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Currently PhD (and other doctorates) student's emails follow the same format as all other students at the university with the 'xyz111@student.bham.ac.uk' style. This appears very unprofessional for the position held by doctoral students, especially when compared to students at institutions elsewhere in Britain and in other countries, who are supplied more professional appearing emails befitting of their position. I propose that instead of xyz111, PhD students should be able to have their given initials and surname as their email prefix, following the format of postdocs and tenured staff, perhaps with the suffix of @student.bham.ac.uk kept to differentiate them from employed staff (i.e: j.bloggs@student.bham.ac.uk instead of jxb123@student.bham.ac.uk). I believe this will help doctoral candidates in securing postdoc funding, research fellowships or industry careers by giving them a more professional foundation to present from.
I would like to see the guild recognise that the current email prefix offered to doctoral students is not representative of the professional station the students hold - who are often receiving funding as payment and working full time hours as they would an industry job - and no industry employer would provide their employees with such unprofessional emails. The guild should recognise that this change will help PhD students to better connect with external collaborators, appear more presentable at conferences and provide a better base on which to build their careers.
I would implore the scrutiny panel to provide the officers with this ultimatum: you have two candidates applying for your grant money, both of them are equal on merit and both of their proposals are equally brilliant. The only separation between the two candidates is one is applying from jxb123@ and the other from j.bloggs@. Who appears more professional, more proficient and better suited for receipt of your money?