Doctorate actors

The strategic steering of the doctoral system is ensured by a Doctoral Committee made up of the heads of the accredited institutions or their duly mandated representatives.

The co-directors of the Collège doctoral de Bretagne are members of the Doctoral Committee in an advisory capacity.

The Doctoral Committee meets at least once a year. Meetings of the Doctoral Committee are chaired in turn by one of its members.

The mission of the doctoral college is to provide operational management of the doctoral program in Brittany, to contribute to its visibility and to the pooling of doctoral school activities.

In this context, the doctoral college is intended to be a place for exchanges and decisions between doctoral schools in order to define common operating rules to improve the overall quality of the doctorate.

The actions of the doctoral college must support the Accredited Institutions and doctoral schools in order to

•  support the development of their attractiveness to doctoral candidates
•  develop and organize their cross-disciplinary training offers
•  promote the diversity and interest of the professional careers of their doctoral students;
•  provide tools and services, particularly digital ones, to facilitate their management and monitoring of the quality of doctoral projects.

More specifically, at the regional level, the Brittany doctoral college :

• Coordinates the regional doctoral system for the group of institutions (common rules and texts, bodies, financial system, agreements, self-evaluation methodology, steering assistance, advice and expertise to institutions and EDs, etc.);
• Carries out career follow-up of PhDs and publishes surveys on the professional future of PhDs;
• Designs and/or administers tools and services, particularly digital ones, for the DEs and institutions in order to facilitate their management and monitoring of the quality of doctoral projects and their supervision;
• Coordinates and evaluates the cross-disciplinary training offer and the support mechanisms for post-doctoral career development (designed and implemented at each site), ensuring in particular that all training needs are covered at each college site
• Contributes to the European and international openness of doctoral students by coordinating a mobility aid system.

The Site Doctoral Centres are located throughout Brittany and the Pays de la Loire region, with centres in Angers, Brest, Le Mans, Lorient-Vannes, Nantes and Rennes. Their missions are:

• Providing cross-disciplinary training programmes
• Interregional and inter-site coordination
• Implementation coordination
• Training offer evaluations and evolutions
• Providing administrative support to the doctoral schools
• Organizing on-site inter-doctoral school events

The Doctorate School of Université Bretagne Loire oversees the university’s 11 interregional doctoral schools that have already awarded over 5,200 PhD degrees. Its missions are:

• Establishing common procedures
• Promoting the skills and expertise of PhD holders
• Creating and implementing coordinated training programmes
• Evaluating the available programmes for a continually improved offer
• Coordinating international projects and initiatives
• Developing a monitoring and management tool
• Monitoring graduates’ careers.

The doctoral school is responsible for:

• Defining and organizing disciplinary training programmes
• Recruiting PhD students
• Allocating PhD student funds
• Ensuring the quality of training and instruction  
• Monitoring PhD students
• Organizing scientific and intellectual exchanges among PhD students

Institutions accredited by the doctoral school host PhD students within their structure and can award the doctoral degree.  
The doctoral school’s accredited institutions

Associated institutions host PhD students within their structure, but cannot award the doctoral degree. PhD students can be attached to an associated institution, but they must also be registered at an accredited institution that will award their doctoral degree.

Each PhD student is attached to a laboratory, known as a “research unit”. This is where the PhD student will work during his/her thesis. The Thesis Supervisor (HDR) directing and overseeing the PhD student’s thesis work belongs to the same research unit.
The doctoral school’s research units