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The Graduate School's Researching Well Together project was awarded the accolade at the annual award ceremony.

Imperial saw off strong competition to take the award, which recognizes work to enhance the wellbeing of the College’s 3,000 doctoral ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½.

Over the past two years, the have developed, in partnership with staff and ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½, a package of support designed to enhance the wellbeing of research ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½, in line with the aim to .

Professor Sue Gibson, Director of the Graduate School, said: “Here at the Graduate School the whole team is committed to supporting our postgraduate community, so to have to have that recognised nationally is a real honour.

“There is growing evidence within higher education that shows a decline in the wellbeing of doctoral ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½. This initiative takes proactive steps to combat this trend and offer our postgraduates the support they need to succeed.”

Researching Well Together

The ‘Researching Well Together’ initiative combines three complementary strands that seek to support the different stages of the postgraduate researcher life cycle.

The writing retreat – initially aimed at ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ in the later stages of their PhD but now available more widely – is implemented in partnership with the . The programme comprises short plenary sessions, one-to-one mentoring, as well as providing time and space for ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ to write.

Meanwhile, the doctoral student coaching programme gives ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ the opportunity to attend up to four sessions with a qualified coach. It is open to all research ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ and is designed to focus on both self-development issues and supporting ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ to develop effective partnerships with supervisors.

In addition, an online course for supervisors is being developed. The course, inspired by themes emerging from the coaching programme, the writing retreat and student surveys, is tailored to specifically highlight to supervisors the challenges faced by Imperial’s research ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½. 

In order to contribute towards sector awareness and policy change, the Imperial team has shared its work with delegations from , , the , the and the . The project has also been presented at conferences organised by the HEA, and the .

Laura Lane, Manager of the Graduate School, said: “We are proud that this initiative is being developed as a partnership between staff and ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½, and for the first time aligns aligns support for doctoral ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ and supervisors.

“Consultation with ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ and staff has dominated every stage of this initiative and in creating this three-part programme we’ve successfully met the needs of our diverse postgraduate community.”

Guardian University Awards

The Guardian University Awards 2017 showcases some of the great work carried out by UK universities. Awards covered a number categories from to , with the seeing the highest number of entrants.

The Guardian’s universities editor, Judy Friedberg, said the awards ceremony, presented by Lauren Laverne on Wednesday night, was a chance to celebrate brilliance at universities. 

She said: “By early June, we’re going to have the results of the teaching excellence framework and we’ll know exactly who has been allocated gold, silver and bronze ratings. While the TEF pits university against university, I like to think of our awards as the Untef.

“We don’t judge all universities by the same clunky metrics. We look for examples of brilliance in all types of universities – and then we trumpet those successes to Guardian readers around the world.