3.06 How to inspire the next generation (with Rosa Smith from the Brilliant Club)

Do you remember what fascinated you about your PhD topic? Sometimes when we’re stuck in the middle of endless studying it can be hard to recall why we even chose this programme. This week in the podcast I’m talking to Rosa Smith from the Brilliant Club about how sharing your research with schoolkids can inspire everyone involved! Rosa talks about how the Brilliant Club works with less advantaged young people in non-selective, non-feeing paying schools in the UK and improves critical thinking skills, academic performance and university prospects. In addition, we hear about how the PhD student tutors in turn develop their communication skills, organisation, confidence and teaching skills, all while getting to share their research with others. You can find out more about the Brilliant Club here - https://thebrilliantclub.org/

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I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I help everyone from PhD students to full Professors to get a bit less overwhelmed and thrive in academia. My weekly podcast, The PhD Life Coach covers the most common issues experienced in universities, including procrastination, imposter syndrome, and having too much to do. I give inspiring and actionable advice and often have fun expert guests join me on the show. Make sure you subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Transcript

Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. And this week we have another guest with us. I am super excited to introduce Rosa Smith, who is from The Brilliant Club, a really cool public engagement organization in the UK. And she is going to talk with us today about inspiring the next generation. And, you know, Just tiny little tasks like that. So, hi, Rosa. 

Rosa: Hi, thanks for having me. It's lovely to be here. 

Vikki: It is wonderful to have you here. Anyway, tell people a little bit about yourself and about the Brilliant Club. 

Rosa: So, I'm Rosa. I've worked at the Brilliant Club for seven years now, which I can't quite believe, and my background is in secondary school. So before I joined the Brilliant Club, I was a secondary school English teacher and then a head of sixth form, uh, which led me to kind of being interested in, in access to university and I realized from that point, really how challenging it was for some young people to even get their foot in the door to get into university.

Um, and that's one of the things that Brilliant Club tries to tackle. So my current role at the Brilliant Club is Tutor Engagement Director. All of our tutors are either current PGRs or people who've completed their PhD. So they're all researchers, and what they do is, is go into schools and share their research expertise with young people, which I'm sure we'll come on to later in the podcast.

Um, but really my job at the moment is, is overseeing their professional development while they work with us. Making sure that we've got the right researchers in the right places to work with our schools and as a charity, and I think I alluded to this at the start, but our real mission is to support students from non selective state schools who haven't got the same advantages as other students to access university and to really thrive when they get there.

Vikki: Amazing. Thank you. And for our international listeners, state schools are public schools in the U. S., I believe. So state schools are our non fee paying, sort of bog standard ordinary schools. 

Rosa: Yeah, non fee paying and non selective as well. So, you know, we're working with students who haven't had the advantages of being in a more selective school.

Vikki: Amazing. And we were just talking before you came on, just to let people know a little bit about you as well, you have had a very productive weekend. 

Rosa: Yes. Well, I don't know if it's very productive actually, because it stopped me from doing any other productive things, but I've just a lot of running. So I did a half marathon yesterday, so I'm a little bit creaky today.

Vikki: And how was it? 

Rosa: It went well. Yeah, it was good. It was dry, which was a benefit because it's been so wet here recently. I'm in Shropshire. So I did the Shrewsbury half marathon yesterday, and it was long, but fun. Quite good fun. It was a good atmosphere. Um, and I had lots of lovely supporters. 

Vikki: And have you done it? Have you done this before? Is this a one off? Is this? 

Rosa: I have done one half marathon before, but seven years ago. So it was, uh, yeah, quite, it felt like quite an achievement to finish it yesterday. 

Vikki: Absolutely. Absolutely. Cool. So, and thank you for telling us a bit about the Brilliant Club. It sounds like an amazing organization. One of the things I want to say just for everybody in, if you're in the UK, this will be super, super relevant to you because you could engage potentially with the Brilliant Club yourself. If you are international, we have tons and tons of international listeners. There is also going to be lots of stuff in here that you can use when you're thinking about engaging with young people, helping raise their aspirations, outside of the context of the Brilliant Club. So there are different, even your universities may have these sorts of schemes going on and stuff. So if you're not in the UK, don't worry, there is still a bunch in this episode for you. So let's start by, let's start by thinking about what the actual students do, right? So most of my listeners are PhD students. I have some academics as well, who I'm sure will be interested for their students. So what do the PhD students actually do in this scheme? 

