Institutional case study: University of Manchester

Continuing our series of institutional case studies looking at the different ways institutions are using Prosper - today we're looking at the University of Manchester's use. Many thanks in particular to Dr Anne Marie Sowerbutts, Researcher Developer at the University, who led the implementation and worked with us on this case study.

Key stats

• Mode of delivery: 3
• FTE resource: 1
• 2 cohorts
• 8 sessions
• 35 postdocs

Context and background

The University of Manchester is a research powerhouse, ranked first in Europe and second in the world for social and environmental impact (Times Higher Education Impact Rankings 2024). As such it has a relatively high population of postdocs - around 1800 across its 3 faculties.

It was closely involved with Prosper from the start, and one of Prosper’s three partner institutions during its development phase - 41 of the 75 postdocs on Prosper’s second pilot cohort hailed from the University.

The University wanted to build on the success of the pilot cohorts and ensure that research staff at Manchester had access to Prosper cohorts and resources on an ongoing basis.

Dr Anne Marie Sowerbutts, who had previously worked as a researcher and internal coach at the University, was brought into the researcher development team with a specific remit to embed Prosper as business-as-usual across the institution.

How was Prosper used?

Given the success of Prosper’s pilot cohorts, the University adopted a similar cohort model for its ongoing Prosper provision.

The University ran its Prosper cohort in two parts. The first ran between October and December 2023, and was built around Prosper’s ‘Reflect’ theme, focusing on self-understanding, discovering skills and strengths, and encouraging participants to reflect on their career aims. It had an online group coaching session following the first session and then three other 90-minute in-person sessions, ending with an optional half-hour of one-to-one coaching with Anne Marie.

The second part, which began in January 2024 and ran till March, was built around Prosper’s ‘Explore’ and ‘Act’ themes, and similarly involved four 90-minute in-person sessions. The first two ‘Explore’ sessions focused on Prosper’s Career Clusters, the breadth of opportunities open to postdocs beyond academia, and developing networking skills. The second two ‘Act’ sessions were focused around CV tailoring and interview techniques. The sessions in both parts were built around a mix of Prosper Portal resources and Anne Marie’s own expertise as a facilitator and coach - with a mix of delivery and group work.

Participants of the first cohort had the option to take part in the second without having to re-apply. The reason for splitting the cohort in this way was two-fold: firstly, to minimise drop-off and ensure a manageable commitment (postdocs only signed up to the first four sessions in the first instance), secondly because of the different focuses - with Reflect being much more of an introspective journey, and Explore/Act being more outward-focused on career opportunities and job application skills. Different postdocs at different stages of their career journey might have need of one more than the other, and the split accommodated this.

The University took a light touch approach to the recruitment process. Applicants simply had to write a 100-word statement on why they wanted to join and what they wanted to get out of the process, and complete a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality test, for use in the Reflect sessions. Applicants were then admitted on a first-come-first-serve basis. This was partly due to not wanting to add to postdocs’ already-heavy workloads, and partly for reasons of inclusivity:

A total of 35 postdocs participated in the two cohorts (with some doing one part and not the other).

Beyond the cohorts, The University also heavily promoted the Prosper Portal to research staff as a resource to be used in a self-directed manner.

Impact and evaluation

The cohorts went well - with the Reflect part in particular serving to create a safe space for postdocs from different disciplines to connect. One of the commonalities to emerge in the group coaching was that many participants felt quite stuck in their career - and welcomed the opportunity to and share their worries, concerns, challenges and reflections with other researchers in a similar position.

The University gathered a mix of qualitative and quantitative feedback via Qualtrics, with participants scoring statements on a 5 point Likert scale in addition to open questions. Dr Anne Marie Sowerbutts also interviewed six participants in-person afterwards to get a deeper sense of their experience (two participants who had done part one only, two had done part two only, and two who had done both parts). Some of the feedback can be seen in the quotes in this piece. 100% of participants rated the cohort experience as “good” or “excellent”.

To capture before and after participants were asked “Before the Prosper cohort, I felt stuck and could not move my career forward” and “After the Prosper cohort, I felt stuck and could not move my career forward”. All the participants felt they were less stuck.

One standout feature of the feedback is that in a number of cases participants joined the cohort very uncertain about whether they wanted to pursue a career in academia or beyond, and that Prosper helped them make that decision, one way or the other, giving them the confidence to take the next step.

Another theme that emerged is that the sessions helped participants narrow down where to focus their attentions regarding their career development, in a practical, structured way.

Additionally, the wider promotion of Prosper at the university has had an impact well beyond the cohorts - with 229 research staff now active registered users of the Prosper Portal.

Future plans

The University will be running another iteration of the same two-part cohort, beginning in October 2024 and running through till March 2025.

In addition - acknowledging that different staff prefer different ways of engaging with career development - the University will be building on this with alternative formats:

• A more in-depth single cohort, involving eight sessions with cohort members participating in action learning sets in between, planned for January 2025
• A two-day intensive version of the above

Across all these, the University is planning to integrate Portal usage more directly into the sessions.

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