrepreneurship and Innovation team of the Careers and Employability Centre plans, runs and facilitates the week with some teaching input. The majority of training is delivered by other internal staff, external trainers and entrepreneurs. The University’s Business School hosts the event providing training rooms and IT suites. Being intensive, all lunches and refreshment breaks need to be catered and one evening dinner is provided, as an opportunity to network with successful entrepreneurs from the region. In recent years, use of software (SimVenture) and the internet, brainstorming tools (Ketso) and profiling tools (e.g. Belbin, eFACETS) have significantly enriched the programme.

Real Creativity is a highly experiential, developmental creativity course which allows participants to work in real time on real problems over a two day programme. It was developed by Skyward coaching and development.

The Talent Pool provides a unique opportunity for doctoral and post-doctoral researchers at all stages of their studies to engage with external organisations and develop into the next generation of academics, business consultants and entrepreneurs. The Talent Pool offers enterprise training that creates a network of students with various skills and ambitions who are able to make time for work experience, placements, internships, consultancy contracts or the chance to set up their own business, by understanding the important skills and strategies behind business ventures. The Talent Pool can be compared with other programmes that have been used at the University in previous years, such as Medici and SPEED.