I'm going to just
talk to you for 10 minutes or so,
going through the structure and the
ideas, the advantages to doing an
industrial experience degree,
and go through the structure of our CIE
program
at the University of Birmingham. So CIE
is our Chemistry with Industrial
Experience
program, so the programme
structure -  this is a master's degree, so a
master's degree is four years
and the year in industry is an
integrated year. That means that
your MSci, the CIE is only four years
and you do your industrial research
project within
that as year three. It's an
accredited degree
by the Royal Society of Chemistry and your
placement year itself does
constitute a mark towards your
overall degree.
At Birmingham, your master's degree, your
year three
is worth forty percent of your overall
degree mark,
and the CIE program, the year three,
is worth the same. So just to summarize
how
CIE degree is structured, in year one and
year two
you do your studies on campus with
all the other chemists.
Then start your 12-month
industrial
placement and that would be a placement
at your host
company, doing your research project that
is assessed
and any other activities that they wish
you to do
on placement. When you've completed your
12 months away, you then come
back to Birmingham onto campus
and do an academic research project and
some more topic based
lectures and that again is just like the
rest of the year four. So you essentially
come and join
your own cohort when you return in
year four.
Just to give a few more details about
the actual placement year,
so as i say it's a 12-month industrial
placement, so you're
you're hosted at a
company who runs chemistry based
research.
It's important that your research
project is chemistry based, hence why
it's
chemistry with industrial experience.
The company you choose to do your placement
can be in the UK or it can be abroad.
The project that you do during the year
is obviously assessed by the university
as it's worth that 40% of your degree.
While you're on placement you pay only
20%
of the fees for that year
and the bonus is because this is a work
placement, you'll be paid by your host
company for that year three.
A typical salary that you get in the UK
for this is about £18,000 for the year,
so that's a real bonus and it's
something that will either help you
while you're on the placement year or
some money to put away for later.
Also, our degree and the
placement year
is in line with the code of practice for
industrial placements by
the Royal Society of Chemistry, so when
you're on placement,
we don't just leave you there on
placement, you have support from the
university during that year
and we provide that by
interaction communication with the
placement coordinator.
You also have a university academic
supervisor
and within the year we will do a number
of site visits to see you,
to see how you're getting on at your
host company.
We also have a number of ways of
communicating with us back at university
throughout that time, so your supervisor
and the coordinator will help to give
you
both scientific advice and support for
your project work
while you are away on the host company.
So what kind of things might you do on
placement? So the placement
years are different depending on which
company you're at, so often you can be
working on a combination of different
projects,
some types of sectors might
have five or six different projects that
you work on during the year,
some other sectors you might be working
on one particular project.
It gives you good experience across
a number of different techniques or
parts of that sector, so
throughout the year you're developing a
very wide range of skills, not just
lab skills,
not just using particular parts of
equipment or a different type of
synthetic
route, you're learning project management,
you're learning how to do independent
work, you're learning how to work in a
group.
You'll learn how to present your work to
your colleagues,
and often virtually to colleagues in
that
company in a different country, so
the placement year maximizes what we
call experiential learning,
so that's learning by having experience.
By working on the different
projects, you're learning
how to do each project and then
apply that to any projects that you do
later in your career. So the placements
are available across a wide variety of
chemistry sectors and i'll show you here
just a selection of some of the
companies where we
have our students placed currently or
have had in the past.
So if you have a look at some of these
logos, some of them will seem very
familiar to you, others maybe not.
If you're interested in the
pharmaceutical sector, you'll notice
logos such as GlaxoSmithKline,
Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Roche -
there are other pharmaceutical companies
here you may not have heard of,
Vertex and Evotec, for example.
These type of companies will offer you
placements
in organic synthesis and medicinal
chemistry,
the larger pharmaceutical companies will
also offer placements
in analytical chemistry and formulation
or physical chemistry.
There are some other companies here,
BMS which is more of a
pharmaceutical analytical company.
Moving away from that sector, we have
companies like Innospec,
which are a more of a polymer company or
a product development company.
