Information for Lecturers and Course Leaders

Why get students engaged in community work?

lost_cats Graduate employability has always been a priority and since the Dearing Report (1997) work experience outside the university has been high on the national agenda. Although 75 per cent of Brighton graduates are employed within one year of graduating, increasingly employers are looking for experience as well as qualifications.

Student Community Engagement provides opportunities for students to

Work on projects with significant local impact
Implement the skills and concepts they have learned on their courses
Gain valuable practical experience working to actual deadlines and within the financial/human resource constraints of the partner organisation
Relate theorectical concepts to policy agendas
Strengthen their personal confidence
Begin to build valuable local networks

CCHF6 Student projects can enhance personal development as well as academic learning since assignments often include keeping a reflective journal, giving a final presentation and/or evaluating personal strengths and weaknesses.

At Brighton, there are a number of opportunities to incorporate Student Community Engagement into existing curricula. These include using core or optional modules in course design, or offering community based research as a dissertation choice. As well as the benefit to students, this work so far has produced benefits to communities and the University.

How does the University benefit?

For the university, expanded and effective community partnerships provide opportunities for lecturers to revise and update their teaching content and keep it relevant to practice and for academic schools to identify and carry out more ‘grounded’ research. As a result, students experience a more effective learning environment. In the longer term, such partnerships increase public support for the university.

What staff say

"My involvement with Cupp started when I was awarded a grant in 2005 to run a project called Dispensing with the Mystery. It was designed to enable pharmacy students to have time to talk to older people with medications and to both learn from them, and help with simple queries.

That project was successful in gaining an award for Exceptional Winner in the Outstanding Project category at the HEACF volunteering awards in December 2006. Subsequently, I have been working with the help of Cupp on extensions of that project, and currently am running a very exciting project called Active Pharmacy, in conjunction with @ctive student (The University of Brighton’s volunteering scheme). Here we are developing a ‘road show’ to be able to promote to a variety of community groups to further the original aims.

If we had not been able to secure the support of Cupp these projects would not have been possible, and I believe that both the community and the pharmacy course at Brighton would have been significantlypoorer because of it.”

Senior Lecturer, Pharmacy

The Dispensing with the Mystery project was an ‘Exceptional Winner’ in the Outstanding Project Award category of the HEACF (Higher Education Active Community Fund) Volunteering Awards.

Would you like to know more?

Have a look at our section about

Contact

If you have any question, please contact

Dr Juliet Millican - Student Community Engagement Development Officer
Telephone: (01273) 644155
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