YCEDE Advocacy Scheme co-ordinator George Gisborne sat down to discuss how the scheme worked out for one of the pairings in the last academic year.
Aisha Mariam joined the Advocacy Scheme in September 2023 while studying an MSc in Materials Science at the University of Sheffield. She joined the scheme interested in a PhD in Chemical Engineering (her BEng subject) or Materials Science. She is now a first year PhD student at the University of Cambridge.
Eric Hewitt is an Associate Professor in Cell Biology and Molecular Immunology and Head of the Faculty of Biological Sciences Graduate School.
Why did you join the advocacy scheme?
AISHA: I honestly really liked the idea of it, because as someone who does come from a Black, Asian and minority ethnic background, I feel like the resources for us specifically are not that widely available.
For me, and a lot of people like me, we don’t come from academic backgrounds. We don’t have access to academics and we don’t have the chance to ask questions or get any help on applications.
Personally, I feel like I’ve been quite lucky in the sense that I had support from a personal tutor at my university.I have had pastoral support, but unfortunately, a lot of people don’t get that. So I like the idea of YCEDE and what it does and I thought, OK, I want to be a part of this.
ERIC: If I’m honest, I stumbled across it. I think it was some e-mail that came through that wasn’t really specifically targeted and it just struck me as an interesting thing for me to be involved in. I’m Head of the Graduate School in Biological Sciences and its quite clear when you look at postgraduate research that it could be more diverse. It strikes me we’re probably missing out on quite a lot of talented individuals coming into research careers.
I’m a bit kind of nerdy when it comes to postgraduate research and when people are interested in doing it I’m happy to talk about how you do it. It also linked to some work I am doing on awarding gaps, examining why certain groups (e.g. mature and some ethnic groups) of students don’t get as many good degrees.
I’m actually participating in doing something directly, which I quite like, and not just making policy decisions.
Aisha, when you applied to be part of the scheme, your areas of research interest were Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Eric is a Molecular and Cellular Biologist. There doesn’t appear to be much alignment between your research interest but you were happy to work together. How did the pairing work?
AISHA: I don’t know if you know this Eric, but I was matched with someone else first. They were from my undergraduate institution and I’d spoken to them before. I asked to be re-matched because I didn’t want anyone that I actually knew in person. I had my personal tutor who I was speaking to at the time and I wanted a different perspective, so to speak.
I wanted someone who didn’t know me and could give me objective feedback and criticism about how I come across. In PhD interviews, you’re likely to have never met the academic(s) interviewing youso the first impression is very important.
With the subject I initially thought biology is different to what I’m interested in. However, I think there are universal values and things that academics look for in potential students so I thought well, Eric must know about that, so it’ll be fine!
Our meetings allowed me to confirm what it is I want to do because Eric would ask, “So what is it that you’re doing? Why are you doing this?” and because he didn’t have the subject knowledge, explaining it to him gave me the reassurance that I know what I’m doing and why I’m doing it, and that I definitely want to do this.
ERIC: When it comes to STEM PhDs and more broadly research, there’s a huge amount of common ground in terms of processes and approaches. There’s absolutely no way I could help somebody doing an arts PhD because how open they are is completely alien to me.
I think a lot of scientists are broader than perhaps they recognize because I interact with a lot of different disciplines. I’m involved in a project just now with an electrical engineer, I’ve worked with Mechanical Engineers. I’ve worked with chemists, physicists. So you can interact with a lot of different specialties in the research that you do.
I think subject specific knowledge in the general field of applying for PhDs is a bit overrated, actually, in terms of the support that you give, it’s much more about the process and understanding it. We’re all after the same thing in a PhD student: we want somebody who’s talented, enthusiastic and committed and I think that’s pretty universal and in terms of the processes, the funding routes, etc in the sciences, it’s pretty similar.
How did you prepare for the first meeting? What did you talk about?
AISHA: I had a pre-meeting with George online and asked more about the scheme and how I could get the most out of it. He went through the scheme and gave me useful pointers. That gave me a bit more confidence to know what I wanted out of it and I reached out to Eric.
I took a lot of notes in the first meeting. I got a lot of constructive feedback. For example, Eric told me about what kind of projects to look for,good unis to look for, lab groups, the supervisor, etc. We talked a lot about my CV , which I sent to him after the meeting. We talked about what academics are looking for, and PhDs in general. We covered a lot of ground.
ERIC: I introduced who I was: My background, what I do and why I’m involved in the scheme and then just chatted to Aisha about what she was doing and what she was interested in. Just trying to learn a bit more about each other and how to potentially support her with her application.
We talked a little bit about the application process itself. I think Aysha was a bit more advanced in her understanding of that, because she’d done some applications previously.
How did you decide when you were going to meet? Did you set yourself tasks between your meetings?
AISHA: I think we initially met on the 16th of November and then arranged to meet again on the 24th. We discussed my CV and it was great to get objective feedback from someone who didn’t know me. We looked at a list of potential projects I’d picked out and discussed why I was interested in them. It was useful to actually go out and look for projects. I think that’s probably the only meeting where we set tasks and that was fine because it meant it was completely flexible. All in all, we had 5 or 6 meetings throughout the year.
Aisha you applied to Cambridge and were offered an interview. Did you discuss how to approach a PhD interview with Eric?
AISHA: After I got the offer of an interview, I contacted Eric and we agreed to meet the week before it took place. It was really, really helpful. For example, we discussed which questions were good to ask. It was useful because Eric assured me that I was fine to ask questions that I might have been hesitant to ask otherwise.
We did have some correspondence over e-mail as well, not just video calls. I think I think at one point, Eric, you sent me a list of stock PhD questions that I might be asked in an interview.
Eric e-mailed me after the interview to ask how it went and I replied saying, “I don’t think it went very well. There were really difficult questions that I couldn’t answer,” . He was reassuring, and told me “No, no, it’s OK, don’t worry, that’s how interviews happen.” He also encouraged me not to pin my hopes on any one application, and to keep applying for any projects that pique my interest. I think that’s very important for applicants.
How did you bring your pairing to an end? Or are you continuing to stay in touch?
AISHA: I hadn’t spoken to Eric for a while after I got my offer from Cambridge because I got bogged down with admin tasks, but George, you checked in and asked how it was going . That’s when I sent Eric an email to give him the news. Eric was really helpful and said, “Look, I’m always here. You’ve got my e-mail if you need to have a chat about anything. I’m happy to have a chat at any point during your PhD.”
He also gave me great advice how to prepare for my first year. For me, one of the best things that came from the scheme was the knowledge that I have someone I can reach out to when needed.
What do you what do you learn from being an advocate?
ERIC: A better understanding of the challenges faced by certain groups of students when they’re applying to do PhDs.
When you look at postgraduate researchers, we’re not a huge, diverse pool of people. There are barriers for certain groups of students, that you might not appreciate. If you understand those barriers, then you can remove them. Then you can get a more diverse group of students in and recruit some really good students that we otherwise wouldn’t have.
Any tips for people just starting on the scheme?
AISHA: This scheme is what you make of it. You don’t have to engage that much if you don’t need to, but I’d highly encourage it for minorities because it gives you an avenue in which you can talk to an academic and just get a feel of what it’s like to be a PhD student. It’s also incredibly handy to receive tips on applications that you may not be able to get elsewhere. Even if you’re not assigned to someone in the same field as you, you could still get very valuable insights from academics.