Arranging Project Supervision

After proposals have been submitted they will become available for arranging supervision once selection has been opened. This will be announced separately by e-mail. Your own proposals can then be viewed by members of staff and staff proposals will become available for viewing. During this phase it is still possible to edit your proposals and add additional proposals to the system.

Suitable navigation links will then be available in PATS to view proposals and express interest in them. Note that expressing interest simply indicates to the proposer that you may want to do the project, but it does not mean supervision is agreed. Members of staff can see which proposals you are interested in and you can see who is interested in your proposals. PATS shows a plain list of all proposals, but also a list of supervisors (for members of staff, students) with their proposals and profile information. Students can also see how many supervision slots a member of staff still has available (if the project coordinator is using this feature).

During this time you should contact members of staff to discuss the proposals and agree supervision, in particular if they have expressed interest on PATS. It is better to be pro-active and contact members of staff early instead of waiting for them to contact you. Also, members of staff have limited supervision slots and once they are gone they do not have to take on any more project (they can choose to do more projects, of course).

You must discuss a proposal with a member of staff before supervision can be agreed. This should be done with an in person or virtual meeting, not an e-mail alone. If you wish to do the project, clearly indicate this to the member of staff, either during the meeting or later on via e-mail.

If a member of staff is happy to take you on for the project, they can select to supervise you on PATS directly. This will create a project that will become available in the navigation bar. Once this happened you have a project agreed and cannot select any other project. This usually cannot be reversed; if there is a problem, please contact the project coordinator. You will receive an e-mail from PATS that the project has been created and see the project (instead of the proposal/project selection) in the navigation parts and the deadlines show up in the task list.

Note that members of staff can only choose to supervise you on a project in which you have shown interest. If it is your project, they must show interest before they can select to supervise you.

Please mention your degree scheme to the staff members when you see them. This is to ensure that the suitability of your proposed project for your degree scheme can be checked by staff members. You may also like to discuss the scope of your proposed project with the staff member, i.e. whether the project will allow you get a certain mark and what you need to do to achieve this.

Note, that after supervision has been agreed the proposal accepted will become unavailable and the students' other proposals will also be marked as unavailable. A member of staff can make their own proposals available again, if they think there is sufficient scope for more than one student to work on different aspects.

If you do not select a proposal by deadline then you will be assigned a random supervisor shortly after the deadline. This is not in your interest as you may well get the worst possible arrangement. Even if you cannot find a perfect proposal and/or cannot find a supervisor for your own proposal, it is still better for you to select a proposal than not selecting anything at all. Note, the deadline cannot be extended as there are no supervision slots available after this has been completed.

Dates and deadlines will be announced by e-mail and are also available in the PATS Tasks section.