Rosa: So our PhD students act as tutors, and they're trained by us to be tutors in school. And what that means is they are tutoring students in school about their specific research and their. area of academic expertise. So, in comparison to other programs, they're not going in and doing, say, for example, English or maths tuition. They're going in and teaching a program of study that they've designed based on their area of research expertise, and that could be absolutely anything.

So, as you can imagine, we have wild and wonderful courses created by our tutors that are based on whatever is their specialism. So we might have something, for example, about the chemistry of baking that someone has created and they've linked their chemistry research to what students might be interested. We've got courses that are about literary history. We've got courses that are about AI. We've got courses that are about climate change. Absolutely anything that you're researching, we can support you to create a course for young people based on that. Um, so what the researchers are doing when they create that course is setting up a series of sessions that they go into school to deliver over the course of a school term.

So they'll go into school once a week for, around seven, eight weeks, and they'll deliver their program and they'll support the students to work towards a final piece of writing at the end. 

Vikki: Amazing. And why do you find it so important for them to do their own research? I've seen schemes before where either it's like a one off research talk or where the PhD students go in and, as you say, act as tutors on more kind of curriculum stuff. Why did you choose, I mean, I love it, but why did you choose to get them to teach their, their actual research? 

Rosa: Yeah, it's a really good question, and I think the answer is twofold. For the young people in school, it's very much about getting them to expand their critical thinking skills. And to, to really apply those critical thinking skills to something brand new, so something that's completely outside of their normal curriculum, and that exposes them to the type of study you might do at university that is completely different to what you might do at school.

So it's about exposing the students in school to new ideas, complex concepts that they might not have otherwise had access to, and really being inspired by the PhD researcher's passion for a particular subject. So I think that's the benefit for the young people and it, you know, it's supposed to really foster that love of learning and that curiosity.

For the PhD researchers, we hear from a lot of researchers that they have got opportunities to teach, but very rarely have they got an opportunity to teach their own specialism. They might be teaching undergraduates, but convening on, on a course that's set up by somebody else. They might be doing other outreach, but it's curriculum focused, for example, or it's very much about information and guidance about university, but not sharing their research.

So for our PhD tutors, it's the opportunity for them to take their research and write it into a course that's really unique and bespoke to them. Um, and they tell us that that's a really beneficial experience. It helps them to really condense what is the most important thing about my research, that if someone couldn't learn anything else, this is what I want them to learn and to really get that experience designing a program of study, or, you know, a scheme of work that they might not otherwise get the opportunity to do. 

Vikki: Remind me, I can't remember whether you said this, what age group are they going in to work with? 

Rosa: We actually work right from the top end of primary school to the top end of secondary school. So, the youngest students you work with might be 9 years old and be in year 5 or 6 in primary school, and the oldest students will be year 12, so the first year of their A level study. We do have pre designed courses for the very youngest pupils, so if you're working with students at the top end of primary or the bottom end of secondary school, we've got some off the shelf courses that our tutors can deliver, and for the older students, it'll be a self designed course by the tutor. 

Vikki: And what do you see the PhD students get out of doing this? 

Rosa: I think there are lots of things. I think, obviously the thing we talk about the most as a charity, externally really, is the impact that they will have on the young people, so that kind of opportunity to really change the lives of young people. And that might sound grand, but actually we've got lots of evidence that, I suppose both qualitatively and quantitatively, that this work that PhD tutors do really has a lasting impact on the outcomes of those young people. So they do better in their GCSEs if they've done the scholars program, even though it's not GCSE tuition. And we think that's because of those critical thinking skills and independent research skills they develop and that confidence they develop. And students are also more likely to apply to and progress to a more competitive university after they've done the scholars program. So a big one is that impact on those young people. And, you know, the young people say really wonderful things about how inspiring their tutors been and, you know, that they really set them on a path that they might not have otherwise been on.

Um, but it's not just altruistic. We think there are lots of benefits for the researcher's professional development, really. So we see benefits in terms of their, I suppose professional skills. So things like resilience, you know, it's nothing like having to deliver your research to a group of 14 year olds to make you resilient, you know, lots of the sorts of questions they ask, the challenges they might come up with. The, the lack of understanding perhaps of one of your ideas and you having to think, Oh, how am I going to present this in a different way? How am I going to restructure next time so it goes better. So I think there's a lot of resilience built in, in working with young people. 

