Our Mission
Provide all physics students with the opportunity to gain skills, knowledge and work experience that will better prepare them for graduate-level technical employment, irrespective of where they choose to work.
Provide all physics students with the opportunity to gain skills, knowledge and work experience that will better prepare them for graduate-level technical employment, irrespective of where they choose to work.
We embed careers education into our physics degree programmes and work with colleagues to develop a skills-based curriculum.
We set up industry-sponsored undergraduate research projects, help students apply for placements and graduate roles and organise site visits and recruitment events.
We engage with companies to help them carry out innovative research and development, recruit talented graduates, and raise their profile.
Graduate employers are looking to employ students who are sufficiently self-aware to know how ‘translational’ their knowledge, skills and experiences are in a range of career contexts. However, these translational ‘graduate attributes’, embedded within the degree, are often ‘hidden’ meaning students are not sufficiently aware of them. Employers also want graduates who can solve problems that are not necessarily well-posed or lie in a specific scientific area. Those who recruit physicists often comment that candidates struggle with open-ended questions. This shortcoming may be due to the traditional ‘modular’ nature of physics degrees, where each assessment only tests students on what they know about one particular topic.
Groups of students who share particular characteristics (eg disabled students, from areas of low socioeconomic status, care givers) show gaps in equality of opportunity in relation to access, progression and success. The Institute of Physics reports there is a higher percentage of students with social communication disorder / autism studying physics, astronomy and mathematics compared to all other subjects. This is problematic as HESA graduate outcomes data suggests graduates disclosing autism were least likely to be in full time employment and were most likely to be unemployed. In addition, there is an emerging picture across WRIPA that physics students who share particular characteristics engage weakly with careers support, curricular work-based learning opportunities and co-curricular activities, including employer recruitment events. At the same time employers realise the importance of reaching a wider talent pool to attract diverse students and graduates into their business.
Employers want graduates with translational skills and students want to make better informed career choices. Many students struggle to articulate the skills embedded into teaching modules or to link these skills to applications in the world of work and graduate careers. An emphasis on curriculum-based employer interactions also helps overcome the ‘self-selection’ challenge where students self-select out of co-curricular or ‘prestigious’ events such as recruitment fairs. This means some students may not have the same level of career awareness or self-efficacy to access professional networks or contacts. At the same time, the frequency of employer interactions is often stymied by the number of staff who’ll engage with employers.
