I'm the higher degree research coordinator
for Humanities so I deal with a lot of the applications for
funding for PhD scholarships for international students
domestic students
and also there's a there's another scholarship that
the university has that my job as HDR coordinator
is to try to get our students positioned as strongly as
possible in those competitive application rounds
so having just come through a major ranking of
scholarship applications for the Humanities students
I thought I might talk a little bit
about how our own students as undergraduates might
be thinking of strategizing so that they can get one of
these scholarships for their PhD studies down the track
now the PhD scholarship program in Australia
has changed last year I think it was
it used to be funded by the Australian Research Council
the ARC
but that has now shifted to a
different government agency the
Department of Education and Training
the scholarships work the same way funded by
a different branch of of the government
and they are now called the
Research Training Program scholarships
or RTP
so that's the term the acronym that that you hear alot
in the context of PhD scholarships now
The way the scholarship works
is you get a stipend for the three years that
you're studying for your PhD
and that I think this year is about $26,000 a year
not a huge amount of money
but you can you can live on that
especially if you're starving student
certain universities well I think all universities
have a program where the university also kicks in
money to support your research
now how much gets kicked in on top of that
it's going to depend on which discipline you're in
and unfortunately archaeology
in most universities is not in the hard science end
of the University where a lot of the money is
we tend to be in the Humanities, Ancient History
things along those lines
at University of New England for instance
the students will get their yearly stipend
their living allowance
these are PhD students
but they'll also get a thousand dollars a year
to support their research
so three thousand dollars over the course of their three
years of study for the PhD
other university's much more generous
for instance Griffith University which I looked
into recently has
you get your RTP scholarship in
one of two different programs
if it's an A-level scholarship
they'll chip in fifteen thousand dollars
over the three years that's five thousand dollars
that you can spend on things like computers printing
internet access at home all that kind of stuff
that's on top of your living allowance that's
given to you by the government
they're Class B scholarship is still nine thousand dollars
over the course of the three years
so that's three thousand dollars a year
so once you add that into it
and different universities are going to have
different levels of generosity in
terms of the university support
it's quite you know it's quite a nice chunk of change
there for getting you through your PhD studies
and I should say as well that there's no HECS involved
that tuition fees are paid for by the government
so really it's a free program if you're able to
get that and they give you stipend to live on
How do you do that?
very competitive okay
the Research Training Program is the gold standard
in Australia for higher degree research scholarships
alright so as you can imagine very competitive
the way that UNE approaches how to give those
scholarships out to different applicants
is there's actually a rubric that we fill out
that's filled out by each school for the applicants
that are coming through that school
as an undergraduate you can strategize what
you're doing now to make
you maximally competitive if you do want to go on
for your PhD and that's something you probably
should be thinking about as an undergraduate
you know is this something that I want to extend
and take it to the highest level
think about it
now the way the rubric works at UNE and
different universities do this differently
so it's not gonna be the same if you applied to
a different University necessarily
but there has to be an empirical way that the university
can evaluate between the candidates applying for this
because they want the ones that are most likely to finish
the rules have changed a little bit in recent years
it used to be that universities got money based on
HDR enrollments it's shifted now to HDR completions so
the university doesn't get paid until the student actually
walks out the door with their degree
so as you can imagine and the impetus is on the
university to really get those students in there who
are likely to complete
how is that judged?