There's also that experience of a professional work setting and having to fit into a school timetable. So that sort of time management and organization skills that you'll have to bring with you really and you'll develop over the course of working with a school. 

Communication skills. It's another huge one. So again, communicating something that you've spent years probably thinking about, researching, you might know more than anyone else about this particular niche topic, but having to really go back to basics and think, how will I explain this and break it down for someone that hasn't got the base of knowledge that I've got and doesn't understand perhaps the particular terminology and doesn't have that, that academic background.

So yeah, excellent communication skills. And I think not just breaking down your research, but also just dealing with a group of students in front of you in a classroom environment. Um, there's nothing like that to develop your communication skills as well. Um, so that is a huge one. We also teach quite a lot of specific pedagogical skills.

So there's a chance to really hone those if you, you know, if you want to stay in academia, for example, or you already are post PhD and you're teaching at undergraduate level, for example, there's lots of transferable teaching skills and training that we offer that you can take to other, other teaching.

Even if you're not going into teaching in the future, those teaching skills I think can be really helpful in other jobs. I think in most careers you probably have to do some training and some presentation to colleagues. So, the sort of skills to structure a session, to break down ideas, to communicate them clearly, to anticipate misconceptions and tackle them. So lots of transferable skills as well as those benefits socially. 

Vikki: And I think we can't even, I mean, you talk about those social, the sort of social benefits as being a kind of purely altruistic thing. But one of the things I see with my coaching clients a lot is they've sometimes forgotten the excitement of their research. It's so standard to them and they're so aware of the things that they don't know and they're not good at and all these people in the world that know more about it than them. As a PhD student, you can feel really like the kind of bottom of the tree and that this is the most mundane thing ever and you've just, you know, you can, you can get kind of bogged down in that, , having something that you were really excited about first and then you can get quite, I've seen lots of clients get quite, quite bogged down in the like, oh, it's just really long journey now.

And I think seeing other people being interested and excited and even impressed with you and what you've done and that sort of thing, I think can really give a boost that then makes it easier on those long days where you're just trying to get your analysis done or just get your writing done or whatever.

It can give you a real boost to know that actually, people think this is quite interesting. This is actually quite cool. You know, when you get out of the kind of get your head out the weeds a bit and share it with people out there in the community, it's actually, it's actually really interesting and I think that can really help people.

Rosa: I think you're absolutely right. And I think a lot of our tutors tell us that, that it, I suppose it forces you to think about why do I think this is so important? And why was I passionate about it in the first place? Because you've got to communicate that to other people. So I think you're absolutely right. And also, You might be surprised at the sort of questions that young people ask in a classroom that make you think, Oh, I really hadn't ever thought about it like that. And that might sound a bit mad, you know, given that they're 14, 15, 16, and you've been studying this probably for years, or at least a version of it for years, but actually, I think young people can really, um, I suppose, distill what you want to say with your research and get you to think about it in different ways and lots of our researchers tell us that yeah, young people, I suppose, reinvigorate some of that passion for their research. 

Vikki: Amazing. Do you have any stories about, obviously anonymous, but stories about students that you've seen make big developments by being involved in the program? 

Rosa: In terms of, of the PhD researchers?

Vikki: Yeah. In terms, no, in terms of the PhD students themselves. 

Rosa: Yeah. I mean we, we've definitely had researchers who've talked about, I suppose particularly if they, they're maybe coming into this in the first year of their research where they're still developing their, their thesis idea. Um, we definitely had researchers tell us that they've sort of shifted direction of their research and, you know, thought actually I had the kind of several routes this could go down, but I've really explored this one idea in my scholars program course, and that's made me kind of want to hone in on that area of research in particular. 

We've also definitely had researchers who working with us has really ignited a passion for teaching in them that they perhaps didn't think they had before and made that, kind of, I suppose, consolidated that as being their career choice, which is wonderful. So we have, you know, some people who worked with us as tutors and then, and then gone into careers in teaching, which is always lovely. 

Vikki: So I guess the flip side of that is, what do you see the PhD student finding most challenging when they're doing it? 