Reckitt Benckiser, so this is a
company you may not have heard very much
but if you have a look at many of the
cleaning products that you have in your
house, you will see this logo on the back
of the packaging. They innovate
and develop a lot of products that we
see.
So those are placement projects that you
might be interested in if you're
interested in product development,
we have other product developments
such as coatings and paints so AkzoNobel
you'll see on the back of some Dulux
paints if you've bought any of those
recently.
UPol do things like coatings for
cars,
Fosroc is a relatively local company to
Birmingham
and they work on anything from concrete
to sealants.
Our last placement student at Fosroc
actually worked on a sealant that was
used in the construction of
one of the halls of residents that
the students are using at the University
of Birmingham.
There are other companies so Dycotec
materials, so that's more kind of solid
state
and material and then we have slightly
more kind of academic industrial type
projects
where you might be working with
scientists developing
more kind of academic programs at
central facilities.
Finally there's another clear sector
here of the food and the drink sector.
We have Molson Coors,
Nestle and Mondelez, so these are all
companies
where you might be involved in some kind
of
product development or food testing or
formulation
for things powder flow,
smell and the taste of products.
Our last student who went to Moorson
Coors actually came away from there
with a brewing certificate
as well so there's a massive range of
different
projects and placement types that are
available to you.
One of the other
things i'd like to highlight that you
do in your placement year when
you're at Birmingham, we also run
our CIE symposium once a year and that's
a great event that all our year threes
enjoy doing.
So all year threes come back, they give a
talk about their project,
their industrial supervisors, their
academic supervisors, come back, we have
all our year ones
year twos and year fours that are
involved in the program
also come along to the symposium so it
starts to develop
a network within the CIE program
of students, so you start to develop
a specific kind of student group that
are on CIE
which is a select group of students and
it helps you with networking
during your degree and beyond.
So the other thing that you need to do
on placement is some distance learning,
so all
universities do this and it's really
important because when you come back
from your placement in year three,
you need to have some background
knowledge
of the courses ready for your options in
year four.
So you do a selected number of the core
chemistry modules,
what we do in Birmingham that's a little
bit different from most of the other
universities though, is we don't expect
you to come back
from placement to sit an exam. So the
distance learning is assessed as an
online open book assessment that you can
do
while you're still on placement, so there
is no time out from the placement,
this is something that you can do in the
evenings and the weekends when the
distance learning
is due.
So how do we actually prepare you
to go on placement? Well we start that as
soon as you join us at Birmingham,
so as soon as you come to Birmingham in
year one,
we start with a number of careers
lectures, workshops and activities to
help you to prepare your CV,
your cover letter, to be aware of what
placement opportunities there are out
there.
Alongside that, we have
skills programs run by careers and we
have a number of industrial partners
who will often come to the university
and run some mock assessment centers
to help you prepare for interviews and
assessment centers and
other activities that help boost your CV.
We do have a hurdle that we like our CIE
students to meet,
your end of year one mark at university
we would expect it to be more than 60
and realistically a first class mark to
give you the best
chance of securing those placements
which you'll apply for in year two.
So in year two all the applications
start for your placement positions
and we give you a lot of support to
produce your
your applications, so you have one-to-one
support from
me, the coordinator and a CIE mentor
group
and also careers and this is important
because
getting onto a placement is a
competitive
process, so placements can be open
and publicly advertised so you're in
competition with
students from other universities and
obviously ones from Birmingham as well.
We also do have a number of non-publicly
advertised positions available so that
is where the company has come to
Birmingham and asked us to put forward
a number of applicants for those
positions,
so it will depend very much which area
you might be
interested in, but a combination of those
are available.
Then at the end of year two, we would
again expect you to get 60
or above to still be on the MSci
cohort. Why would you want to be on CIE?
You get the benefit, so you'll see the
benefits as soon as you come back to us
in year four, our CIE cohort
have so much more maturity and
self-confidence when they return. We
actually see
this during year three when they come
back for the CIE symposium, so
you benefit so much from that year in
industry
immediately. So not only do you have that
added self-confidence,
your project management skills
are enhanced majorly and that helps you
in your
project in year four when you come back
and as a cohort,
the CIE cohort tends to have a higher
average degree mark
as well. So you see that benefit as soon
as you come back into year four.
