Monitoring of the PhD student

Procedure for assigning a tutor and director

As regulated by article 9 of the REODULL, once admitted, each student will be assigned a tutor by the Academic Committee. The tutor must be a doctor and meet the requirements to supervise doctoral theses mentioned in article 10 of the aforementioned Regulations. The Academic Committee, after hearing the doctoral student, may modify the appointment of the assigned tutor at any time during the period of completion of the doctorate, provided there are justified reasons. If it deems it appropriate, it may request reports from the tutor and the thesis director.

Functions of the tutor

The duties of the tutor are: a) to regularly review, together with the thesis director, the doctoral student's activity document; b) to endorse, together with the thesis director and before the end of the first year, the research plan drawn up by the doctoral student; c) to sign the teaching commitment, together with the doctoral student, the thesis director and the competent vice-rector representing the ULL; d) to issue the annual report on the doctoral student's activity to the academic committee; e) to ensure the visibility of the ULL in all publications and activities for disseminating the results of the research developed by the doctoral student.

Assignment of director

Within one month of registration, the Academic Committee will assign a thesis director, who may or may not coincide with the tutor.

Thesis directors

They must meet the requirements mentioned in section 5.1.
At any time during the course of the doctorate, the Academic Committee, for justified reasons and after hearing from the doctoral student, tutor and director, may modify the appointments and authorize the inclusion of a co-director.

Supervisory Commitment Document

The supervision functions of doctoral students will be established by means of a documentary commitment, signed by the vice-rector responsible for postgraduate matters, the doctoral student, his/her tutor and his/her director or co-directors. The commitment must be signed within the first three months of the assignment of a tutor and a director. The document must include the unconditional acceptance of the doctoral student and the director regarding the system of respective rights and duties provided for in the REODULL and in section 5.1 of this report. It will also include a conflict resolution procedure, and will consider the aspects related to intellectual or industrial property rights that may arise within the scope of the doctoral program.

The commitment document, once signed by the participants, will be incorporated into the Document of Activities of the PhD student and filed in his/her file. The commitment document must conform to the established model.

Conflict resolution procedure

In the event of any non-compliance with any of the points included in the commitment document or the occurrence of any other disagreement related to the development of the doctoral programme, either party may bring it to the attention of the Academic Committee, which will act as mediator with a view to reaching an agreement that puts an end to the dispute. If mediation does not allow the conflict to be resolved after two months have elapsed since the doctoral programme coordinator was informed, it will be forwarded to the Doctoral Committee (or Doctoral School when it is in operation), which must issue a resolution within three months, after hearing the parties and the doctoral programme coordinator. An appeal may be lodged against the agreement of the Doctoral Committee (Doctoral School) before the rector, under the terms provided for in Law 30/1992, of 26 November, on the Legal Regime of Public Administrations and the Common Administrative Procedure.

Activity Record Control and Data Certification

Once the Supervision Commitment Document has been signed, the Academic Committee of the programme will enable the Personalised Activities Document (DAP) for the individualised registration of the activities carried out by the doctoral student. It will record both the training activities referred to in section 4 of this report, as well as the training supplements established by the Academic Committee based on the access profile and the recommendations of the tutor. Each activity must include identification data (type, title, place of performance), source of funding if applicable, authorisation of the tutor/director, purpose of the activity, its relation to the topic and research plan, and once completed, a summary of its content, duration in hours and date of completion, proof of its completion, incidents if any, and verification/certification by the tutor of its completion, as regulated by the programme's own CA and the ULL's Postgraduate Studies Committee or Doctoral School when it is in operation. Annually, the thesis tutor and director and the CA will incorporate into this document their reports on the fulfillment of the scheduled activities.

The DAP will be regularly reviewed by the tutor and the thesis director.

Annual evaluation of the Research Plan and the Activity Document. Before the end of the first year, the PhD student will prepare a Research Plan that will include at least:

a) justification of the study,
b) methodology to be used and objectives to be achieved,
c) available resources and
d) temporal planning.

This plan may be improved and detailed throughout your stay in the program and must be endorsed by the tutor and the director.

The academic committee of the programme will annually evaluate the development of the Research Plan and the document of activities carried out by the PhD student, together with the reports that the tutor and the director must issue for this purpose. The report of the tutor and the director may be joint or independent.

It must include an assessment of the degree of compliance and use of the scheduled activities, a general assessment of the doctoral student's performance, the progress made in the planned research plan, the difficulties encountered and the proposed solutions, and a summary of the results obtained, including publications and communications to conferences if any.

From the 2nd year (4th year on a part-time basis), a reasoned estimate of the time required to complete the thesis and the possibility of requesting an extension at the end of the 3rd year (5th year on a part-time basis) will be included. If the supervisor considers it unfeasible to complete the work, he or she must provide adequate justification. A positive evaluation will be an essential requirement for continuing in the programme. In the case of a negative evaluation, the academic committee will issue a report justifying it, in which appropriate corrective measures will be proposed for the next evaluation. In the case of a negative evaluation, the doctoral candidate must be evaluated again within six months, for which purpose a new Research Plan will be drawn up. In the event of a new negative evaluation, the doctoral candidate will be permanently removed from the programme.

Forecast of doctoral students' stays in other centres

One of the priority challenges of the ULL in recent years has been the promotion of collaborations with other national and international centres for research and postgraduate training. The geographical location of the University of La Laguna conditions these relations in two ways. On the one hand, the distance makes it more difficult to maintain a direct and fluid interaction with national and European reference centres, and on the other, it makes the ULL centres a strategic point for interaction with African and Latin countries.

The efforts made in recent years to strengthen these relations are reflected in:

a) the award of "International Campus of Excellence" in 2010 by MINECO,

b) the signing of doctoral training agreements with different European universities:

c) the implementation of two European projects that involve the mobility of pre- and postdoctoral researchers:

d) agreements with different universities and research centers in Latin American and African countries and

e) Numerous unanticipated collaborations between researchers participating in the programme and researchers from national and international reference centres.

These interactions allow us to foresee an increase in the mobility of doctoral students in the coming years.