Rosa: Yeah, I think, great question and probably lots of things and slightly dependent on what your previous experience has been. I think lots of researchers find what I've just talked about as being a real benefit really challenging. So, actually, what do you choose? You know, you've only got, you know, We say sort of five sessions of content delivery on the scholars programme and then preparing for final assignment. So really, you've got five hours to teach something to a group of young people. So really distilling what you're going to teach in those sessions and what you want that final assignment to be.

So how, how do you condense such complex ideas into something that's understandable for non experts? I think that's, that's a massive challenge for researchers. And, and linked to that, the sort of. the way you communicate with young people and getting that right, getting the pitch right, so that it is academically challenging, but it's not inaccessible.

And I think that's a challenge for every teacher to an extent, but it's particularly difficult if you're bringing your research into a school setting. Another challenge, which I'm sure isn't unique to the Scholars Program or Brilliant Club, It's just the time management aspects of it and kind of fitting this sort of work alongside a really busy research schedule, often other commitments, you know, most people doing a PhD have got multiple other commitments as well. So fitting this in, in your schedule, I think those two things are probably the biggest challenges that our researchers face. 

Vikki: And there's such useful challenges to face that I'm sure they are difficult. They're the sorts of things, again, that my clients talk about it with other contexts, things they're involved with. But if you can develop the ability to condense down complex ideas to something achievable or something sort of understandable, it's such an important skill. Cause I see so many people who are trying to shorten work. It's one of the biggest things that people talk to me about in my membership sessions, you know, I need to shorten this piece of work and there's no way, there's no way I can take out any words. I need all of them. And it's like, well, how many words is in there? Like 7, 000 words. Like you definitely can. And that ability to go, you know what? Yeah. To talk about it in this much depth, maybe I need 7, 000 words. But actually, there's a 200 word version of this that tells you the key stuff. And there's a 1, 000 word version of this that tells you the key stuff and elaborates a little bit more. And then there's a 3, 000 word version that probably covers most of it, to be fair. And I think anything like this that helps students to develop that ability to see that whatever the topic and whatever the scale of the topic, you can kind of choose a level and choose a quantity and make it work. I just think sets them up for everything.

Rosa: Yeah, absolutely. It's such good practice for condensing complex ideas in a work context or just sharing your research with maybe academics that are outside your specialism, for example. So yeah, definitely lots of transferable skills in doing that. And we don't just leave researchers to do that by themselves either. I think what they can learn from is the expertise of other tutors who've come before. You know, we've got lots of example courses where a tutor has done it really well. Yeah. We've also got a template, what we call what, what the tutors go in and deliver a course handbook and we've got a template for that. So in our training, we'll cover kind of how do you use an existing structure? How can you use these ideas of how to structure a lesson to break down your ideas? So our training will really help with that and in a, in a transferable way, I think. 

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Vikki: Fantastic. And that was what I was going to ask actually, is what support, and I guess this is a two part question because some people will have access to the Brilliant Club if they're in the UK, and for everybody else, what support do you provide these students, and what support should, if people are looking for this in other countries or in places where you guys don't work, what sort of support should they be looking for?

Rosa: I think they should be looking for a structured program if they're going to go and deliver their own research in a context outside of an academic setting. So I think looking for things like logistical support from an organization, which we do provide. So support to make contact with a school, for example, support to schedule sessions, support to communicate appropriately with students and teachers.

So, you know, What we do on the Brilliant Club is allocate, the school allocates, sorry, a lead teacher and we allocate a program officer and those two people will liaise and then bring the tutor in when it's appropriate to organise what times to go into school, for example, and all the logistics of a placement.

So I'd be looking for some sort of structure so that you've got support. in your very busy schedule, and you've got support about how to do a program like that in a way that's really professional and go into school and meet the school's requirements. I'd also look for training, you know, both pedagogical training and some training about the sort of expectations of a particular context.

So if you're going into school anywhere, you want to know what the expectations of schools are. We have lots of international tutors working with us if they're living in the UK, who might not have gone to school in the UK. So we do try and cover kind of expectations of UK schools and things. So yeah, I'd be looking for training.

I'd be looking for logistical support. We also pay our tutors and pay travel expenses. So we pay for, preparation time for training and for delivery, and travel expenses. You know, it depends what sort of program you're doing and, and how much time you've got on your hands, I suppose.

