Why should you attend the Swiss Summer School?
Methodology
is the corner stone of good scientific practice
and a sound training in methodology will be essential for your professional future.
There are however many different philosophies, approaches and techniques, many of
them highly specialized; new approaches are proposed and practice evolves over time.
The various workshops offered answer different needs you encounter during your studies and career:
- You need to acquire new or other tools and approaches, that where not covered during your formal training. New techniques are becoming popular, or your
research requires additional or more advanced skills. In addition and depending upon your study curriculum you had some topics were not covered at all.
- After having completed your initial degrees (bachelor, master) you start working on a PhD project or get a job as (research) assistant or collaborator
within academia or outside. You feel that your methodological skills are somewhat shaky, too theoretical and many practical problems were not really
covered. It is also quite common that the methodological training during the normal course of studies is somewhat sketchy or you did
not yet (or were not motivated to) understand the central place of methodology in whatever scientific endeavour.
- Today's careers require flexibility and even experienced researchers need to acquire new techniques and
additional skills (life-long learning). [In the last years several professors have attended courses in the Summer School!]
Reasons to attend the Summer School:
- Intensive one-week courses (Monday to Friday). Even if your work load is very heavy, you should be able to spare 5 days in late summer to learn something new.
- Oriented towards real practical applications, not only abstract theory and trivial technical exercises (you will be able to apply what you have learned
when back home)
- Highly qualified instructors, experts in their field and open to discuss your research problems (Instructors are asked to spend at least 50% of THE
teaching time to applied work and discussions of problems, including problems you encounter within your research projects.)
- Small groups of highly motivated participants:
Meet and exchange with fellow participants working in many different scientific disciplines and from many institutions in Switzerland and abroad
- Last but not least: the location (Lugano)
According to the evaluations sent-in by the participants, the Summer School experience is highly appreciated: the quality of the courses, the exchange between participants
and instructors and among fellow participants, the possibility to meet new colleagues (and often new friends), as well as the location (in their own words:
What former participants say about the Summer School