b. What does it mean to be active in an academic community
You need to be actively interacting with other scholars where you will share knowledge and learn from others. This can be achieved by attending seminars, conferences, workshops and working groups. Exposure to recent literature in the field is also important as well as contributing to knowledge through publications, which can be done individually or in collaboration with others.
What is a scholar in your view? What does scholarship mean to you?
To me a scholar is someone who has the curiosity to acquire and generate knowledge in methodological ways. S/he is driven by the desire to understand things that are not obvious to everybody and to improve the way practical problems are solved. As such, s/he is always engaged in formulating research problems out of the ordinary life experiences and conducting researches so as to answer the research questions that are raised by the research problems. To do this, s/he has to look at these ordinary issues with a very critical mind and to question what everybody else thinks is obvious. Because of the desire to improve the understanding of social issues, a scholar is a such not so much bothered with solving practical problems as the priority concern but rather generating new knowledge that can help in solving these problems. S/he also mentors others to look at issues critically and with the curiosity that would push them to want to generate new ways of doing things, new understanding, and also challenging what everybody else considers as obvious or not doable. Scholarship is the art and science that a scholar engages in.
I think a scholar is someone who is an expert in a field and engages in current debates and a lifelong learner contributing to the society.
To be active in academic community:
one needs to be continously engaged in trainings, workshops and also training others
And to participate in academic activities like, research, attending conferences and publishing
4.PG support network
Is necessary to entrench the student in the academic community. This provides links to others who may assist in not just academic mentoring but in career progression. Supervisors can assist by tagging PGs to conferences, research projects; grant proposal writing and opportunities for publications
