Semester 1 Update

Hello Everyone!

It has been such a busy and exciting semester for the Mission Employable team!

We launched the Peer Mentoring scheme on Monday 22 September with training day for all mentors and mentor officers. The day was run by Verity and myself and included talks by our Students’ Union, Student Services and the Humanities Senior Tutor, so that all mentors knew where to direct their mentees should any problems arise. Following the training, all mentor groups met in Freshers’ Week, and have been meeting every fortnight ever since! This week they are holding their last official meetings before the Christmas break. We have already held a mid-point review where the mentors from all seven Humanities disciplines (Archaeology, English, Film, History, Modern Languages, Music, and Philosophy) shared best practice and talked over solutions to some of the challenges that had occurred over the first 6 weeks of the scheme. We will be repeating this process at the end-point review, where we will also gather feedback on the scheme and ideas for improvements ahead of the scheme’s 2015-16 relaunch.

The Employability Module is also up and running, with feedback from the first semester currently being gathered by our Peer Mentors and First-Year Course Reps. We are really excited about developing and adapting the module over this year as we respond to students’ needs – we hope this will make the employability module one of the most useful and enjoyable modules in the Faculty! Watch this space for more information about the semester 2 activity we have planned through the module.

Our student-led Mission Employable Working Group is going from strength to strength! We are continually being contacted by University-level student associations and societies as they start to hear about Mission Employable and want to get involved: the Working Group has been the perfect place to introduce them to everyone that they might end up working with, as well as encouraging discussion and ideas for future activities. We have also used the Working Group to review activities and gather feedback/share best practice, as our History Society have already hosted two successful and well-attended employability events with our support. We are currently planning semester 2 events with the English, Music, Modern Languages, and Philosophy societies too! All are different, and this just proves the need to adapt employability activity to the needs of each academic discipline.

After Christmas Dr Eleanor Quince and I will be working closely with James Tribe to launch our Alumni Network and External Advisory Board, as well as creating a new campaign to make prospective students aware of all that Mission Employable can offer them when they attend visit days. Our new Student Employability Ambassadors will be helping with that, and I’m hoping that one of them will share their experiences with you in the New Year! In the meantime, I would like to wish everyone a fun and restful break over the holidays, and all the best for 2015.

Charlotte