Students getting more than just science

Our Invasive Animals Cooperative Research Centre PhD students are each undertaking 80 days of training in things like media, communications skills, intellectual property, the funding environment, working in teams and self awareness.  We call the program "Balanced Scientist" because we think that the program's graduates will be more effective because they are receiving a wider range of training opportunities. 

We don't expect them to simply squeeze the training into their research time.  We've arranged to give them extra scholarship time.  Because most of them are working with animals or natural systems, the extra time also helps if they lose a season's data or animals don't behave as planned.