The Actuarial Teachers and Researchers Conference (ATRC), was hosted by the University of Leicester and held at College Court at the end of July.
This year it differed in format, with more of a focus on teaching aspects, professional skills training for experienced members and a sequence of sessions aimed at actuaries in academia. The event was rounded off by Leicester's PhD students giving five-minute taster talks in front of researchers and the IFoA's Head of Research in exchange for tips on how to get research across most powerfully.
The key themes were:
- What skills do we need to prepare students for an AI driven world?
- Using technology for teaching and assessment
- Teaching excellence
- Curriculum 2019 (led by the IFoA Education and Lifelong Learning Team)
- Professional skills
- The future for actuarial research.
The teaching sessions set the tone for the whole conference, with participants prepared to be completely honest about their early career experiences, both good and bad, and the challenges of switching from commercial roles to academia.
The highlight of the conference was probably when Andrew Smith got us all to get our laptops out and work through an Excel-based example highlighting model and parameter uncertainty - nicely illustrating how model risk is more important than often emphasised.
To learn more about this year's ATRC, including access to the slides, visit www.le.ac.uk/atrc-2018