But you would at least want to find out what the remuneration is, and, you know, consider how you can make that work alongside your other commitments, but you know, it is a benefit of, of programs like this. I think if you, if you can be paid given, we know it's, you know, really challenging financial time for lots of people.

Um, I'd also look to make sure that there's a really clear safeguarding policy that both protects you and young people. So we offer safeguarding training and we've got a really clear system. We've also got a very safe way to communicate with young people on a virtual learning environment so that it's moderated and protected. 

I think also you'd, you want to make sure that if you're working with a supervisor, if you're a current researcher, that you get their support as well and that they understand what you're about to do and how you plan to fit that around your research.

Vikki: Yeah, I'm going to ask you about supervisors in a minute because that can always be a whole thing in my experience. But before you do, I just want to, I think the pay thing is so important. I mean, I am thoroughly in favor of PhD students volunteering and all that stuff. And there's a lot of good that can be done and can be got out of that.

But I think properly recognizing what the PhD students are bringing, and the fact that you pay them for the preparation time as well as for the training, I think is huge, because so often you get a kind of like an okay hourly rate for the thing you're actually delivering, and you're like, okay, that's all right, but then by the time you've added up how much time you've actually spent getting ready for it, then suddenly is not looking like a good deal anymore. So I think that's hugely important, not least to make it accessible to more students. Cause one of the things I saw when I was an academic and now through, through my clients as well, is that so many PhD students are having to hold down other jobs just to be making enough money, particularly people that are self funding and all that sort of thing that you can kind of end up in a position where it's only a certain type of student that can afford to do these things. And I think the fact that you pay them so this can be a way that they bring in money that they can actually live on, whilst also getting all this training and support. I just think, I think it's brilliant. I think it's such a good model for how to do this. 

Rosa: Yeah. And it's really important to us that it's accessible for anyone doing a PhD. What we really want is role models going into school. So we want Our, our school students to see tutors that look like them or have come from similar areas to them and, you know, share some of their life experience and not in every case, you know, and there are benefits both ways.

We, we want everyone to, to think about coming to work with us if they're doing their PhD, but we do want a really diverse range of tutors to go into our schools and we don't want. kind of finances to be a barrier to anyone.

Vikki: Amazing. So let's talk supervisors. How do you hear, so I'm presuming you don't talk to the supervisors directly, but how do you hear through your PhD students about supervisor opinions on all this stuff? 

Rosa: So we don't work with supervisors directly, but we do often work with doctoral colleges or graduate schools who are very supportive of our work and generally very interested in seeing the sort of professional development outcomes for The researchers.

So we do report back to universities on the sort of professional development of a group of researchers at their institution if they're a partner with us. So we tend to get support from them, but they tend to also ask us, like, what can we tell supervisors? How can we, how can we promote this to supervisors and get them on board?

Um, So I think, you know, I think the age old concern of supervisors is that anything that isn't your core PhD research is going to be distracting. What I would really want them to understand is that actually it's, it's a benefit. Compared to a different part time job or even other outreach opportunities, doing something like the Scholar's Programme, where they're actually using their research and sharing it with the community, is helpful to the research itself. It helps to distill a researcher's thinking. It helps them to break down what's really important to them about their research. So we want them to understand that. And we also want them to see that, you know, we know that a really large percentage of PhD researchers do not go into academia and jobs are often quite hard to come by in academia, even if researchers want to do that.

So equipping them with the skills to explore a broad range of careers when they finish their PhD is sort of everyone's responsibility who's involved with that researcher at their institution. So we want them to be on board with the professional skills that can be gained through working with us.

And also, most supervisors, one would hope, are interested in diversifying the future pool of researchers that they work with, and we know that, you know, the PhD population is not as diverse as it perhaps could be, and we think that putting a broad range of role models into schools and allowing researchers to really inspire young people that doing a PhD is amazing and exciting and something they might want to do one day will really improve the diversity of the future pipeline into postgraduate study.

So, you know, we'd hope that if supervisors saw it through that lens, they'd be more supportive. So we'd encourage our tutors to articulate that to their supervisors as much as they can. 

