In keeping with Research Council guidelines, MOAC's students receive training in "Transferable Skills" such as team building, or communicating science - as well as being able to avail themselves of Warwick's Graduate School Skills Programme.

All MOAC students register on the Warwick Postgraduate Certificate in Transferable Skills in Science.

Please see the course homepage here for the latest news and documentation.

The certificate consists of six modules as set out in the The General Introduction to Transferable Skills Certificate, and normally you will complete two each year. One of these will concentrate on the skills that you should be building up during your routine work as a research student. The other will usually be based on a three-day residential course with some follow-up activities.

Past courses include:

Science Communication

This media course is run in conjunction with the Chemical Biology Centre DTC, and focuses on communicating science to the general public. As part of this exercise the students film a mock TV documentary show, and produce a mock radio broadcast at the BBC.

• January 2006 - Report with photos and downloads
• Summer 2007 - Repeated with the second MOAC intake
• July 2008 - Download the TV and radio reports created by the students

Team Development

MOAC and the CBC DTC at Imperial College have created a regular "Team Development" course, that is specifically targeted to students doing research in the sciences:

• Spring 2005 - Wyck Hill House Hotel, Stow on the Wold
• April 2006 - Scalford Hall, Melton Mowbray
• April 2007 - Scalford Hall, Melton Mowbray (CBC report)

The course content also included emphasis on presentation skills, and graduate career advice.

Decision making

The first of what could be another regular MOAC and CBC DTC course:

• Spring 2007 - Cumberland Lodge, Windsor Great Park

Industrial mentors

In addition to transferable skills courses each MOAC student is being paired with an industrial mentor. Most graduate students have spent the majority of their lives in academia and thus many automatically consider academia as their future. The purpose of our mentor scheme is open the minds of MOAC students to non-academic life. The mentors role is to expose the student to the industrial sector, through their own experiences and careers. A further benefit, for students and mentors, is the forging of contacts within each others world.