The Progression Scholarship includes financial support as well as access to other support, such as free gym membership and access to mentoring and networking opportunities. Here she tells us how the scholarship has impacted her so far.
Continue reading “Scholarship provides a boost for University of Brighton student”
I have learnt many facts and experiments from various sciences as well as the process of applying to university and what it maybe like. I found the experiments enjoyable and the talks on university and post 16 options useful
Lucas
The university outreach team organised a Science Saturday Club, which ran over four Saturday mornings earlier in the year. 27, Sussex-based year 10 and 11 students from schools as far away as Littlehampton and Hastings attended the club held on Saturday mornings, which combined lectures and lab sessions run by academics and PhD students interspersed with information and guidance about post-16 options, a tour of our Moulsecoomb campus and plenty of opportunity to engage with three Applied Science student ambassadors supporting the club. The club, which was free to attend, aimed to show students what studying science at university is like.
Continue reading “Science Saturday Club for students in Years 10 and 11 at the University of Brighton “
Hi I’m Jade and I’m a first year studying Biological Sciences BSc(Hons) and here’s what I think of the course so far…
I chose this course as I’ve been interested in biology for many years, and I like that this course specifically allows you to cater it more specifically to yourself with how many option modules there are for later years. I chose Brighton as I’ve lived rather locally my whole life, and I’m enjoying being able to study whilst also still getting to live at home.
Continue reading “My course so far”
To take a break from studies this February, 40 students and staff from Geography, Environment and Ecology courses decided to get out of the city for a casual social event. The chosen location was Devil’s Dyke. With its deep ice-cut valley, its wildlife, its folk legends and its panoramic views across the South Downs, this was the perfect place to roam around on a Saturday afternoon! And being just 20 minutes from the city by bus, it’s easy to travel to any time.
Continue reading “Nature walk and social at Devil’s Dyke”
Congratulations to LearnSci Teaching Innovation Awards winners, Dr Neil Crooks and Dr Inga Zeisset.
The awards recognise innovative, impactful practices in teaching and learning. Dr Crooks and Dr Zeisset’s were recognised for Advanced interactive assessments reduce marking burden and build confidence in a large cohort of students.
The judges commented: I really like the way this is not just a unique dataset for each student but the way they collectively contribute to class data and therefore the ‘live’ element to this.
Find out more about Dr Crooks and Dr Zeisset’s award as well as other award winners and finalists.
We have an exciting opportunity for secondary school students to take part in a science based project led by University of Brighton staff and students at our Moulsecoomb campus. For anyone interested in science this is a fantastic way to explore the universities labs with hands on experiments.
Students in years 10 and 11 will experience a series of practical workshops delivered in the labs which will explore how science plays a key role in our daily lives. The sessions will cover ‘the Earth from above’ (flying drones), ‘Do fruits have DNA?’, ‘The entangled life of fungi: the good, the bad and the ugly’ and ‘The secrets of the genes’.
Dates: 3 Feb, 10 Feb, 24 Feb, 2 Mar (no session on 17 Feb due to half term)
Time: 09:30 – 12:30
The Saturday clubs will run over four Saturdays and are free to participants, priority is given to student who are from a widening participation background.
For more information email outreach@brighton.ac.uk
Simonne Weeks along with students Marianna Valouma and Roma Sujith, share insights from a recent pathology lab tour.
The combination of manual work and advanced diagnostic technology paints a vivid picture of the clinical setting. The trio discusses their ‘aha’ moments, where theoretical concepts merge with real-world applications, establishing a connection between lectures and the practical learning in the lab. They outline how their biomedical science modules correlate between seemingly disparate topics.
Continue reading “From lecture theatres to pathology labs”
As part of the Ecological Impact Assessment module, students met Ryan Greaves, from the Bat Conservation Trust and we had the fantastic opportunity to take part in bat box checks.
The mild weather in late September meant that bats were still active and around! After an in-depth lecture on bat species and their ecology, an intro to bat boxes and the different survey tools at hand, we were ready to go an check some boxes. This year was a really good one and we found some common pipistrelle in a couple of boxes.