On a more pastoral note, we would then
ask the year four students to be
involved in the
in the CIE network, so when you come back
from doing your placement you will be
very proud of your project,
you will be very proud of your
achievements and you will be very proud
of the company that you worked with
so you can then pass that information on
to year ones and year twos.
You become part of a very select
student network
and that network continues when you
leave us
as well, so in terms of after year four
and when you leave us with your
with your higher than average degree
mark, you
clearly also have massively enhanced
employability prospects.
That industrial experience year is
absolutely
invaluable and
it means that you have both
the lab skills,
the non-lab skills and just that
increased confidence
which gives our CIE students a much
better employability
record when they leave us.
If you've got any questions
about
the placement year you can ask.
We've also got Dr Adrian Wright
with
us here today, he's the senior admissions
tutor so any more general questions
we'll be happy to take those as well.
Do you want to tell us a bit about
what you did this year?
Hi everyone,
i just came back from my industry
based in Cornelius Specialities in
Suffolk
and during my placement year i've worked
on quite a few projects actually
including the process optimization of
a monomer used in contact lenses
and i was also involved in an emulsifier
used in cosmetics.
My work at Cornelius Specialities had
a positive impact
on the future work for the company and
the suggested
optimization procedure from me is
actually to be implemented which will
increase the pass rate and
product efficiency. I was able to
translate what i learned in lectures
the science and the chemistry into a
commercial product
and i gained invaluable insight into
polymer chemistry which
wasn't taught in depth in a university
but i learnt on the job,
and i had hands-on experience with
different analytical techniques,
including gas cartography and hplc
and ions such as
such things like that. Also i've
conducted quite a few
viscosity tests and polymer tests, these
are all things
and that weren't taught at university, so
i thought it was very valuable to learn
them in the company.
It has been a really good year for me,
i enhanced my teamwork skills and
research,
and i also developed my attention to
detail, analytical,
and time management skills, with all
these i feel a lot more confident coming
back to Birmingham and
going to my future job applications.
So i hope you would choose the same
course.
Could you tell us
what a typical day
on your placement was like?
So for me, i lived outside
the company town so i commuted every day,
i'll probably get up around seven
o'clock,
commuting get there for eight, to get
ready for my day.
I usually would have my reaction set up
the day before so i can go straight into
the reactions
in the morning and i usually have a tea
break around 10 o'clock,
and that's usually when my reaction is
safely on and stirring probably,
and then i'll come back to do some more
lab book
recording, writing and data analysis from
the previous day or something.
By that time, my reaction is
probably
ready for a in process test, so i will
take that over to the main building.
Then when that runs i'll have my
lunch break
and then
through my lunch break we actually spend
time with the work colleagues in the
kitchen,
watch tv programs,
and so around two o'clock i would start
a new reaction.
If not, i'll do some more writing, my
company is very nice to allow me some
time to do my distance learning work
from university,
so if i had a quiet day i'll do some of
that at work
and i usually have another tea break
around four,
do some more work, and then finish at
five.
I joined the local gym so i would
sometimes go there after work
or just do some food shop and come home
so it's pretty
long day for me but i actually quite
enjoyed it.
I think it must be good to have that
change from
from studying to get an insight
into what
a working day is like once you leave
university, because
when i was at university i did a
year abroad, i studied French and
I worked at a company and i think it
was really good to see
what i'd be in for once i got
a real job
once i left university. It's
nice to have that experience
and i think employers will value that as
well, the fact that you've not just
studied throughout your degree,
you've actually had some real world
working experience.
Was the year different to what
you expected?
I think i actually expected something
quite similar
because what i wanted was to kind of
experience something that's not a
student life
and more like a routine kind of day
so i actually expected something similar.
What was the application
process like? How did you find out about
the company you ended up working for?
