Category Archives: Student Campus Partnership (SCP)

Employer Case Study: Dept of Modern Languages and Cultures

Education, Teaching and Research, Employer Feedback, Internship Schemes, Language and Translation, Student Campus Partnership (SCP), , , ,

Name of Organisation: Dept of Modern Languages and Cultures

Name of Employer: Katie Brown

Job Title: Senior Lecturer

Internship Scheme used: Student Campus Partnership (SCP) | Employer Engagement & Student Employment | University of Exeter

Feedback:

“Our intern was instrumental in organising the conference, handling a large amount of correspondence with participants, putting the programme together and ensuring the smooth running of the hybrid event throughout the day. She showed exceptional organisational skills and kept calm under pressure.

The student and I met regularly to discuss tasks that needed to be completed. She was very efficient and self-reliant, but checked in with me whenever an important decision needed to be made. She worked very effectively on the day of the conference, helping the day to run smoothly. She worked in Spanish most of the time and demonstrated her strong linguistic skills.”

Employer Case Study: University of Exeter

Employer Feedback, Information Technology, Internship Schemes, Student Campus Partnership (SCP), , , ,

Name of Organisation: University of Exeter

Name of Employer: Amy Binner

Job Title: Senior Lecturer

Internship Scheme used: Student Campus Partnership (SCP) | Employer Engagement & Student Employment | University of Exeter

Feedback:

“The internship culminated in the production of complete and validated code for a pilot project and a well formulated protocol for scaling up the work.

Our intern took the lead on co-ordinating and bringing together six programmers from across three different institutions and organised live coding sprints which played a key role in progressing on the development and validation of integrated code. He succeeded at this intimidating task which required leadership, organisation, clear communication and listening, forward-planning and delegation skills.

It was great to have our intern, the experience was both productive and fun. He was a vital member of the project team and throughout the internship he brought a positive energy and passion for his work. He rose to the challenges of working in an international and cross-disciplinary team and adopted a flexible approach. I particularly appreciated his problem solving skills and his patient and unassuming approach to communicating solutions and transferring knowledge. I wouldn’t hesitate to work with him again in the future.”

Employer Case Study – Global Systems Institute

Administration, Education, Teaching and Research, Employer Feedback, Internship Schemes, Student Campus Partnership (SCP), , , ,

Name of Organisation: University of Exeter – Global Systems Institute

Name of Employer: Andy Richards

Job Title: Global Systems Institute Manager

Internship Scheme used: Student Campus Partnership (SCP) | Employer Engagement & Student Employment | University of Exeter

Feedback:

“Hosting the internship was an incredibly beneficial experience for both our organisation and the student. It was a productive four weeks, we were able to progress a piece of work that needed to come off the back-burner and the intern learnt new skills. An excellent win-win.”

Student Case Study: University of Exeter Internships Dept

Administration, Advertising, Marketing and PR, Degree subject, Education, Teaching and Research, Internship Schemes, Psychology, Student Campus Partnership (SCP), , , ,

Name of Student:  Harry Moreton

Degree Subject:  BSc Psychology

Job Title:  A2I Internships Administrative Assistant

Company Name:  University of Exeter Internships Dept.

Type of Internship:  Student Campus Partnerships (SCPs)  

What were your key duties and responsibilities during your internship?

Creating employer/student internship contracts
Maintaining email box
Updating spreadsheets
Creating some marketing posts/posters
Chasing essential paperwork

What was your biggest achievement on your internship?

Nominated for student employee of the year and gaining valuable work experience with a fantastic team

Were there any challenges and how did you overcome these?

Working from home for the first time was something to get used too but this came with practice. Besides that, it was tricky once I broke my arm but was helped enormously by Hannah who was really understanding of my circumstances.

Skills Learnt: 

  • Organisation
  • Teamwork and collaboration
  • Communication
  • Time and workload management

Attributes Developed:

  • Motivation
  • Confidence
  • Independence
  • Work Ethic
  • Professionalism

Your message to other students considering a similar job role, organisation or sector?

A fantastic experience of which I would recommend (and have) to any student. You gain valuable skills alongside your degree that you would not get otherwise. I have since gone into an admin role through the GBP scheme and am using the skills I gained from this internship already. A fantastic department to work for full of great people, the experience ended too soon!

Student Case Study: Climate Emergency and Energy Intern

Education, Teaching and Research, Environmental Work, Geography, Internship Schemes, Physics and Astronomy, Student Campus Partnership (SCP), , , ,

Name of Student:  Janka van der Merwe

Degree Subject:  BSc Physics with Astrophysics

Job Title: SCP 6029 Climate Emergency and Energy Intern

Company Name:  University of Exeter

Type of Internship:  Student Campus Partnerships (SCPs)  

What were your key duties and responsibilities during your internship?

