Student Ambassador Update - September 2023

Student Ambassador Activity

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

All three Student Ambassadors put posters up around the campus and in the psychology building to make people aware of who they are, providing their contact details so that students can contact them if they have any queries or ideas!

Catia Soares – Open University

Catia spoke to the team at the Open University about allowing more information to be shared about the BPS and all the resources out there for students in the psychology field. Catia has also created an Instagram handle called @psych.talkwithc and Catia shares BPS information as well as other psychology related topics that help students on their journey.

Sophie King and Harvey Upton – University of Aberdeen

Sophie and Harvey held a stall at the annual University of Aberdeen School of Psychology networking event. Here they spoke about the BPS student membership, the benefits of having a membership and the various career routes available for psychology students upon graduation.  

Carolina Nyakila and Hanaa Khan – Brunel University

Carolina and Hanaa organised an end of year social in collaboration with the BPS and Brunel Psychology Society.  

Nghi Lam, Shubhi Kohli and Aabhya – University of Manchester

The student ambassadors organised an event at the end of May to promote the BPS. They promoted the event via social media. 

Updates from the Careers Team

Support Packs

We spent a day putting together your support packs which you should receive soon or have received already. The extra resources we packed can be shared with your fellow students.  

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!   

Psychology Careers Festival 2023 [Monday 6th November – Saturday 11th November]

We are excited to announce confirmation of our second BPS Psychology Careers Festival. Last year's festival was such a success, that we thought we'd go bigger and better this year!

Throughout our six-day festival, attendees will access an online conference platform and are able to navigate across multiple different online festival tents, exploring different careers sessions where they will hear from inspirational speakers across a broad range of disciplines. We'll have talks from a number of individuals at different stages of their career, from a variety of different backgrounds.

Attendees will be able to explore the world of 'hidden psychology' - occupations where psychology is applied. We will also be running workshop style sessions so attendees can practice some of those key employability skills needed when transitioning through a psychology career journey. We will also be hosting an employability fayre, sharing hints and tips for best preparing for a career in psychology, and attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions, chat with and meet up in our online lobby space with speakers and other likeminded attendees! 

As Student Ambassadors, we'd love to offer you a free place at our festival! Bookings are open, please use the code BPSSTUDENTAMBASSADOR to gain your free access. 

Also, we'd love for you to share this information with your fellow students and have attached a flyer for you to post across social media and through your university virtual learning environment. Please share away!...  

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].

Events for you to promote within your university

Stepping Outside: Therapeutic Support Within Nature (Virtual Networking Event) 

• 29 September 12pm – 1:30pm 
• Online 
• Register for this event 

This webinar, facilitated by Dr Matthew Slavin, provides an opportunity to discuss using the outdoors and nature to enhance therapeutic effectiveness, exploring what this means in clinical practice, considering examples of good practice, discussing issues and concerns.

Division of Health Psychology Scotland Virtual Networking Event

• 03 October from 12.30 – 1.30pm 
• Online 
• Register for this event 

We are delighted to announce that Dr Hannah Dale (NHS National Services Scotland, NHS NSS, BSc, MSc, PhD, PFPH) will be joining us at our online networking event to discuss applying for posts within the NHS post-MSc/doctoral-level training. This will include how to map transferrable skills from your qualification (MSc, PhD, NES & Professional Doctorate) on to the person specification in the essential criteria in the job description, including for stage 2 Health Psychology NHS Education for Scotland posts, and qualified health psychology posts.  

Psychology Careers Festival 2023

• 06-11 November 
• Online 
• Register for this event

Throughout our six-day festival, we'll be hosting careers sessions across different online stages where you'll hear from inspirational speakers across a broad range of disciplines. We'll have talks from a number of individuals at different stages of their career, from a variety of different backgrounds. You will be able to explore the world of 'hidden psychology' - occupations where psychology is applied, and we'll be running workshop-style sessions so you can practice some of those key employability skills required, when transitioning through your career journey. We will also be hosting an employability fayre, and sharing hints and tips with you about how you can best prepare for a career in psychology!

Theme for October – Collaboration

Building relationships with one another and cololabrating on projects is an essential part of your role. Think about who you could reach out to, your psychology department perhaps or your careers team within your university. You may have a psychology society or other BPS Student Ambassadors at your university. The skills that you build or enhance whilst collaborating will be useful for your future too. Have a little think about who you would like to collaborate with in October.

Drop In Sessions

We have moved the Student Ambassador Catch Up to a new date of Monday 25th September 2023.  Please find details below including joining instructions: 

• Date: Monday 25 September 2023 
• Time: 5.00pm – 6.15pm 
• Location: MS Teams 
• Topic: Welcome/Introductions 
   

Agenda: 

• Introduction to the Team and the catch up 
• Discussion around ideas 
• Questions and answers 
   

Pre-Attendance:  

Next month's theme is around collaboration. We would like to give you the opportunity to discuss any ideas you may have. We will also have our colleagues from the social media team and communications team in attendance. They will share what they do within their roles and how you could get involved. 

Once we've discussed this, we'll have time for you to ask questions you might have about your roles also share any best practice. 

As always, these sessions are optional and we will record it for anyone who cannot attend. 

We look forward to welcoming you to the session. 

Joining Instructions: 

Join on your computer, mobile app or room device  

Click here to join the meeting  

Meeting ID: 375 364 275 846  
Passcode: JiaES8  

Download Teams | Join on the web 

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].