The BSc Chemistry with a Year in Industry course gives you a great opportunity to build up your CV. You will spend 12 months between your second and third years on a work placement, paying reduced fees for the year you are away from campus. Most students earn salaries during their placements and many are offered a graduate level job at the end. Previous placement students have gone to businesses such as GSK, Unilever, and even companies overseas. Unlike our MChem Chemistry with a Year in Industry course, this BSc course gives you the freedom to try a role outside the lab, such as communications, market research or business development.The content of our courses was created in consultation with our students. On this degree, we cover a number of topics based on the latest advances in science, and the skills and expertise that chemistry graduates can offer industry and society. These include:
- environmental and sustainable chemistry
- biological and medicinal chemistry
- advanced materials and nanotechnology
- chemistry of light
- astrochemistry
- computational chemistry
All of our undergraduate students take the same modules in their first two years. You'll have the freedom to specialise later in your degree. Our courses are accredited by the Royal Society of Chemistry, so you'll cover all of the organic, inorganic, physical and analytical chemistry that a professional chemist needs to know.In your first year, you'll spend a day a week in the lab, learning essential skills and techniques. You'll study topics including the structure of atoms and molecules, how chemical reactions happen, and how to identify and analyse different chemicals and elements. You'll also look at the biological processes that chemistry drives, and the technologies and products that chemistry has made possible - from cosmetics to explosives.In your second year, you'll start spending two days a week in the lab, as you learn to run more complex experiments. You'll move on to study more advanced topics in organic chemistry (functional groups, synthesis, biopolymers), inorganic chemistry (main group compounds, transition metal coordination complexes, inorganic solids) and physical chemistry (quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, polymers and colloids).During your placement year, you'll have academic and industrial supervisors to support you, and a visit from a member of staff to make sure you are settling in. Students often have a project to complete as part of their placement, which you might be asked to write up in a report. Placements aren't guaranteed - it's your responsibility to secure one, but we'll do everything we can to help.After your placement, you'll pick up where you left off and start your third year. You'll work on your own research project: you'll gather and evaluate data, run your own experiments and present your findings. You'll have a wide range of optional modules to choose from too, with topics ranging from energy storage to chemistry in space.All of your lectures are backed up by small group tutorials, where you can delve deeper into complex topics. These small group teaching sessions are led by your personal tutor in first year, and specialist tutors who are experts in the specific topics you're studying in later years. Your personal tutor will also help you work out which skills you need to develop and support you as you build up your CV in time for graduation.
