Student Ambassador Update - February 2023

I'm Harmeet Kaur the new careers officer who has joined the lovely careers team at the BPS.

A little bit about me - I am a psychology graduate and then went onto complete a MSc in occupational psychology. I have worked in several industries and sectors in a variety of roles from sales, management and education.

I was part of the careers and employability team at the University of Leicester. Here I was able to support and coach students with their CVs, applications and interview preparation.

I am pleased to support my colleagues Natalie and James to deliver the careers strategy for the BPS. I will also be overseeing the student ambassador programme going forward. If you have any questions for us, please do drop us an email via the student ambassador inbox. 

Also, just to give you an update, we will soon be saying goodbye to our Careers Manager James, as he moves on to a new role within Derby University (Student Ambassadors at Derby, keep your eyes peeled!). Natalie will be taking over the role of Careers Manager so will still be working closely with you as we move forward.  

We are so pleased to see many of you are carrying out activities within your role and have shared some great examples in the update below. If you have met with your branch representatives, we hope you have found this useful and are working closely with them to give a student voice to their initiatives.  

Student Newsletter/The Psych-Talk Magazine

As a reminder, we love to share your work across our communication channels. If you have carried out an activity within your student ambassador role that you are particularly proud of, please send over a short description of the type of activities you have been doing within your role so far, and perhaps some accompanying photos, to [email protected].  

Student Ambassador Activity

This is the space where we provide you with an update of each branch region activities. Please feel free to send over updates to us to include.  

Update from the University of Birmingham Student Ambassadors

The Student Ambassadors ran two sessions as part of Psyched@UOB, which is a week-long festival ran by the school of Psychology in order to build our community. They provided opportunities to learn more about their School, Psychology, and Neuroscience in the form of career events, drop-in sessions, introductions to postgraduate programs, and more! 

The Student Ambassadors hosted two sessions as a way for prospective students to meet the team and learn more about the support they can receive from the BPS as members. It also gave the Student Ambassadors an opportunity to meet, get refreshments, and collect Psyched@UOB t-shirts! The Student Ambassadors mentioned it was a fabulous week thanks to their School, and they are looking forward wait to representing their University and the BPS!

Hannah Lillis, Emma Strong & Sienna Wellington – University of Leeds

It was great to hear that Hannah, Emma and Sienna have met up with the director of Careers in their Psychology department and have set up a MS Teams chat to discuss future opportunities to promote the BPS. They have also organised multiple Careers events with several Psychologists from different branches of Psychology including Educational, Sport and Occupational. They believe these events will be a great opportunity to promote different routes into Psychology and to highlight the large range of jobs students can explore that fall under the umbrella of the BPS. They have also created posters to promote these exciting events!

Inas Adam and fellow Student Ambassadors – University of Sheffield  

Inas has recently discussed with the Psychology Department of the University of Sheffield how the BPS Student Ambassadors can collaborate with the department and also with the Careers Team. During the discussion, the department mentioned how they have organised quite a number of psychology-related social events for the students such as Psychology Movie Night. However, the department expressed that they'd love to have students leading the events during the event day. By doing so, more psychology students would be interested to join the events and students can also play a more active role in the departmental events. So, as a BPS Student Ambassador, Inas would love to use this opportunity to lead some of the departmental events. This opportunity will also be used to brief students about the BPS.  

The department has also dedicated a section to the department's monthly newsletter for BPS. They intend to write short updates on BPS events and some info on the BPS in the newsletter. There will be a link for the BPS website in the newsletter as well to bring students to the website. 

In conjunction with University Mental Health Day in March 2023, the student ambassadors also plan to distribute posters with infographics and advice on taking care of your mental health. This poster will be distributed to the psychology students during their workshop. Some of the info on the poster will be sourced from the BPS website or social media posts. So, there will also be a BPS logo and their contact information if anyone feels like they need some guidance on where to seek help. 

Great work so far and lovely to hear about your plans, looking forward to hearing more about them! 

Carolina Nyakila and Hanaa Khan – Brunel University London 

Hanaa and Carolina did a lecture shoutout to all Psychology Undergraduate Students. They outlined what the BPS is, who they are and how they can help and support them throughout their studies. They also made an emphasis on what the BPS membership is and the benefits are of joining the BPS as Student Members. They already have a plan to carry out a similar presentation for MSc Students.

Carolina and Hanaa also spent some time at the coffee corner with a few undergraduate Psychology Students alongside the Lead from Brunel Psychological Society. Their time was spent brainstorming ideas and making future plans for possible collaborations moving forward such as a Psychology event for March. 

Opportunities to get involved in

Mental Health First Aid Training;

We have now sent out invites to those who were able to secure a place onto our two dates across February and March for MHFA training. Please keep an eye out as some more dates for further training will be released over the spring/summer period.  

Student Ambassadors Online Thread

As you may be aware, we now have a live Student Ambassadors Thread on our student community! The thread is for any discussion between you as the newly appointed BPS Student Ambassadors and our fellow student members.

Thank you to those of you who have started to use the thread already, that is brilliant to see. 

Theme for March – How can you better represent the BPS online

This month, we would like you to think about ways how you can better represent the BPS online. This will also tie in nicely with the next drop-in session which will focus on the BPS careers webpages. Our colleague from the digital communications team will be attending to share some ideas.

There are many Instagram pages where you have represented the BPS but could other social media platforms be utilised. LinkedIn and Twitter could also be utilised on behalf of your university incorporating representation for the BPS. The app BeReal could be a great tool too. Here you could showcase your authenticity, possibly do a "day in the life of a student ambassador". A few ideas for you to use as a starting point maybe. 

As always, we are keen to hear your updates, so please do send over updates to us (including pictures) via [email protected].