Are you a researcher interested in engaging with local schools? Want to share your passion for research and your subject area with teachers and students?

Read on for an opportunity for researchers submit project ideas for collaborative research-led activities for secondary school and college students.

The School-University Partnership Initiative (SUPI) is an RCUK-funded project to create structured and strategic mechanisms for universities to work in partnership with secondary schools and FE colleges. This supports researchers’ direct engagement with students and brings contemporary and inspirational research contexts into formal and informal learning to enhance and enrich the curriculum.

In line with this, the SUPI team have developed a mechanism for researchers to post ideas for projects with schools, in the form of a project listing portal. Teachers can then browse these projects and get in touch with researchers if they want to develop this into a project for their students. It would then up to the teacher and researcher to work together on this to run the project in school/on campus.

The portal is available here:
www.supi.manchester.ac.uk/projectlistingportal/

If you would like to submit a project idea to be added to this site, please complete the Template for project listings (doc) and return to me, by Monday 24 November if possible (to be ready for wider promotion to schools). Teachers will then be able to get in touch with you if they are interested on working with you and running the project with their students. Please take a look at the projects already listed to give you a better idea of the layout.

Important information

  • Don’t worry if you don’t have a fully formed project idea. Please just complete the attached template with as much information about your idea as possible, and then we can note that the project outline would be discussed further with interested teachers.
  • At the moment, there is no funding specifically allocated for projects listed on this portal. Many projects will not need any funding apart from travel expenses to the school, which may be able to be covered by the school involved or the researcher’s Academic School. However in the New Year we are hoping to create a mechanism for researchers to bid for a small amount of funding if necessary, and also signpost people to ways to access funding from their Academic School, as each School is allocated money each year to run projects with students. Information about this will be circulated via the Public Engagement mailing list once available.

Please let me know if you have any questions or require any further information – Roz.Webster@manchester.ac.uk

Roz Webster,  Student Recruitment and Widening Participation Officer (SUPI), The University of Manchester