Student placements and projects

Reasons to host a placement or project student

• Access business support and insight at no cost to you:
  • Placement students work on meaningful projects or tasks for your organisation.
  • Project students carry out high quality research and analysis of an issue that is important to you.
• Engage with potential future employees from a range of backgrounds.
• Join a network of professionals across the globe and access more opportunities to connect with the University of Bristol.

If you would benefit from some additional support or have an idea for a project, please email fssl-pln@bristol.ac.uk.

What’s involved

We work with you to develop placement and project ideas, to ensure that it meets both your organisation’s requirements and the student’s learning outcomes.

We match the best student(s) to your project or placement. You are not required to recruit or assess the student(s).

Before, during and after the project or placement, you gain access to specialist university support, including inductions and ongoing supervision.

Placements

• Unpaid and 80 hours long (typically one day per week for 10-12 weeks)
• Flexible working arrangements depending on your requirements
• Available to second year undergraduate students in Schools of Management, Education and Policy Studies

Organisations are required to:

• assign a line manager / mentor for the duration of the placement to provide induction, consistent support and guidance;
• structure a placement to ensure students can meet the 80 hour requirement.

Projects

Unpaid, 4-5 months of dedicated research

• Option for individual or group projects (depending on the programme)
• Available to postgraduate and undergraduate students across the Faculty

Organisations are required to:

• meet with students at the start of the project;
• have (typically) 1-2 meetings with students and should be responsive to emails throughout duration of project.

Maximum number of students a host can employ

Hosts can take on an unlimited number of project and placement students however, there should be some considerations around resource to support the students whilst the project or placement is running.

Expected outputs at the end of a project

Outputs will differ slightly depending on the programme, but hosts will receive a summary of the findings through a report and/or a presentation.

Expected outputs at the end of a placement

This depends on the set of tasks or project given to the students across the duration of the placement.

Payments to students

The students are doing this for academic credit so should not be paid and are not expecting payment. Students claim their travel and incidental expenses from the University.

What business ideas, areas and/or issues could I develop for a student?

Host stories

Ian Roderick

Ian Roderick, Schumacher Institute, speaks about the benefits of working with students.

Mark Chandler​​​​​​​

Mark Chandler, DEFRA, speaks about the fantastic work undertaken by a placement student.

Rachel Moffat

Rachel Moffat, Bristol Energy Network, who talks about a project focused on helping their small business grow.