Graduate Schools

About 90% of the RUG-researchers is member of a graduate school.

Graduate schools work based on a five year research- and educationprogramme, which must be approved by the recognition comittee graduate schools (Dutch: ECOS) of the royal dutch academy of sciences (Dutch: KNAW).

Graduate schools that have gotten this approval, are called "(KNAW) acknowledged". This acknowledgement can be prolonged after five years, when the ECOS judges the acknowledgementcontinuation request (in which a report of the previous period and a new research- and educationprogramme for the next five years) positive.

In total there are a little over a 100 acknowledged graduate schools in the Netherlands. The reseachers that are a member of a graduate school take care of the education of promovendi, mostly assistents in education(aio's), researchers in education (oio's) and bursalen. All researchers (among which the promovendi) make a contribution with their efforts to the execution of the approved five year research programme.

The RUG is leading partner of ten acknowledged graduate schools. RUG-researchers participate in 22 graduate schools where the leading partner is another university.

In five graduate schools researchers of more than one faculty participate. These are interfacultairy graduate schools.

Four graduate schools also have members from other universities. These are national graduate schools.

The graduate schools related to biology are BCN (school of Behavioral and Cognitive Neurosciences) and GBB (Groningen Biomolecular Sciences and Biotechnology Institute).