I am (was) a mature student with 20 years previous commercial experience
Over the course of two extensive field trips plus lab work during my Masters degree I developed and promoted some interesting and contemporary ideas and methods in ecology. There were certainly aspects of originality and practical use.
Of course in my literature review I examined state-of-the-art and the relevance of my work within that.
At the time I was trying to obtain more buy-in and interest from my supervisor and the course supervisor. The response was luke warm to say the least. In fact I was led to believe that there was very little value in my work by a course director - which definitely put me off - although I was committed to what I thought was a great direction.
I would also say there are/were publishing opportunities - but as a busy Masters student it is difficult to start this, without contributions from some supervisor or other.
Subsequently (within a couple of months of thesis completion) I found out that in fact there was actually a massive interest in this topic, at the university (and elsewhere) . When I found this - I held a meeting with an academic (in a different dept, as this was a cross-department interest) - indeed it turns out that there was funding applied for , for the very topic. But I didn't hear from this academic again , I felt (rightly or wrongly) that they wanted to pick my brains rather than establish any co-operation
Now the university are running a full scale promotion and research in this field - indeed it is becoming a flagship concept.
I am frustrated that there seems to be no acknowledgement of my work. In one sense I understand that as soon as you are not a student at that university - then there is no obligation to involve you in any way. However I also feel that there is a sense in which the 'push to publish' has led them to be non-collaborative in this work now. And it would be naive to think that departments are not competitive, especially when there is interesting new work involved.
However I would have liked to have been involved at some level, whether that is through acknowledgement - or further collaborative opportunities (as post university I am keen to get involved, whether as a consultant, or in further independet research which I have been working on). In fact the work they are engaged in now supposedly involves the commercialisation of the topic.
I would say that I am extremely amenable to co-operation (I work with lots of stakeholders in the work that I did previously) and avoid pointless conflicts
My specific questions are Should there be any acknowledgement of the work that I have done? Should I be disgruntled for having my work ignored? What could be done to alleviate this?