As part of the standard bat survey, measurements were taken, we had our smallest male with 4.5g. Pipistrelle weigh the same as a £1 coin! We concluded our training day with a bat walk, using bat detectors and listening to the clapping of the bats feeding above our heads!
This was a great start of term!
Congratulations to final year Geography BSc student Dom Jarvis who has been awarded the inaugural Richard Reed Prize sponsored by Friends of the South Downs.
The Richard Reed prize, named after one of the co-founders of the Friends of the South Downs, is an award of £500 for the most improved performance by a BSc/BA student within our Geography, the Earth and Environment subject area. It is based on their academic results over their first and second years.
Dom (centre) was presented with the award by Paul Wilkinson (right) Membership & Marketing Committee Chair for Friends of the South Downs and Dr Matthew Brolly (left), Principal Lecturer in geography and environmental sciences courses at the University of Brighton.
Student pharmacists will be able to test their treatment skills on three new ‘sim people’ following a reorganisation of teaching space.
The idea is to hone students’ communication skills and decision-making when faced with patients in a variety of challenging scenarios. By ‘treating’ the mannequins for medical conditions such as anaphylactic shock, taking a blood pressure or responding to unspecified pain, our student pharmacists can build confidence before clinical placements.
Lecturers don’t even have to be in the room to see how students are performing – they can keep tabs on what’s going on from a separate centre of operations via a live video link. As well as responding realistically to different medications, the mannequins also include a hidden microphone, which will allow lecturers to ‘speak’ on their behalf and respond in real time to what students are doing.
Jenny Minto, Principal Technician in the School of Applied Sciences, has been helping to set up the mannequins. She said: “In the past, students have had to work in quite large groups and haven’t had much hands-on experience, but now they can all have a turn as opposed to watching everybody else. When we get them in small groups, they can really have a go rather than feel embarrassed about getting it wrong in front of their peers.”
The student pharmacists will also be able to practise what it would be like to call other healthcare professionals – for example, to request a consult – via a telephone link from the treatment rooms to the lecturers’ centre of operations.
The mannequins were purchased two years ago from Laerdal but the reorganisation of teaching space in Huxley building on Moulsecoomb campus means that they can now be used to their full potential. The fully articulated dummies can be posed in a number of ways and the hope is to have them in a variety of situations – lying down on a hospital bed hooked up to a heart monitor, for example, or sitting up in a facsimile of a GP’s consulting room.
In line with other Inclusive Practice work being done in the School of Applied Sciences, the mannequins were chosen with diversity in mind, with dark hair and skin. They also come with interchangeable genitals and detachable breasts, meaning that student pharmacists can practise treating patients of different sexes – for example, examining the model breasts for lumps to rule out breast cancer.
Dr Melanie Flint, Reader in Cancer Research and the leader of a stress and breast cancer programme at the University, is excited by the possibilities. “I teach the breast cancer case for Pharmacy,” she said. “In our workshops we take students from diagnosis to living with cancer, as part of which an advanced clinical care nurse will come in and show them how to palpate breast tissue. That’s very important for Pharmacy students, with one in seven women being diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime. Although Pharmacy students don’t currently perform breast exams, they do get people coming into the clinic with suspected lumps so they need to learn about that.”
Having the mannequins will be invaluable, she believes, not just to give a physical demonstration but as a way of helping students to practise talking to patients. “The most important part is the communication,” she said. “Even if you have somebody who’s newly diagnosed who comes into the pharmacy clinic, if you’ve got a pharmacist who knows about this and can show empathy, they’re the skill sets we want to get from our workshops.”
According to Dr Matt Ingram, Associate Dean (Academic Operations) in the School of Applied Sciences and Principal Lecturer in Pharmaceutical Sciences, the new facilities have the potential to supplement students’ learning in other ways too. “The idea is that, in addition to their usual lectures, the students will be able to book one of the rooms to come in and practise, subject to availability,” he said.
“Thanks to the video links, one lecturer can see what’s going on in multiple different rooms simultaneously – and it can be streamed over Teams so our clinical team can observe when they are off site. There is also a facility to record to the cloud as well as livestream. These systems are fully compliant with General Data Projection Regulations (GDPR). Under supervision, students may be able to watch back and assess their performance later.”
