Advanced Supervisor Modules

Date 

Topic 

02-10-2025 

The PhD/EngD Career perspectives: The role of the supervisor

For PhD and EngD candidates, the doctoral journey is more than just research. Many are not doing the doctoral degree track within a job position. Hence, they find themselves asking: “Wat’s next after my degree?”, and “How do I find my dream job?”. This can be quite a challenging process that may hamper the progress in their development and the actual degree.

While Wageningen Graduate Schools (WGS) offer career development opportunities and coaching support, one key question remains:

What is the supervisor’s role in helping candidates plan their future career realistically and constructively?

This is the topic of the WGS advanced PhD supervision afternoon workshop. We will focus on the role of supervisors in this process and how this role is fulfilled constructively and effectively. After an introduction, a career specialist from Academic Transfer and a career coach/trainer will give insight, tools and tips on how supervisors should play their role.

29-01-2026

Dealing with the PhD supervisor team: Challenges and solutions

More information TBA

28-05-2026

Strengthening your PhD’s resilience

In recent years we can see that PhDs and EngDs are being encountered with an additional set of challenges (e.g. high work load, publication pressure, social media pressure). The consequence is that many experience more stress and a reduced resilience to cope with challenges at the workplace and beyond.

The question is how you as supervisor can support your PhD or EngD candidates in reducing stress levels and enhance their resilience. This half-day workshop focusses on the manner in which supervisors can do this.

We start off with identifying the various challenges that PhD and EngD candidates encounter that cause stress and reduce resilience. Accordingly we identify what the responses can be and how these can be identified by the supervisors. Finally we address the manner in which supervisors can support their PhD’s in reducing the stress and enhancing their resilience to cope with the challenges.

• Janneke van Seters (WU, Dean of Research office)
• Claudius van de Vijver (WU, PE&RC)
• Audrey Peters (Academic Transfer)
• Jessica Tummers (Meijer en Meijaard)