Student Ambassador Update - March 2024

Student Ambassador Activity

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

Iram Hamid – Aston University

Iram independently organised a speaker led event within her university. The invited speakers shared their unique journeys into their respective fields. Iram invited Dr Andrew Clements, an Occupational Psychologist, Dr Rosemay Carter, a Clinical Psychologist, Dr Stacey Turell, an Educational Psychologist and Mrs Jamila Begumz, who shared her experience working within the justice system. Feedback received from students was extremely positive. 

Branch Collaboration - Tahani Baldwin (University of Birmingham) and Vlad Makkar (University of Leicester)

Tahani's university was holding a "Psyched@UoB" event in February, which aimed to promote workshops, activities, and career sessions to the School of Psychology students. As lead ambassador for the West Midlands, Tahani invited her colleague Vlad (who's lead ambassador for the East Midlands) over to the university. They hosted a stand for students to come up and speak to them about how the BPS can support them in their careers, and how being student ambassadors helped them develop professionally.

Zofia Szaprowska – University of Derby

Zofia has been working alongside the careers and employability team within the university. Zofia delivered a talk on her time as a BPS Student Ambassador together with promoting the students to apply for the role when applications open on May 13. She also explained what is on offer with the BPS student membership with 60 students engaged within the session. Zofia has been involved in wider discussions around the promotion of the BPS too and how student members can get involved with their local branch and chosen member network.

Simran Chettiar, Zeynep Sacli, Mohammad Rathore and Kaya Esnard – University of Greenwich

The student ambassadors have created a monthly newsletter which includes a staff spotlight key event links for students as well as links shared by the member of staff - an example is below.

The members of staff chosen by the ambassadors are members of the BPS and they ask them to highlight what they like and how they benefit from being a member. The ambassadors hope to provide students a better understanding of how being a part of the BPS enhances their careers in Psychology.

Houda Salih – University of Essex Online

Houda has promoted upcoming BPS events on the University's psychology forum. Houda also embarked upon a self-development journey starting with participating in the Mental Health First Aid Training which was facilitated by our very own careers manager Natalie Billing. Houda has also written a piece summarising her research study where she replicated the study 'The Short Dark Triads' by Dr. Jones and Dr. D. Paulhus (Jones & Paulhus, 2014).

Updates from the careers team

Visits

Going forward we will try to attend as many careers events as we can. We will reach out to you directly if we plan to attend, this will give us a chance to meet you face to face!

We will be recruiting new Student Ambassadors soon

On May 13 our applications will open for new BPS volunteer student ambassadors to join you. We are extremely excited to have more enthusiastic ambassadors onboard. We will need your support to spread the word. If you could start to think about how you could do that over the next couple of months, that would be appreciated!

Callout from the social media team

We would love to receive content from you! Some examples of what you could create and send our way are below:

• Videos, photos, or a short-written description of the activities you have carried out for us to use in our student newsletter/magazine
• A day in the life of a student ambassador/psychology student
• Top tips for revision or any other kind of student content
• Quotes from yourselves regarding your experience as a Student Ambassador.

Please send them to [email protected] and [email protected] – thank you in advance!

 Events for you to promote within your university

Inspiring Careers in Counselling Psychology

Date: 11 April, 6–8pm

Location: Online

Cost: Free

The Division of Counselling Psychology Scotland invite you to their annual Inspiring Careers Event 'Changing Lanes, pathways in Counselling Psychology'.

This event will offer attendees the chance to hear from Counselling Psychologists within different career settings:

• NHS
• Private Practice
• Academic
• Portfolio
• DPsych student perspective.

Once the panel explains their journey and their work, attendees can ask the panel questions.

Understanding and working with trauma and neurodiversity in adults: Lived experience, diagnostic assessments and therapy

Date: 19 April, 9am–4.30pm

Location: The British Psychological Society, 30 Tabernacle Street, London, EC2A 4UE

Cost: £48

In this one-day conference, we hear a range of perspectives from psychologists with expertise in the fields of trauma and neurodiversity about the lived experience of trauma for neurodivergent people alongside the complexities and solutions for working with trauma and neurodiversity in diagnostic assessments and therapy. Some of our presenters are neurodivergent and share their unique perspectives on working with trauma in neurodivergent adults.

Understanding depression: The bigger picture

Date: 9 May, 10.30am–12.30pm

Location: Online

Cost: £30+VAT for members

This webinar provides you an opportunity to hear from three of the report authors and an individual with lived experience to understand more about their perspective for greater recognition of the interpersonal, social and societal drivers and how we can intervene in some of these through psychological and social therapies and social action. You will be able to hear more about the report and the challenges around insufficient recognition of the contribution of life-events, social circumstances and societal factors (e.g., inequalities) to causing and maintaining depression.

April theme - Stress Awareness Month and Exam Prep

As it is stress awareness month in April, I thought it would be great to get you all thinking about this now. Also, exam preparation I believe goes hand in hand with this topic. It would be great to start thinking about how you can raise awareness within your university, possibly alongside your university well-being team. Please make sure you take time out for yourself too.

Student Newsletter/PsychTalk 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].