Vikki: Definitely. I've seen it from both sides, I think. I used to oversee the postgraduate training for one of the colleges at my university. And we'd really struggle with those supervisors that you talked about who are just like, no, you need head down in the lab, get the work done. Anything else is a distraction. So we definitely had to try and manage that side of things. But then we also had the other side, where you had the serial volunteers, where you had PhD students who were doing Brilliant Club, and they were doing three minute thesis, and they were a postgrad rep, and they were a ambassador on open days, and they were a this and a that, and they were teaching this module and that module, and it's like, when are you doing your PhD? I don't understand. So I think for me, I would probably with for the people listening, I would probably really encourage people to think about what are they actually doing at the moment? Where are they getting their money from? And what's their what's their focus of their PhD? And what are they doing kind of co curricular stuff, so stuff that's related to their PhD but not it directly. And to think about where are they full and where could they be doing more things, because I think something like this is an amazing way of gaining all this experience and all this money and all this influence and impact and all this stuff that we've talked about.

But it may be that for some of our listeners, now is the perfect time to do it. Get in contact with Brilliant Club, go do it. And for other people, it may be a case of, you know what, this is not right for the phase of my PhD I'm in right now. Right now I'm on, you know, I'm on the writing home straight or I'm on just establishing this study or whatever it is.

I have a past episode about working out what phase of your PhD you're in and how you can then use that to make decisions. So I think it's one of those things where it's really important to kind of look at everything you're doing and see where this fits. Does it fit now? Does it fit at some point in the future?

 And then make the kind of decisions from there. And I think if supervisors see students doing that, then I think they're also much more likely to be supportive because they can see how you're going. Okay, we're doing these things this semester or this year. And then we'll focus on those things more next year, for example.

Rosa: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And that in itself is a really transferable skill, like being able to navigate that and think through what is the best time to get involved in this when I can really commit to it. to it properly and I'm not committing to too many things that, you know, we do see researchers struggle sometimes because they've over committed and they say, yeah, I can do four placements in a term and then it's too much.

So yeah, we want that too. You know, we want you to do it at a time that's right for you. It's also worth saying that it's never too late. You know, we've got people working with us who completed their PhD many years ago and have either been working in academia or not, you know, and want to come back to their research and use it for something later down the line. So we'll work with you at any stage post PhD too. Um, so it doesn't have to be immediate. 

Vikki: I love that. I think it's always useful to remember as well that the supervisors aren't perfect at this stuff either. I coach all the way through to full professor and the tendency to overcommit or the tendency to put your head in your sand and say I can't possibly do anything else except this. If you don't get the sort of skills you're talking about or the sort of support that I provide, some supervisors never, never develop past that. So sometimes the, the lack of understanding from supervisors is from their own tendencies and their own kind of challenges in balancing all the things that academia asks of them.

So yeah, I think these are making these decisions and figuring out how to balance things and how much you can do, I think is a huge part of all of this.

 Just to finish off, what would you say to anybody who was considering getting involved in something like the Brilliant Club? 

Rosa: Obviously the first thing is what you've just touched on. You know, really think about what commitments have you got? What time have you got? How are you gonna fit this in really to everything else that you're doing.

But I would urge you to go for it at a time when you feel it's right. I think there's so many benefits to how the way you think about your research, but also to your future career. Working on something like the Brilliant Club or another outreach program, you know, if you're outside the uk. It's such a brilliant thing to put on your CV and to talk about in interviews.

You can talk about the way you've navigated it alongside your research, the way you've built communication skills, the way you've navigated a really different professional setting than that of a university. Um, so my advice would be do your research. Find a program that looks and feels right for you. Have a good look at the Brilliant Club website. And if that doesn't feel right, there'll be outreach opportunities at your own institution, you know, that you can find out about. Um, so have a look what's available. 

And just really think through before you apply. What skills have you already got? How can you articulate your communication skills, your passion for your research, and really why you care about the mission of that organization? What we're looking for in applicants is that they're passionate about their research and that they have great communication skills, because everything else, we can work on in training and communication skills are also something we expect you to develop over you over the course of your work with us, but we just want someone who can talk confidently and excitedly really about their research.

Vikki: Amazing. And I remember you said, so mentioning the website, we're going to link to various different links to do with the brilliant club in the show notes. So for any of you listening, who desperately trying to grab pens or whatever, that will all be at phclifecoach. com in the podcast section but I remember like when we talked previously, that there were certain bits of the country that you were really keen to try and find more people. I know you want people all over, but do you want to give a shout out to areas that you're specifically interested in finding people or particularly interested to get more people to? 

