The first round of recruitment for Newcastle University’s new Academic Track scheme opens on Monday 14th January 2019, just the other side of the weekend. A replacement – or more accurately an extension and rebrand – of the NURF scheme, NUAcT is part of the overhaul in the university’s research strategy and seeks to “bridge the R&D skills gap” and grow researcher power in Newcastle by 20% over the next ten years.
On Thursday 10th, Prof. Brian Walker (PVC for Research, Strategy and Resources) led an informative meeting with a booming attendance down in the Herschel Building to lay out the plans and answer – quite clearly and reassuringly, at times – questions about the scheme’s detail. Essentially five-year internally-funded research fellowships, the NUAcTs are poised as an early career career-development-type award with a focus on research, mentorship and that all important “transition to independence”.
Most of what was said at Prof. Walker’s open forum can be found in the proposal which is, unfortunately, no longer available. However, the NUAcT website covers much of the same information. Over five years, 100 ‘fellows’ will be supported across the whole university, increasing the principal investigator complement by 8%. Unlike other universities, these fellowships will recruit up to twice-yearly over the five year period (much like the UKRI Future Leader Fellowships) and make NUAcTs “part of the brickwork” of Newcastle, but the expectation is that recruitment won’t be spread evenly over five years but be front-heavy, with half appointed in the first two years.
As with the NURFs, the key focus of the NUAcT fellowships are to support research to improve the competitiveness of excellent candidates for external fellowship awards; that said, the default position of a NUAcT is progression to an open-ended faculty post – provided the formal review at 3-4 years goes to plan. Therefore the NUAcT is looked at least as a singular stream and more of a brand: “The NUAcT ‘umbrella’ will encompass current NURFs and also those holding equivalent externally funded fixed term fellowships as well as a newly appointed cohort of NUAcT Fellows.” Similarly, allocation is described in three strands: the open ‘big splash’ recruitment, targeted recruitment to NUCoREs, and equivalent entry for UKRI fellows.
Prof. Walker was keen to stress the flexibility of the scheme throughout the forum. NUPAcTs, the Partnership Academic Track scheme, clearly encourages industrial or commercial collaboration; EDI is set to play a key role to widen participation and plug the leaky pipeline. The support was a clear take-home message: not just start up money (£50k for lab-based, £20k if non-lab based) and a PhD student for a leg-up on the research front but also mentorship and development support, with a line manager and peer programmes to make “rounded academics”. Though teaching is not the focus of the fellowships, it’s clear teaching and engagement are to be core parts of that career development depending on the individual fellow’s prior experience and faculty-level teaching needs.
So what about recruitment? The original introduction of the NUAcT scheme concept in 2018 came with an air of “external applicants only” and so Prof. Walker was keen to stress that this was certainly not the case: there will be no preference or advantage to either internal or external candidates, with no letters of support or advanced negotiation required prior to application. The application process is less “grant application” by the sounds of it too, with no costings required up-front. We’ll know more on Monday when the application form goes live.
Appointment factors were also touched on by Prof. Walker. As is the trend with all career development fellowships nowdays, there are no limits on time-served and instead it’s the usual ‘track record for career stage’. Of course, alignment to Newcastle’s research strategy and vision will be the most paramount criteria, and a need for “breaking down the -ologies” was stressed; multi-disciplinary will be the key-word, as will an air of independent thinking – “potential for successful transition” is the phrase used, as well as “potential to be a strong role model for EDI”. Progression centres primarily on the fulfilment of these criteria after 3-4 years, with career breaks and such taken into account at all points. While Prof. Walker insisted that the NUAcTs will sit alongside normal advertisement and recruitment of lecturers, it is known that FMS no longer actively recruit lecturers, in favour of the NURFs. The expectation is that the overall lecturer (plus NUAcT post-progressors) pool will increase within all three faculties, indeed nearly doubling in FMS by 2028.
Prof. Walker also set out the governance of the scheme – Prof. Candy Rowe has been appointed as Director of NUAcT and Prof. Walker will be Chair of the Board – and overall is pretty detailed and optimistic. The value-added information from the open forum hosted on Thursday 10th was primarily in the encouraging tone and some stiff-upper-lip on the impact of Brexit (to paraphrase Prof. Walker, “we just have to crack on”). With the first round of applications and appointments due in the next few months, the proof will be in the pudding. Any questions in the meantime can be addressed to the NUAcT admin team – contact details on the website.
Note: this blog was edited on Friday 11th Jan 2019 to reflect the proposal document no longer being available online.