Journal of Academic Development and Education JADE Issue 8 | Page 26

26 | JADE
HIGHLIGHT #1 | 27
PAUL ROACH & MARK SMITH
1. English should be the official language.
2. Availability of a supervising professor to prepare, supervise and
coordinate the training program.
3. Availability of sufficient number of supervisors (PhD holders), so
as not to exceed supervisor to student ratio 1:4.
4. Nearby housing and transportation from housing to the center as
well as from and to the airport
5. Provision of certificate at the end of the training program.
6. A weekly schedule for the research training and a list of available
research projects.
7. Enriching activities outside the scientific program (e.g., sport
facilities, weekend local visits).”
It was clear that Keele could deliver on all these criteria, including
several of the listed subject areas, but ISTM was only offering
summer research placements to UK students at that time. Expansion
to international students was seen as a potentially profitable
international activity, both financially but more so for the Research
Institute to increase its international profile. So, in conjunction with
Professor Gordon Ferns (the Director of ISTM at the time), the
authors drew up a specification and submitted it to the agent in
May 2011. On working out the projected costs and setting the price
it was clear that the optimum number of students to come to
Keele was between 16 and 20, so the pricing structure was scaled
to encourage a group of that number from year two onwards. The
students all come from the College of Medicine, Al Imam Muhammad
ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Being initially
founded in 1974 and now having approximately 24,000 students
and 1,300 faculty staff, the medical school at this University was still
relatively new and was looking to enhance its external visibility via
the development of a research profile. The long-term goal of the
international programme from their perspective was to nurture their
top students into research active clinicians.
After some rapid negotiation on terms and price, the first students
arrived on Keele campus on 3rd July 2011. Being a Research Institute
focussed on PhD/DM/MPhil and hosting some Masters level
courses, largely being based off-campus at the Guy Hilton Research
Centre hospital site, this was the first time ISTM had hosted any
undergraduate student groups. The learning curve was steep and
the young men who arrived found the European culture-shock acute.
Likewise staff within the ISTM had a culture shock when dealing
with this first cohort. Unfortunately it was too late to find sufficient
campus accommodation that year and they stayed in a small local
hotel. It has been crucial to reserve campus accommodation for
every year since then, and this has become an important part of the
Keele experience that has ensured the student groups return year
after year.
SAUDI TO STAFFS: LEARNING EXPERIENCES FROM SAUDI ARABIAN STUDENTS’
BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH VISITS TO KEELE UNIVERSITY 2011 TO 2016
The Al Imam University College of Medicine views these visits not
only as a very valuable experience for their students, but also for the
development of their staff. Their vision for a Faculty Development
Programme was set out in a paper by Bin Abdulrahman K A, et al
(2012) as part of the overall plan to encourage academic staff in
Arabian Gulf universities to study for a PhD themselves and become
more active in research. The student group is always accompanied by
an Academic Tutor from the College of Medicine, and their specialties
and research interests have included dermatology, paediatrics and
family medicine. To help to achieve this goal, the College of Medicine
set up funded programmes with universities in the USA, Malaysia
and Australia. But by 2016 they had dropped these other links, and
focussed only on visits to Keele.
There have been several other key features of the programme that
have emerged and may be useful to others who have the opportunity
to host visitors from the Middle East.
1. Capacity: Sufficient lecturers and tutors for the students’
projects need to be identified and signed up well in advance, as
the visits occur in July or August when many colleagues can be
away on leave. Sometimes members of their teams have stepped
in to cover for a week or two, but the students do need and
expect input from an experienced member of research-active
academic staff for their projects; that is what they are paying
for. The hierarchical social aspects of Saudi Arabia are quite
firm, with respect of the highest degree for those higher up
this societal ladder in terms of age and experience. The leader
of a group is seen to be the main person from whom these
students can learn, and be networked with in terms of helping
with their future career. This was a very important aspect from
the visiting students’ perspectives, and echoed entirely by their
accompanying Academic Tutors. ISTM has opted for a 1:2 basis of
supervision rather than the specified 1:4. The choice of projects
needs to be done well in advance. Allocation is done by the Al
Imam University Director of Visits as there is often a hierarchy
also within the student cohort – this we found was based on
student performance in examinations with the highest achieving
students allowed first choice of the projects.
2. Gender and culture: ISTM offers an entirely mixed-gender,
culturally diverse medical research environment which the
students have to accept and adapt to. But culture-shock in
coming to the UK can be acute, as many of the students have
not been outside the Middle East before, where gender, class,
religious and nationality divisions are often very entrenched. The
only concession to this is the booking of an entire floor of 18
en suite campus accommodation to meet cultural requirements,