Rosa: So as I say, you can apply from absolutely anywhere. We're particularly looking for researchers at the moment in Essex and sort of Southend, Thurrock area. We have lots of interested schools there and you know, if you're a researcher that either lives in Essex or can get to Essex easily from London, that would be amazing.

Similarly Hertfordshire. and also kind of Bexley, Bromley, that, that kind of top area of Kent. So obviously some London tutors are easily able to get out to those places, but often our schools are somewhere, you know, as you know, schools are not always in the most obvious next to a train station place. So if you live in, in any of those areas, thinking about the South. 

Then we're also very keen for more tutors in Coventry, Rugby, Stoke sort of area. So if you're there, then, then we'd love to see an application from you and then finally Bournemouth, we're keen for some more tutors there because we've got some new schools interested in Bournemouth, that we've not worked with before.

Vikki: Amazing. And that list is obviously as of, like, the end of September 2024. So if you're listening at another time, because my podcast episodes stay up for do check the Brilliant Club website. I'm sure there'll be information there about what specifically places you're looking for, but it's good to know which areas you, you particularly need people at the moment.

And before we finish up, Rosa, one of the things that my clients and my listeners are always thinking about is the different careers that they can have after, doing a PhD. As you mentioned, lots of people won't go into academia and I think you've shown brilliantly how all this sort of work can set people up to do that. But maybe you could tell us a little bit about what it's like working for the Brilliant Club and what type of opportunities there are there. 

Rosa: Yeah, I'd love to. So obviously my background is not in PhD research. I was a teacher, but I've got lots of colleagues who have come to work for the Brilliant Club post PhD. Several of them were tutors with us, a couple of people have done internships with us and then become a member of staff, which is also worth checking out. If you're a funded PhD through a doctoral training partnership, lots of those, as I'm sure you know, will fund a placement, and we offer a limited number of placements if you've already got funding. So do get in touch with us if you're interested in that and that applies to you.

 The sort of careers that are available somewhere like the Brilliant Club are really varied. So there are jobs in any organization, in any charity that are HR focused, finance focused, those sorts of things.

 Our staff who've done research often go into our research and impact team, for example, so we've got a team who really are solely focused on evaluating the impact of our programs and other educational interventions. So, Evaluation is really important to us, and making sure we're measuring impact is really important to us. So we've got quite a good track record of doing that, and now we do that for some other organisations too. So we're looking for people who are experts in analysing data, are experts in presenting data in accessible ways, I'm really thinking through, a small scale research project essentially. So those sorts of jobs are really appropriate for someone who's done a PhD. But also often people who've completed their PhD want to do something that is supporting other researchers. So the person in my team, Katrina, who is our head of tutor engagement on our tutor engagement team.

She is really interested in making sure that all of our PhD researchers are getting the best professional development, the best support, and, and she really advocates for her community really of researchers. So she's gone more into a support role, but I think she would say that having done her PhD has been really beneficial in thinking about what sort of support our tutors need.

Vikki: This is why I always try to remember to ask this question of people who come on the podcast because I think so often people only see the route into a traditional academic role or kind of leaving it all behind and going off into some corporation somewhere. I had a guest on a while back, Holly Prescott, who talked about academic adjacent careers. So check out that episode, everyone, if you're interested in this stuff, and I think these are such interesting examples of academic adjacent careers where you're still working with research, you're still working with people from universities, but in a different context and with a different aim. And yeah, I think it's just really useful for people to know these sorts of things exist.

Rosa: Yeah, definitely. Do check out our website and have a look for vacancies, because things do come up and we're always interested to hear from people who've finished their research. 

Vikki: Well, thank you so much for coming in, Rosa. I hope that you have inspired lots of the listeners either to engage themselves or if they're academics to encourage their PhD students to engage. If people want to find out more, where should they be looking? 

Rosa: So first and foremost, look on the Brilliant Club website. There's a whole area there about being a tutor. There is a little video, there's some FAQs, there's lots of information. You can also sign up on our website for an information event where you can find out more and come along to a live session. We are on LinkedIn and X and Instagram, so do check us out on any of those platforms. If you've got specific questions, you can also email apply at thebrilliantclub. org to find out more. We'd love to engage with you and if you've got any questions, do just reach out.

Vikki: Amazing. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you for such a useful episode. And thank you everyone for listening. I will see you next week. 

Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach.com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time.