Introduction
One strong focus of ARCTOS is student support. Student members of the network (master and PhD) can benefit in several ways, such as by attending and presenting at the monthly colloquiums and getting ECTS for it (PhD students only), joining teaching cruises, or organizing and attending the annual Student Forum in connection with ARCTOS Days.
From 2005 to 2018 an official PhD School was part of ARCTOS. In 2018 the funding scheme for the ARCTOS PhD school changed and it is now called the ARCTOS Student Support Network. In total, 58 ARCTOS students have successfully finished their PhD since 2005. At present 35 PhD students and 2 Master students are part of ARCTOS .
Monthly ARCTOS colloquiums
The colloquium is an approximately monthly seminar series covering a wide range of topics, such as fish, benthos, plankton, molecular analysis, and ecotoxicology. Members also present new or running projects. ARCTOS PhD students have to attend the colloquiums, either in person or via video link, and give two presentations during their PhD period, one at the beginning (project description) and one in the middle (mid-way presentation). The colloquiums can also be taken as a 5 ECTS course (BIO-8504) but then a third presentation as to be given by the student (final presentation prior to defense). Two ARCTOS researchers will ask questions and provide feedback. Master students can attend the colloquiums and present their research, if they would like to.
ARCTOS Days
This is the annual meeting for all ARCTOS members and students. It consists of two parts. The first part is for PhD students (ARCTOS PhD Forum) and is usually a workshop organized by the students lasting 1-2 days. Master students may attend as well if ARCTOS has enough funding. The PhD Forum is meant as a meeting point, to get to know each other, discuss the network and PhD related topics as well as develop skills such as presentation techniques, leadership, teamwork, communication, proposal writing etc. The second part is for all members and the focus is on presenting new results or projects, discussing the network and new projects/upcoming calls. There is also time to simply talk and network.
ARCTOS provides a number of courses, such as the monthly colloquiums, but also scientific sampling cruises to Svalbard (BIO-8510) and Greenland (BIO-8511) with the possibility for PhD students to join for their own sampling. Another course is the Arctic Frontiers PhD workshop (BIO-8516) during the Arctic Frontiers conference in Tromsø each January, where students attend the conference and travel to Lofoten afterwards to practice how to work interdisciplinary and to write project proposals.