Royal Holloway Physics won the Team Teaching Award for the RHUL Education Conference 2024. The Physics department is a founding member of a pioneering network of universities across the South East that annually creates hundreds of work placements accessible to students, with significant uptake over several years, which has boosted employability for our graduates, and enabled alumni to run events that support current students.
The creation of industrial placements for our students has been driven by the recently renewed South East Physics Network (SEPnet), which supports graduate training, employability, and outreach with a focus on improving diversity. Royal Holloway Physics is a founding member of this innovative consortium of six universities, that unites efforts of Physics employability advisors based in each university to build a collaborative employer engagement network. By individually approaching industrial partners, employers can be readily convinced of the benefits of offering placements to our students, that are competitively awarded from the partner universities.
Royal Holloway students have been very successful in obtaining SEPnet placements, supported in their applications by our dedicated team within the Department, and from Careers and CeDAS. The curriculum embedded employability programme prepares students through recruitment training, self-efficacy promotion, and mentorship. The 8-week paid work placements enable students to benefit from authentic learning experience in an environment that applies and further develops the skills acquired in their degree modules and improves the competencies that are most valued by future employers. What started as a scheme for Physics students has most recently been adopted by Mathematics students too. The scheme not only provides a transfer of knowledge across the South East of England, it increases the employability of students, as evidenced below through graduate prospects data.
Students’ success in their placements is celebrated annually at a high-profile SEPnet Students’ Expo held in London. The conference style event offers students the opportunity to give presentations and display posters about their summer projects. Over 100 students, academics and employers attend this networking event to hear from inspirational industry speakers and visit employer stands.
The Department run annual Alumni events at Royal Holloway, inviting all recent graduates to return and for our current undergraduates to listen to the wisdom and insight from life-experience of a diverse panel, with a question and answer session. The most recent event on 22 February 2024 was highly successful, with an increase of student attendance from previous year, and with a diverse panel of five alumnae who worked in communications management, Antarctic Survey, cyber security, NHS, and accounting. Hearing first-hand the career paths of alumni from under-represented groups has helped to inspire and motivate the aspirations of current students.
We have also launched and established an Industrial Liaison Board that includes alumni, now in high-flying jobs, to foster a close connection with those who may employ our graduates, and to benefit from their insights into what skills are most actively sought. The industrial representatives also meet with our final year undergraduate students during their poster session that presents their major project work.
Through SEPnet, we have pioneered important work in Outreach, including widening participation, and graduate training (GRADnet) as well as coordinating research collaborations and sharing best practice in equality, diversity and inclusion. In April 2023 Royal Holloway Physics organised and hosted a successful SEPnet Diversity Workshop – Embedding diversity into the curriculum, as described here.
SEPnet has been extremely effective in mitigating the risks to the discipline of physics (and more recently mathematics) in the UK and helping partner institutions thrive and lead the way in many important initiatives. Through GRADnet we have increased the opportunities for PG research students to undertake a rich, diverse and relevant training programme with an uptake beyond the department.
Beneficial impact on learning
Our SEPnet employability activities have had a demonstrable impact on student’s authentic learning in a work environment and the direct development of experience and skills most valued by employers, as quantitively evidenced by improved graduate prospects data:
Interest from students is demonstrated by the sharp increase in students who have self-registered for SEPnet placements, which has risen from 2022 (19%) to 2023 (31%) to 2024 (63.6%).
The impact on student employability has been evaluated by Graduate Outcomes Survey, a government sponsored survey run by HESA, with students surveyed 15 months after graduating. Through the graduate prospects data Royal Holloway Physics Department was recently recognised as 2nd in the UK for Physics Graduate prospects (Source: Physics subject rankings; Complete University Guide 2024). High scores in graduate employability and the departmental focus on summer placements and alumni careers events create a strong profile for graduate success.
In an external evaluation of the department’s teaching provision, the Institute of Physics Accreditation panel noted in their 2024 report:
“The panel was pleased to hear about the formation of the Industrial Liaison Board, which is good practice. The panel was pleased to hear the board had emphasised the importance of skills development to the students, especially the importance of being able to work in a team.”
“The programme includes aspects of career literacy and the students received formal advice over their CV. The students also noted that the careers advice was good, both from the department and the university. They also receive employability support through SEPnet.”
Recipients: Jana Checkley, Claire Hepwood, Dr James Nicholls, Gemma Seabrook (Careers), Prof Stephen Gibson and all academics in the Department of Physics
