Graduate School Production Ecology & Resource Conservation (PE&RC)

The Graduate School Production Ecology & Resource Conservation (PE&RC) is a collaborative research and PhD** training institution coordinated by Wageningen University (WU), with a number of non-Wageningen University members. The broad field of ecology is a key pillar of PE&RC. In this proposal internationally renowned PE&RC research groups in this field join forces with MSc programmes in Ecology to offer a coherent, challenging MSc and PhD research and training programme. The groups comprise 12 groups from Wageningen University (the Centre for Crop Systems Analysis, Entomology, Genetics, Forest Ecology & Management, Land Dynamics, Mathematics and Statistics, Nature Conservation & Plant Ecology, Nematology, Plant Breeding, Plant Production Systems, Resource Ecology and Soil Biology & Biological Soil Quality), the research group Ecology & Biodiversity of the Institute of Environmental Biology of Utrecht University, the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) and members from the International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC, University of Twente). Given global change (e.g. climate, land use), the functioning of ecosystems and the services they can supply have become a focal area of interest within ecology and need to be understood and investigated at different levels of biological integration and complexity and across various spatial and temporal scales. The listed research groups allow for such a cross-scale approach as their research covers scales from gene to ecosystem, from individual to landscape and from evolutionary to real time. Experimental and modelling research approaches are applied to both natural and agricultural systems. Thus, the students will benefit from gaining knowledge on natural systems, which may be applied to agricultural systems, and from integrating information at different levels of biological organisation in a systems approach in a setting that meets with leading developments in state-of-the-art science at the international forefront. PE&RC was established in 1994 and is accredited by the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences. Its central mission is "to understand the functioning of (agro)-ecosystems to design and enable the development of sustainable and multifunctional production and land use systems". The proposed PE&RC Graduate Programme involves groups participating in PE&RC that have shown external assessment results of 4 (internationally competitive and yielding a significant contribution to the specific field) or higher on all four aspects assessed according to the standard evaluation protocol used for Dutch public research organisations. During the MSc phase of the Graduate Programme, students can be admitted to a Research Master Variant (RMV) which includes: · Short rotations and a Research Master Cluster (RMC) within the first half of the Master studies · Two MSc thesis projects within the second half of the Master studies and · A RMC+ for a selected number of MSc students at the end of their MSc study. Formal responsibility for the Research Master Variant lies with the MSc programmes, but the RMC and short rotations are developed in close cooperation with the graduate school PE&RC. Furthermore, the two thesis projects are embedded in the PE&RC research programme. Finally, the RMC+ is the sole responsibility of PE&RC. Staff members of PE&RC develop the RMC and RMC+ and teach the pertinent courses. The RMC aims at acquiring and improving the students’ professional skills in developing, writing and defending a scientific proposal. Students are free to choose a topic of their own choice under the condition that it lies within the scientific scope of the groups participating in the current proposal. Within the RMC+ approximately 12 proposals for a PhD project will be elaborated and assessed. In this phase, a limited number of students from outside the Graduate Programme will be allowed to enter the competition for the four positions within the RMC+ for NWO-funding. Students participating in the RMC+ whose proposal is not selected will be encouraged and guided to apply for regular PhD positions within PE&RC. In the context of the PhD research, a training and supervision plan (TSP) is mandatory. The careful carrying out and monitoring of the TSP is an important tool for quality assurance of PE&RC. The TSP consists of courses aimed at both further developing professional skills and at further deepening of the scientific skills and knowledge. In 2009 an external evaluation panel assessed the research and the teaching programmes of the PE&RC Graduate School to be of very good to excellent quality2. Furthermore the panel assessed that the "Graduate school provides an excellent platform for effective collaborations of the groups of the school and associated groups". ** The degree granted is called ‘Doctor’, which is equivalent to an Anglo Saxon PhD and will therefore be referred to as PhD in the remainder of the document.