Information for Supervisors of Dr. sc. hum. or Dr. med. / Dr. med. dent. doctoral candidates

Contact persons

Information on registration, doctoral agreements, dissertations and the assessment of doctoral theses is provided by the doctoral office. The School of Translational Medicine of the Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University (STMM) is responsible for the training offered during the Dr. sc. hum. and Dr. med. doctorate. Training offers for these structured programs are managed via the IT platform LEARN.

Documents for download (doctoral regulations, guidelines, forms) can be found here.

Student life cycle – Administration via LEARN

Procedure

Activities within the structured doctoral program are managed online via the STMM IT platform LEARN. Students can register on the platform before starting their doctorate (Dr. med.) or simultaneously with the start of the doctorate (Dr. sc. hum.), book courses and upload supporting documents. LEARN certifies the successful completion of the doctoral program by creating a transcript of records, which must be attached to the request for admission to the doctoral examination.

LEARN also allows creating a Thesis Advisory Committee (TAC) and documenting the activities of the TAC. TACs are mandatory for doctoral candidates for the Dr. sc. hum. degree and optional for doctoral candidates for the Dr. med. degree.

Supervisors’ responsibilities

Supervisors can view a list of their doctoral candidates in LEARN and track their progress.  Supervisors need only confirm those activities of their doctoral candidates that have no record in LEARN (events that cannot be booked via LEARN, e.g. research group seminars; participation in courses whose relevance for the doctorate is evaluated by the supervisor). Requests for confirmation are sent by the STMM directly via LEARN.

Access & technical questions

All supervisors are automatically requested by e-mail to register with LEARN at the latest when one of their doctoral candidates registers.

Your account remains active even if you are not currently supervising any doctoral candidates in the system.

A manual and FAQs are available to users on LEARN.                

Dr. sc. hum. | Structured program

All doctoral candidates for the Dr. sc. hum. at the Faculty of Medicine Mannheim must complete a structured doctoral program. For doctoral candidates who are involved in a Research Training Group, participation in the structured educational offerings of the Research Training Groups is usually sufficient to fulfill the requirements of the compulsory studies for the Dr. sc. hum. degree. For other doctoral candidates, the STMM offers a curriculum and course resources for the Dr. sc. hum. studies. The curriculum comprises at least 240 hours and mandatory TAC meetings.

New doctoral candidates who wish to participate in the STMM's structured training program for the Dr. sc. hum. indicate this in the doctoral agreement submitted with the application for acceptance as a doctoral candidate. Courses and activities that are not offered by the STMM but are nevertheless relevant to the various categories listed in the curriculum, can in principle also be recognized for the STMM structured training program, subject to the approval of the STMM office and the doctoral supervisor.

Dr. med. | Structured program

Training offer

The structured doctoral program for Dr. med. sets requirements in 5 categories (80 hours), in the area of good scientific practice, general and subject-specific basic skills and key competencies, as well as in the area of scientific exchange.

Only the content on good scientific practice is mandatory and relevant courses are regularly provided by the STMM. If possible, doctoral candidates should familiarize themselves with GSP basics (DFG and university guidelines on GSP) and take a first GSP course before starting their doctoral thesis.

The remaining categories are elective subjects - we would like to ask all supervisors to discuss with their doctoral candidates at the start of the doctorate which theoretical and practical knowledge is useful for the successful completion of the doctoral project.

Furthermore, we would like to ask supervisors to encourage their doctoral candidates to actively participate in scientific exchange within the research group as well as in seminars and conferences.

In principle, MaReCuM students can cover a large part of their elective program with MaReCuM content. While these credits are intended to enable students to complete the structured program alongside their studies and in a relatively short amount of time, it is of course preferable for doctoral students to acquire additional advanced research and academic skills.

TAC and second supervisor

A TAC or a second supervisor is not mandatory for Dr. med. doctoral students but can be registered in the doctoral agreement and documented on LEARN. For each TAC meeting, 10 hours are credited for the category “Scientific exchange”.