I think this is one of the
internally advertised companies,
so the supervisor came himself to
campus and did an interview around april
time. It was quite a
straightforward application this one.
Do you think that the
interview process
is something that will
inform your future interview process?
I think so, i have
been applying things in autumn term and
carried over
like two terms of application experience.
It definitely
was quite a lot and i think i would
be more confident applying for future
jobs because i had that kind of
experience already.
Do you know what sort of
placements your
your friends and and those in the
same year
did?
My friend is doing analytical chemistry
and another person, she's
doing computational so she's
not in the lab as much as either of us
but she's still doing computational
chemistry that's quite varied.
Someone working for
AstraZeneca
is doing process like process optimize
process chemistry and which is also
quite different it's more like a
scale-up version of
laboratory chemistry so yeah i think
that's a very good
variety of projects we can apply to.
In the fourth year our students
tend to do
projects where it's self-guided
and do you think that what you've
learned this year
on your experience here will inform that
project this year?
I'm not entirely sure what projects i've
got at the moment but
I think i've got more experience in
the lab
now so i don't really feel scared
anymore going to it. I think it's quite
exciting because then
you know it'll be your own research.
It's really cool to be able to
shape your own
ideas.
So how many people choose the
industrial experience uh course?
So typically
we have i suppose in a year around about
20 to 30 students picking the
industrial experience but
there is no limit
on that, we don't have a target number,
we can have as many students and
even if you haven't chosen the course to
start with, you have the chance
during year one to choose that program.
So typically it's about sort of
20-25 students that actually go out
on around that sort of placement level
by the time they get to
to year two and applying in year three
so it's around that number but it varies
from year to year.
We have a lot of
companies that we have links with,
sometimes we can't fulfill all their
requirements we don't have enough
students to go out sometimes,
which is great so it shows you know we
don't guarantee the placement
but it's up to you to go and find
ones you want.
I was going to just expand on that,
so to give you some idea of proportions,
in our MSci cohort so the number of
students that
are the year four course each year,
that's between kind of 50 and 60,
and on placement we tend to have about
20
students actually out on placement,
and the past couple of years i've
actually had to turn
certain companies away at the end.
Towards the end of the year, almost all people
do get placed but it is
something that people
sometimes start looking applications and
then
decide it's not for them and then we
pick up other people
kind of coming on to the program so it's
quite a fluid
change as the year goes
through.
I mean there's there's quite a bit
of work to do, so you get the same
especially the same year two as every
one of the other
students but obviously on top of that
you're applying and
and potentially going to interviews and
obviously get some practice in that as
well so
it is quite challenging in that
year too to get that and to get your
placement.
As you can see companies are really
keen to have our students.
The first
semester i actually had to travel to
quite a few companies
and take days out from university to
go
for them assessment centers, so i
think it's challenging process but
as soon as you get it it feels quite
relieved to
be going on placement next year.
In terms of the timing of the process,
the reason we start giving
you help in terms of looking at cvs and
things over the summer of year one,
is that a lot of the placement positions
are advertised at the absolute start of
year two so
already this year's cycle is starting,
there are a couple of companies who are
already advertising for placements ready
for this year so mondelez and pfizer
have already advertised and the
the whole process starts pretty much
middle of september.
I guess the the lucky ones
might get their placement by kind of end
of october i think was the first one,
and that the process will just
continue all the way through until end
of april.
There will be placement positions
available all that time,
so that also benefits those students who
maybe haven't quite decided at the start
of year two,
whether they really want to go where
they really want to go through this
process and some students
will start applying in kind of Christmas
of year two and still get a placement
because there's still quite a few
available until that time towards the
end of april.
How long do do the placements
typically last?
That kind of depends on
the company, so
some placements will start at basically
the beginning of july,
so you imagine that you've finished your
year two
academic year at the university and you
have a couple of weeks
and then go on your placement and
that will be 12 months, so then you
finish at kind of the start of july
before you kind of come back to year
four. So you can have your holiday then
others might start their placement first
of september
so they can have a bit of holiday after
their year two
and then it means that when they finish
their placement first september the
following year then they'll have
two or three weeks before they come back
to us in year four.