when you've got you know I think there was 150
160 students in the last round of the our RTP's
for maybe 40 scholarships on offer
so very competitive
how do you evaluate between those students to
figure out who is most likely to finish
you look at their track record
now the way the degree works here
as you guys are all aware
at UNE it's a three-year undergraduate degree and then
the next step is your Honours year
okay now the way the system is structured and
this goes back for at least a decade maybe even longer
is that the gold standard for getting one of these
RTP scholarships is having a first class result
in your Honours year
you can also potentially get the degree
get the scholarship I should say if you have a 2:1 result
so if you get a 2:1 it's not the end of the world
you still could potentially get one of these scholarships
but first-class honors you get the full 10 points
in the rubric for that okay
it's considered the gold standard at the current time for
setting yourself up for at least being in the running
for one of these degrees
now the way the rubric works at UNE is
another section that's fairly heavily weighted is
publications
this is kind of a new thing that's happening
where the whole publish or parish thing has been
around for decades
but as we get more and more into the government's
expecting positive returns on investment in
higher education one way that they can
measure that empirically is by how
many publications that you know our department
puts out for instance
so I suppose it's sort of a natural progression
to think about when you're
evaluating different students applying
for these scholarships how do you differentiate them
well this guy's got a publication or this woman you know
she's written a book chapter
If you think you've got a really good idea or you've got
something that you want to develop into a publication
start talking to your lectures at the undergraduate level
we actually have ways that you might be able to work
some idea that you have or an idea
that one of your lectures has into a small
publication through
for instance at university New England we have the
HUMS 301 which is sort of an independent study thing
that you take on with a lecture
they might have a little project that you can do
get a good result
you know these are small projects
but you might be able to publish it somewhere okay
that publication then looking good when it
comes to doing the rubric because if
you've come out of your undergraduate degree
we're even talking before Honours here
you have a publication
that's looking really good
at showing that you know how to do research
not only that but you can also follow it through
to a scholarly completion
"completion" there's that word again
The way the rubric works it doesn't matter where
that publication appears
it has to be peer reviewed
but the way the UNE rubric works at the current time
it doesn't matter what that's published in
for instance in this last round we had a
student applied from overseas who has
he's a second author on a publication in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science in America
which is considered one of the top three science
journals in the world
he gets a certain set of points in the rubric
based on that
same set of points if you were the second author on
article  in the Journal of Australasian Folklore
or something like that
which doesn't rank up in those same echelons
and but it is a peer reviewed publication
counts the same
so you don't really need to be worried too much about
you know the profile at this stage
at the early stage of your career it's more important
that you show that you can publish
and that you've been successful doing that
now in your Honours year
and the Honours here is a year-long study where
you're focused entirely
this is full time study
entirely on that one research question
and we would anticipate that you can get a publication
out of that by the end
and really the whole rationale behind that year of study
and your Honours to show that you are capable of
initiating developing research and
getting to that final publication at the end of it
that's sort of the rationale here
if you can do that in your Honours year that's great
because what that does then is first-class honours
or even a 2:1 a couple publications you're going
to be fairly competitive in the RTP scholarship ranking
There are two other things I want to mention
one of them is experience
another aspect of the way that the UNE ranking tool
works is keep very close track of any kind
of experience that you've gotten
like if you've worked for a consulting company
for a few months write that down exactly
start/end terms of your employment so that you can
accumulate months and years of experience
that you can point to because an aspect of
the rubric is points for experience in the field
chosen field of study
so that's again boosting your chances of getting
a scholarship just a little bit more and then the
other thing I want to talk about is we've talked
about publications in peer-reviewed journals
there is another type of publication
called a non-traditional research output
for instance if you're working at a consulting company
and you're given the task of writing part of a
contract report for instance you have
to do the chapter on flaked stone tools or something
keep close track of that because that can count as a
non-traditional research output
it's non-traditional in the sense that it's not
peer-reviewed but it's still doing research in your area
and those can count just as well as something
that's published in a peer-reviewed paper or peer-reviewed journal
so if you are doing that sort of work already
or if you have the opportunity to do that sort of work
if you're volunteering for a consulting company
or you're working part-time for consultant
by all means take all advantages of writing aspects
of those those technical reports
if they've said if you're asked you know
can you write this up don't go
oh no I'm not a good writer I don't want to do that
or it's just boring or whatever
do it alright because you can possibly count that
as a non-traditional research output
other things you can do would be
you know this is getting a little bit in the grey area
for archaeology but if you write a blog for instance
that can be considered a non-traditional research output
and the reason that there is that category
is more for the Arts
you know if somebody does a play or whatever and
they need to use that for their studies in Arts then
they can count that as a non-traditional research output
but it does have this scope in the context
of what we're talking about here
getting a getting your profile up
to set yourself up for an RTP
another one to think about
might be a conference poster
you may not feel confident when you're first starting out
doing a full presentation at the
Australian Archaeological Association conference
for instance but you may feel comfortable
doing a poster on some aspect of something
you're interested in or something you researched
do it
poster sessions are great
you can count that as an NTRO
So the whole idea here is as an undergraduate
you can start thinking strategically
about things you might do going the extra-mile
and just getting yourself set up professionally
with a bit of a track record and with the aim
of getting yourself in a position where you'll be
competitive for these RTP scholarships
coming out of your Honours year
