The Doctoral School – Emphasis on the Development of a Person and a Researcher in a Broader Sense

“If, a few decades ago the final goal of doctoral studies was to provide the research findings that might almost be Nobel Prize-worthy, today the demands are different. A doctoral student is trained so that he would be able to create work worthy of the Nobel Prize,” explained Prof. Janina Tutkuvienė, Head of the Department of Anatomy, Histology and Anthropology at the Faculty of Medicine at Vilnius University. The comprehensive training of doctoral students is one of the key goals of the Doctoral School of Medicine and Health Sciences which was established on 1 February.

What is a Doctoral School?

Doctoral schools started to appear ten years ago and today there is hardly a country in Europe without them. Although in Lithuania we are used to hearing such English terms as Doctoral School or PhD School, the term Doctoral School in the Lithuanian language is not so broadly known, even though doctoral schools in various fields of science have actually been established in a variety of universities during the last five years. The Doctoral School of Medicine and Health Sciences is the second such school at Vilnius University.

“The Faculty of Medicine has been a member of the Organisation for PhD Education in Biomedicine and Health Sciences (ORPHEUS) since 2005. I have been participating in its conferences since 2007. This helped me get acquainted with the organization of doctoral studies in various European and other countries. ORPHEUS has also issued recommendations for good practice in doctoral training, which state the importance of doctoral schools and includes specific operational guidelines. We have been trying to follow these guidelines for the past 10 years, but only this year on the initiative of Vilnius University was the doctoral school established at the Faculty of Medicine,” Prof. Tutkuvienė said.

According to the professor, “the aim of the doctoral school is not only doctoral training within the specific field of science in order to perform modern and relevant research, but especially to strengthen the scientific empowerment of doctoral students in a broader sense – developing their critical thinking, interdisciplinary approach, international cooperation experience – and fully preparing them for independent research and the postdoctoral stage. A few decades ago, the only aim of doctoral studies was the high-quality technical execution of a specific research topic. The conclusions of the dissertation seemed to be the key criterion for determining the value of a doctoral student as an accomplished researcher. Unfortunately, it was not usually particularly important whether the student could conduct the research or how they did it. In other words, the question was not whether the doctoral student had sufficient general knowledge of the principles of research methodology, research ethics, specifics of writing publications, the ability to submit scientific applications or other general skills, but which today, are the foundation for carrying out world-class research and fully preparing for independent work in the future. In other words, earlier a doctoral student was simply thrown into the water like a kitten – either they would swim or they would not.”

Meanwhile, doctoral schools focus primarily on the development of a doctoral student as a person and a scientist in the broader sense. “If, a few decades ago the final goal of doctoral studies was to provide the research findings that might almost be Nobel Prize-worthy, today the demands are different. A doctoral student is trained so that he would be able to create work worthy of the Nobel Prize. They are trained so that they can perform research independently in the future and build a team to implement the research. Of course, research still must be important, relevant, meet modern research requirements, and be publishable in high-level scientific journals. However, the research findings alone do not reflect the readiness of the doctoral student as a well-developed researcher for future research,” Prof. Tutkuvienė said.

Special attention is given to training general competences

The goal of the doctoral school is also to train general competencies encouraging researchers to think globally and help them acquire the necessary skills – which simply were not paid attention to before. Relationships with supervisors, colleagues and co-authors are a very important aspect. It is especially important to promote the interdisciplinary approach of doctoral students to the problem they are addressing by combining not only basic medical sciences with clinical disciplines but also by cooperating with scientists from other fields and areas of science. Thereby, the aim is that the specific subjects of the doctoral studies do not focus on a narrow area relevant only for a particular doctoral thesis, but that the topic of research is developed at the level where interdisciplinary science meets.

According to Prof. Tutkuvienė, the importance of comprehensive doctoral education at Vilnius University was emphasized even before the establishment of the doctoral school. For example, doctoral students from the Faculty of Medicine were recommended to have at least one subject in their doctoral studies selected from an adjacent field of science, and since 2017, courses for training general competencies, seminars, and joint scientific events have been organized. “This also contributes to the cooperation of researchers from various fields of doctoral studies (medicine, public health and dentistry) at the Faculty of Medicine,” the professor added.

In order to strengthen the cooperation of doctoral students and develop their comprehensive approach to their research challenges, conferences on Evolutionary Medicine were launched in 2012. According to Prof. Tutkuvienė, “usually doctoral students participate in congresses in narrow fields, but it is important to hear the topics that other colleagues are exploring. We want doctoral students to understand the importance of scientific communication from the outset of their studies, and then the number of research studies carried out at the interface of sciences will grow. In addition, this also helps to avoid some situations where, for example, a doctoral student who carries out their research on the ground floor of Building A learns 3 years later that a colleague working on the third floor of Building C carried out very similar research.”

At the end of the interview, the professor noted that the year 2022 was special because at the end of August the conference on Evolutionary Medicine for doctoral students and other young researchers will take place for the fifth time on the topic of The Interdisciplinary approach to the diversity of human health and diseases. At the same time, two more international events entrusted to the Faculty of Medicine back in 2020, but due to the pandemic postponed to 2022, will be held—the 22nd Congress of the European Anthropological Association (EAA) and the 15th Congress of the International Society for the Study of Human Growth and Clinical Auxology (ISGA). Doctoral students are invited to participate in all these events (https://www.eaa2022.mf.vu.lt/).