Conduct research of rainfall, doing analysis on rainfall observations in the Northern African/Sahel region.

What was your biggest achievement on your internship?

Creating a report of the findings of the research.

Were there any challenges and how did you overcome these?

Working remotely was challenging, and making sure I did the right amount of hours each week. I kept up with this by going onto campus and joining a friend who was also doing an internship, where we would work together.

Another big challenge was the high level of knowledge that I had not entirely been experienced with, regarding the climate field. Luckily my supervisor gave me access to a few of his lecture slides on the code that I was working on, and that was really helpful. I would also google the keywords, and that gave me a much better understanding.

Skills Learnt: 

  • Organisation
  • Researching
  • IT

Attributes Developed:

  • Independence
  • Work Ethic
  • Professionalism

Your message to other students considering a similar job role, organisation or sector?

This internship opened my eyes to a field that seems so exciting and up-and-coming. It has allowed me to refine my career interests, and I feel more confident in what I want to do after my undergraduate degree. I gained valuable skills working in 2 different coding languages; Python and R. I have developed the skills to perform a rainfall analysis thoroughly, which has been engaging and interesting to learn. Discussion with my supervisor also gave me a wider understanding of what the results from the analysis mean, and what could further be investigated. I am proud to have identified that the Northern Sahel region has different dominant frequencies in their rainfall spectrum than the Southern Sahel, which has implications in understanding the two Hadley cells that occupy that space on Earth.

Student Case Study: Professional Pathways Administrative Assistant

Administration, Advertising, Marketing and PR, Archaeology and Anthropology, Education, Teaching and Research, Internship Schemes, Student Campus Partnership (SCP), , , ,

Name of Student:  Lucia Janigova

Degree Subject:  BA Anthropology

Job Title: Administrative Assistant

Company Name:  University of Exeter

Type of Internship:  Student Campus Partnerships (SCPs)  

What were your key duties and responsibilities during your internship?

Helping with the adminsitrative aspect of running the Professional Pathways programme. This included responding to student emails, recording data from applications and email correspondence, preparing for the training week and helping with running of the training week.

What was your biggest achievement on your internship?

I believe my biggest achievement during my internship was the training week itself. We had to manage a lot of different parts of the programme while running it and for me personally it was challenging especially because of the high number of people we met, introduced to each other and in general made sure were enjoying the week while we were simultaneously responding to any issues that arose.

Were there any challenges and how did you overcome these?

Skills Learnt: 

  • Ability to Work Under Pressure
  • Organisation
  • Decision Making

Attributes Developed:

  • Personal Awareness
  • Work Ethic
  • Professionalism

Your message to other students considering a similar job role, organisation or sector?

My internship with the Professional Pathways was a great experience. I had the chance to meet amazing people and learn more about the behind-the-scenes work that goes into running such programme. I have personally learnt a lot, whether it be improving my written and spoken professional communication, managing my time around many small tasks and prioritising between them or putting my creativity into use to promote the programme. It was an all-round experience and a great opportunity to develop further professionally.

Student Case Study: Shore Crab Research Intern

Animal Care, Biosciences, Degree subject, Education, Teaching and Research, Environmental Work, Internship Schemes, Marine Biology, Student Campus Partnership (SCP), , ,

 

Name of Student:  Madeline Kirby

Degree Subject:  BSc Marine Biology

Job Title: SCP6015 Shore Crab Research Intern

Company Name:  University of Exeter

Type of Internship:  Student Campus Partnerships (SCPs)  

What were your key duties and responsibilities during your internship?

Assisting with fieldwork in the intertidal environment. Transferring data from the IUCN redlist to an excel format.

What was your biggest achievement on your internship?

I personally became more confident with identifying European Green Crabs, and learned a lot about the scientific process and how to conduct research. As I was working with a PHD student, the work I assisted with won’t be published for a few years yet.

Were there any challenges and how did you overcome these?

Catching covid in the first week of my internship was inconvenient, but we adapted by shifting to online tasks. Other challenges were trap placement and how to maximise our catch, so we played around with the methodology until we found the best practise.

Skills Learnt: 

  • Ability to Work Under Pressure
  • Organisation
  • Time and Workload Management

Attributes Developed:

  • Logical thinking
  • Confidence
  • Creative thinking
  • Professionalism

Your message to other students considering a similar job role, organisation or sector?

My internship experience was really positive. Working with a postgraduate student was really exciting as I felt I was learning a lot about the scientific method and gaining loads of skills I will be able to take into my own research career. I also felt included and the informal approach made me feel comfortable to ask questions. I loved being able to take a more active role in research and meet other people in the field. I have also secured a part-time internship extension with the team which is exciting.

