Prosper was fantastic because while we’ve historically offered a lot of training and standalone sessions, this was the first opportunity we’ve had to run a programme just for postdocs where everything is joined up in a holistic way, with a real community element. That space to create connections with peers from other disciplines, especially in our hybrid working era, was incredibly powerful.

Chris Emmerson, Organisational Development Lead, Newcastle University

Continuing our series looking at how different HEIs across the UK are using Prosper, we are featuring Newcastle University, which ran a Prosper cohort in 2024 and is planning another for 2025 at the time of writing. Many thanks to Chris Emmerson, Jennifer Webster, and Farhana Chowdhury from the Organisational Development team at Newcastle, for their implementation of Prosper and also their contributions to this piece.

A PDF version of the case study can be downloaded via this link.

Key stats

  • Mode of delivery: 3
  • FTE cost: 1
  • 15 postdocs
  • 9 workshops
  • 4 coaching sessions

Context and background

A founding member of the Russell Group, Newcastle University is a Global top 130 university, with three campuses in Newcastle, Singapore and Malaysia.

As a research-intensive institution, it employs approximately 950 postdocs spread across its three faculties (Medical Sciences, Science Agriculture and Engineering, Humanities and Social Sciences).

How was Prosper used?

Prosper gave me the opportunity to focus on my career from a different perspective, allowing me to reflect on the skills and values I would like to see reflected in my own career path. All the activities were a moment of reflection on our future moves. One of the strongest assets of Prosper is the collaborative and supportive environment that was created. Everyone was willing to share their stories, as well as carefully listening without competitiveness.

Cohort member feedback

The Organisational Development team at Newcastle felt there was a gap in their provision for postdocs who might want to explore roles beyond academia. While there was existing resource via their career service and various sessions, they felt like more could be done to join this activity up into something more holistic and tailored to the postdoc audience.

Having seen the success of the Prosper pilots, the team felt the Prosper cohort model would be ideal for this.

The cohort ran over three-and-a-half months from 16th April to 3rd July 2024. The University ran a light-touch recruitment process based on expression of interest and a short statement regarding what applicants wanted to get out of it (similar to Prosper’s cohorts at the University of Liverpool).

15 postdocs ended up taking part, with 5 from each of the University’s three faculties. As well as being diverse in terms of disciplinary backgrounds, participants represented a diverse mix in terms of gender and ethnicity.

The cohort was structured around 9 workshops and 4 coaching sessions, as well as an additional induction to the coaching. It followed Prosper’s Reflect, Explore, Act model in even thirds, with sessions including self-reflection, broadening career horizons and exploring other career paths beyond academia, entrepreneurial skills, leadership, networking, and interview skills.

The team drew heavily on resources from the Prosper Portal to create the sessions, while weaving in their own expertise, content from other sessions they’d run before, and material from their careers service (the aim of the cohort being in part to join the dots and draw from what they knew had worked piecemeal elsewhere in the past).

Thanks to Prosper, I decided to apply for a national course on how to commercialise your own research. Although my plan is still to remain in academia, I feel more confident in exploring alternative and compatible career paths.

Cohort member feedback

For some of the sessions the team brought in academics from the University that had switched between industry and academia in their own careers, to talk through their experience and provide direct insight.

The sessions had group discussion and community elements built in. Participants were encouraged to reflect on the content of sessions and discuss their learnings amongst themselves, applying the ideas to the context of their own career journeys and aspirations - connecting over shared experiences.

Partly due to this desire to create a tangible community, sessions were mostly in-person, and often combined with group coaching on the same day, with a group lunch in between (everyone loves free food!). The group coaching was done in two groups of seven and eight, kept consistent throughout the cohort.

Impact and evaluation

I was thoroughly grateful for the time to reflect on my career progression with my peers. It was great to get to know other postdocs from different faculties and discover that our experiences were surprisingly similar, and to receive sympathetic and understanding ears to the challenges we face as postdocs. Prosper has made me feel more certain in my desired career path and more focused on my goals. I would highly recommend Prosper, as valuable time to grow, reflect, and focus on what you want to do after your PhD.

Cohort member feedback

The cohort was a success - and the organisers found that the group and community element in particular was really valuable for the postdocs that participated.

The team took a light-touch approach to formal evaluation - with participants filling in a simple feedback form after each module (i.e. Reflect, Explore, and Act). Feedback was very positive for each - participants found that there was a lot in the sessions they could relate to, that there was a good spread of content, and that the content was very useful for sparking thoughts and discussions relating to their own career journeys.

Some of the content was quite new to participants - e.g. the material on leadership. A lot of the cohort said they’d never really had an opportunity to explore ideas around leadership styles and what different models of leadership look like.

Participants also stated that the cohort had a real impact on their own career perspectives and aspirations - one stated that thanks to the Explore sessions, they are now considering a career in professional services.

The cohort was an exploratory pilot - one of its main intentions was to get the programme up and running, and to find out what works and what doesn’t, to inform the design of the next iteration. The team was able to get a lot of useful insight for this purpose; for example, participants responded well to the more focused and condensed day sessions, so this is being factored into the design of the next cohort.

Future plans

The community element proved to be just as beneficial as any of the information or content provided in the sessions. It meant postdocs could connect and work with each other through all the material, and also allowed us to build up a rapport with them over the cohort – get a sense of how they’re thinking, and how different peoples’ journeys are both different and similar. It allows a holistic approach that other models struggle to replicate.
 
Prosper is a great scaffold for this and we’re excited about refining and scaling this up in the future.

Jennifer Webster, Organisational Development Lead, Newcastle University

The Organisational Development team is planning a second, expanded Prosper cohort to run between April and June 2025 - with the team aiming to recruit 18 postdocs  

The team are adapting the structure based on the feedback from the first cohort. Instead of having smaller sessions spread out on different days, they will be running three full-day sessions (one for Reflect, one for Explore, one for Act).

Each full-day session will be held monthly, with action learning sets scheduled in between.

The action learning sets will involve each participant coming to the group with a problem they wish to discuss. Each participant will have 20 minutes to discuss their problem, and the facilitator will then guide the cohort in working together to come up with group solutions.

If you're keen on using Prosper within your own institution, or are using it but need some help or advice, do feel free to contact us at prosper.postdoc@liverpool.ac.uk