The other thing that tends to happen
quite often is the companies will ask
students to stay on a little bit longer,
so you're actually getting more than 12
months
because that acts as a really good
knowledge transfer,
so you imagine that the
student from
19/20 is on placement and the student
from 20/21 is starting their placement,
it's nice to have a little bit of
overlap, you learn quite a lot from the
previous placement student
and then as the placement students
staying on you get paid for another
month or two
if you wish to take that on which is
always a bonus as well,
get more experience. So these things
are often quite flexible but
we tend we go for the 12 months as a
minimum.
Is it possible to transfer onto the
industrial course, so say you
applied for the bachelor's or just
a straight masters, is it possible to
change on to the industrial experience
year?
That's certainly what
happens to many students
during  year one, there's
opportunities for any of our students to
attend workshops about
industrial placements they can get to
find out a bit more about if they
haven't really thought of it before,
talking to other students they'll get
to hear from
those students who've been on placement
and
maybe talk to them about what it was
like. Then you can if you wish to
transfer onto that program you can do.
The thing we have is
an academic hurdle at the end of year
one, you need to be
at sort of 2:1 level, so 60 average
and part of that is
because to get the best
placements, you need to have a good
academic record. Obviously the year
two as well when you are a little
distracted by
filling in application forms and
going to interviews
and taking time away, you need to
make sure the course is running well for
you so that you're not going to be
behind on it. So we do have
that academic hurdle, it's
both for the students benefit
and making sure that they're not
compromising anything, but
most of our students are at that
threshold and
can deal with that.
After the end of year one it can be
difficult because
some
companies are already offering out
adverts for their places, so you know if
you haven't already committed to it by
the end of year one, it's a little bit
late then you might you might find it
more difficult.
I mean it makes it hard
to try and get your applications
at the right kind of level for the
placements if you've not been on our
list
kind of thing at the start.
The CIE symposium that i referred to in
my talk actually plays quite a big role
in this,
so our CIE symposium normally takes
place in kind of march or april
and that's when the year threes
threes um would come and give a talk.
Unfortunately this year,
Covi-19 put a spanner in the works
but assumed under normal
circumstances, all our year threes would
give
a kind of 10-15 minute talk and
all the year ones who are interested in
the program are invited along to that
symposium.
So it gives you a really good idea of
what placement projects are available,
what is involved in those, what kind of
sectors,
what kind of companies, so that really
gives you an idea at that point
as to whether it's for you or not.
So it gives you a real idea and at
that time i normally get
a list of a number of students
contacting me and saying,
okay i want to come on to CIE and that's
purely because
of seeing what placements
are available.
Equally if you do sign up for the
program, you're not forced to do it ,you
can
easily drop back off the program as well
if you change your mind,
circumstances change. It's
entirely flexible and you can drop back
out of it if you wish to.
So it's the idea that there's full
flexibility and you get to make a
decision when you know best
what your thoughts are on it rather than
forcing you to decide
today tomorrow or when you apply.
Indeed the whole
application process
sets you up for what you
might want to do in your later career as
well.
So there are some students who are on
the CIE,
they go to their first couple of
interviews or their first couple of
visits to a company
and actually decide that an industrial
company environment
isn't what they thought it was and
decide that
that's not really for them and then that
helps them make the decision
that when it comes to the end of year
four, they might be looking more at kind
of the phd route and the academic route
instead. So even if it's something that
you think actually, this isn't really
for me, then
it's also an opportunity to either
affirm or not
if the industrial route is for you
long term as well.
Okay great and if you've got any
questions just to say again
please ask them and this is a good
opportunity to find out from the experts.
What it's like to live in selly
oak?
Sso it's one of the main areas
that students live
out of campus but it's not far,
it's about a 15-minute
walk.
It takes me 16 minutes to go from my
room to Haworth,
so it's pretty good.
There's a big Sainsbury's near it and lots of
cafes and pubs - obviously some were
shut at the moment but i'm sure they'll
be reopening
in September.
