Student Engagement
Making the most of your degree at the University of Bristol is about understanding how you can apply your discipline with confidence to make an impact in the real world.
The Professional Liaison Network helps you to apply your degree in real-world settings, helping to set you up for success after graduation and throughout your professional life.
We do this through activities specifically designed to help you to achieve this.
The Mentoring scheme is open to all students and helps you to understand different career paths and how they connect to your discipline. Students tell us that mentoring builds their confidence in speaking to professionals and gives them insight about their career development.
Placements give you the opportunity to work in a professional environment while studying your degree, allowing you to understand working life in different organisations and equip you with direct work experience.
Student projects enable you to work on a range of live briefs, industry challenges or projects from our partner organisations. By working on real challenges which have been developed for your programme, you will have the opportunity to understand some of the questions organisations are grappling with day-to-day and give you the opportunity to use your discipline to solve them.
This range of different experiences will help you to understand how to apply your discipline and the value you can bring within a professional context.
Mentoring schemes
Mentors offer their time and expertise, sharing their experiences with you about how they got to where they are today. The results can be life-changing for students who may discover their future career in an unexpected place.
Relationships can be the beginning of your professional network and often continue to develop outside of the mentoring scheme. In the past some students have taken up internships and even graduate employment in their mentor’s workplace. Students are matched with a mentor based on their interests.
If you are a current student interested in mentoring you can view and apply to the scheme through our internal mentoring guide.
- Students are put into small groups who share common career interests.
- The scheme involves three formal meetings
- Ideally you would engage in-person so you can build close connections, but an online option is available so you can build connections across the world
You benefit from advice and guidance on the possibilities after graduation. Helping you to develop an achievable plan and articulate your skills and build your confidence.
Your mentors may set you a 'mentoring challenge' as part of the meetings to help you understand some of the types of challenges involved in the profession.
Mentors will have studied a relevant degree (or have extensive relevant experience e.g Accountancy Qualifications), currently work within a role that utilises your degree and/or can support students to understand how their degree will help them to make an impact in the workplace
Placements
Students in some programmes can undertake a professional placement (Business School, Education and Policy Studies) unit matched with your career interests.
- Renumerated in course credit and 80 hours long (typically one day per week for 10-12 weeks)
- Flexible working arrangements
- Available to second year undergraduate students
Student Projects, challenges and live briefs
Organisations can collaborate with us across a range of in-curriculum projects where you will bring your academic experience to solve a real challenge that the organisation is facing. This can be undertaken in many different ways.
- Applied Projects: working on an industry challenge as part of your dissertation
- Student challenges: organisations present a challenge to a large group of students to work on and solve
- Group consultancy: A small team of students consult with an organisation on a specific business challenge.
Projects are available to both Undergraduate and Postgraduate students across the Faculty and involve direct connection with an external industry partner.