Student Case Study: Research Intern – Decolonising Environmental Science

Degree subject, Information Technology, Internship Schemes, Science, Student Campus Partnership (SCP), , , ,

Name of Student:  Burhanuddin Anis

Degree Subject:  Natural Sciences

Job Title: SCP6014 Research Intern – Decolonising Environmental Science

Company Name:  University of Exeter

Type of Internship:  Student Campus Partnerships (SCPs)  

What were your key duties and responsibilities during your internship?

Putting together python script to automate the scraping of scopus exports for key data involved in a systematic literature review pertaining to parachute science, particular the author affiliations and sites of study of various paleo-ecological studies.

What was your biggest achievement on your internship?

Produces a fully documented and functioning script that automated a large part of the literature review, going through about 8000 results automatically, saving manual work.

Were there any challenges and how did you overcome these?

Often the code didn’t quite work the way we intended, returning incorrect data. Overcame these by sharing with my supervisor and co-worker, who helped troubleshoot and come up with lateral solutions to the problems.

Skills Learnt: 

  • Focus on Goals and Outcomes
  • IT
  • Researching

Attributes Developed:

  • Logical thinking
  • Independence
  • Work Ethic

Your message to other students considering a similar job role, organisation or sector?

Overall, my internship experience was excellent. I learnt a lot about working in an active research team, as I was able to see a project idea go from just that, to actively developing a methodology with my co-worker and supervisor, into having a large role in implementing this methodology. I greatly improved my confidence in communicating with a team and also greatly enhanced my knowledge of data analytics in python programming. I thought that it was particular good that I was able to actively suggest ideas to the development of the project, I felt that I was genuinely an equal contributor to the goal and this made the internship that much more fulfilling. Thomas Roland was a great supervisor and I’m grateful for his guidance and his willingness to trust my skill set!

Student Case Study: Science Research Assistant (Endangered Species)

Biosciences, Degree subject, Internship Schemes, Science, Student Campus Partnership (SCP), , , ,

Name of Student:  Amy Goymer

Degree Subject:  Biological sciences

Job Title: Science Research Assistant (Endangered Species) SCP 5967

Company Name:  University of Exeter

Type of Internship:  Student Campus Partnerships (SCPs)  

What were your key duties and responsibilities during your internship?

Carry out laboratory work to obtain DNA sequences for meat sold as ‘eel’ to evaluate whether endangered species were being utilised in eel sushi products. Then collate the data to synthesise a paper for publication.

What was your biggest achievement on your internship?

Analysing enough samples to significantly contribute to the global collection (more than doubling it!) which will allow a much more rounded view of eel trade globally.

Were there any challenges and how did you overcome these?

Some samples were hard to collect usable data from due to being degraded by frying, cooking etc. But you just have to be persistent and go right from the beginning again and then some will just have a lucky round and give you results.

Skills Learnt: 

  • Ability to Work Under Pressure
  • Organisation
  • Leadership
  • Strategic Planning
  • Decision Making

Attributes Developed:

  • Logical thinking
  • Commercial Awareness
  • Confidence
  • Independence

Your message to other students considering a similar job role, organisation or sector?

This internship experience not only furthered my laboratory experience and was a good thing to talk about moving forward in my career, but also made me feel like I was contributing to global science as an individual rather than just learning things as a student. I also hope to publish the paper I wrote as part of the internship with help from my supervisor, which is a really cool outcome to reward the hard work put in. Ultimately, it was great to get paid for something that really interesting, fun, and allowed me to contribute to science.

Student Case Study: University of Exeter with Diego Marmsoler

Computer Science, Information Technology, Internship Schemes, Mathematics, Student Campus Partnership (SCP), , , ,

Name of Student:  Teddy Cameron-Burke

Degree Subject:  Computer Science and Mathematics

Job Title: SCP 6021 Research Intern

Company Name:  University of Exeter with Diego Marmsoler

Type of Internship:  Student Campus Partnerships (SCPs)  

What were your key duties and responsibilities during your internship?

Formal verification and automation of automata

What was your biggest achievement on your internship?

Verified all machines necessary, and personally learned the isabelle programming language

Were there any challenges and how did you overcome these?

Steep learning curve to learn isabelle, which was overcome via example problems

Skills Learnt: 

  • Teamwork and Collaboration
  • Organisation
  • Leadership

Attributes Developed:

  • Creative thinking
  • Independence
  • Professionalism

Your message to other students considering a similar job role, organisation or sector?

Overall the internship was fantastic, I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in the mathematics of computer science and or getting into cyber security. From the internship I have many new contacts within the university, and have managed to organise a third year project with the significant advantage of already knowing the programming language. My supervisor, Diego Marmsoler, was excellent at being on hand to deal with any problems I had during the internship and was very welcoming to me and my peers. The internship was challenging but that was what made solving each problem that much more rewarding!