I quite enjoy the community here,
like quite a few of my friends live
literally up the road and this friend of
mine who works at pfizer she's going to
be living five doors away from me.
If it wasn't for Covid, we
will probably be walking to lectures
together,
but still we can meet up
quite frequently now and when she moves
back.
I live quite close to Selly Park which is a nice green park
area for me to go cycling around it or
Pebble Mill
country park and yeah quite like the
environment here.
I've got the convenience of going to
Aldi literally by 10 minutes or
popping to the green park around here.
but um i worked on quite a few
accommodations on
Someone is unsure about whether to
do the placement year now,
would you recommend applying for the MSci
or the CIE course through
UCAS? so they're just not sure which
Well i can say it doesn't matter really
to be honest with you, that you know we
we take the limitations we have
on our course are just the overall
number of chemists so whether the
chemists are doing the
master's program the bachelor's program
the industrial experience
program or chemistry with the modern
language
or chemistry study abroad that there is
no quota on it. So i would suggest
that it doesn't really matter which
one they apply to, the offer will be the
same
for the master's programs. The bsc
program
has a grade lower but if you apply to
the masters there's also an offer
guarantee
so it equates to the same sort of
offer in the end, so really it's down to
the student themselves, it doesn't really
matter
which one. As i say if you apply to a
chemistry course at birmingham
that's what i'll read it as and then
you can always change between those
courses
after you've applied
right up until often sometimes the end
of year one or even the end of year two
if you're looking at doing a choice in
the masters or the bachelor's course
and you don't want to do the placement.
So i don't think it really matters,
maybe put down the one you think you you
like most and
you know if if you are interested now in
the industry placement, put that one down,
it doesn't mean we'll hold you to it, you
can always change from it, but if it's
one that appeals to you,
put that one down. If you're not sure,
you can always put the masters program
or the bachelor's down so
it doesn't really matter in a great
extent because the offers are very
similar.
You can always change
between courses.
In the chat i've put some
links in, so we've created a resource for
potential students, so feel free to check
that out that website there.
Also we're always here for questions
so
if there's anything we've not covered
or anything you want to ask about
do email us.
We do have a another
open day which is going to be virtual
again in september
so please come to that if you'd like to
and we do have more webinars planned.
I'm gonna end the polling now thank you.
We've got a whole
series of these webinars now, i know some
of you may have been to some of our
previous ones we're trying to cover as
much
of the information you might want to
hear
from us at birmingha,  obviously at the
moment with
with not having the ability to have
so many visits to campus and open days,
we're trying to make sure that our
webinars cover all that material.
If you have any ideas or things you want
then please let us know.
I think we're going to try and focus on
our topical research in some of the
upcoming
webinars looking at some of the way we
use chemistry for
drug development, also looking at some of
the sustainability
and also some of the work on our energy
materials in terms of batteries and fuel
cells and and recycling, so
hopefully those things will be of
interest to you and you can come along
to those.
We're going to run some of these other
ones again as well of course so if
you've missed some of the ones we've run
previously,
we're going to make some of those
available again for you and hopefully
before
too long we'll have the ability to come
onto campus and meet us in person, we
really would like that.
We're all keeping our fingers
crossed that that will happen sooner
obviously we're going to start our
program for our new students
joining us the end of september,
we're going to be bringing mixed
courses where there's partly on
campus
and partly remote and
myself my colleagues are
developing all the material for that, so
it's quite exciting, a little daunting,
developing all this new teaching
material.
I'm sure many of the changes we
make to our teaching at the moment will
be things we'll retain
for the long term, you know i think
Covid has forced us to re-look at what
we do
and i think we're offering new ways of
approaching our teaching that will be of
benefit to all our students
and to us as well.
It's quite a
challenging time since the changes to A
Level have just occurred,
we're dealing with those at the moment,
it's not been without its problems,
but hopefully for you applying in the
in the next
admission cycle, all those issues will
be out of the way and
and not affecting you.
Thank you for
your attention today,
i hope you've enjoyed today's activity
today's talks and
a chance to speak with us.
