Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Geography (Optional Placement)

at University of Plymouth United Kingdom

 Why should we conserve biodiversity? How can we manage and restore habitats? With a hands-on approach, we’ll give you the scientific tools to address these issues, developing your understanding of plant and animal biodiversity in the UK and abroad. Develop your knowledge of key areas such as population ecology, evolutionary processes, behavioural ecology, conservation genetics and habitat management, and prime yourself for a career in ecology, conservation or environmental monitoring.

This course focuses on conservation in terrestrial, marine and freshwater environments. You will experience two compulsory overseas residential field courses in years one (Spain) and two (Mexico), giving you first-hand experience of a range of ecosystems in other parts of the world. There’s no extra to pay: it’s all included within your tuition fees. You’ll participate in an optional work placement year, giving you the opportunity to apply your knowledge in a real world context.

Key Features

Do you want to protect coastal communities from the threat of flooding? Are you interested in how engineers think about the sustainability of our coastlines and the consequences of climate change? Would you like to design large structures that withstand the strength of storms and the sea? Our Coastal Engineers graduate with the skills and knowledge of a Civil Engineer combined with specialist skills for designing and creating infrastructure that functions in the coastal environment.
This professionally accredited course allows you the flexibility to change to other civil engineering programmes. We offer a mentoring scheme that puts you in touch with our professional network of alumni. You can also enhance your professional competence by choosing to take a year in industry. You will receive support and inspiration from enthusiastic academic staff from the day you arrive through to your joining our exciting profession as a graduate Plymouth Engineer.

Key Features

Understand the roles of democracy, freedom and security in the 21st century near the site of the 2021 G7 Summit. Our programme is not just about helping you understand politics and international relations; it's about building your critical thinking to empower you to be part of a change. Hone your skills with our unique practical assessments that immerse you in mock-ups of real-world scenarios. Our students have gone on to key policy and political roles locally and nationally.

Key Features

• We’re very proud of our National Student Survey (NSS) 2019 return showing overall satisfaction for 100% of our students. 100% of students agreed staff were good at explaining things and also that the course is intellectually stimulating.*
• Develop specific knowledge of the discipline of politics – understand the significance and nature of political processes, the variety of forms of government and the concepts that inform their operation.
• Engage with political institutions and processes to acquire a detailed knowledge of these systems and how they interact. You’ll use current affairs as case studies to bring broader principles to life.
• Take part in debates on contemporary international relations and have the opportunity to study a number of relevant themes and issues, which may include; international security, north-south international relations, international political economy, the United Nations, refugee studies, foreign policy, theory and area studies such as Africa, the Middle East and South East Asia.
• Learn from research-active staff, leading the way in their subjects. Members of the team are internationally renowned for their work on elections and electoral systems and ethnopolitics.
• Enhance your employability by taking part in extra-curricular events and talks organised by the student-run Politics and International Affairs society (PIASOC).
• Open doors to a wide range of career opportunities including journalism, advertising, teaching, non-governmental organisation work and academia.

Set yourself up for a successful career in early years education, developing the professional skills you’ll need to teach in schools and other settings in this sector. Shaped by our own research expertise, this course supports you in the study of education throughout the primary phase, and specialising in different forms of education for children from three to seven years old.

Have you considered

• BEd (Hons) Primary (KS1/KS2 with QTS)
• BEd (Hons) Primary (Special Educational Needs with QTS)

Key Features

• Launch your career: obtaining integrated Qualified Teacher Status (QTS), which means you can begin your teaching career immediately. Expand your horizons, enhance your practical experience and set yourself above the competition.
• FS/KS1 focus area: this degree will look at teaching the ages from 3–7 but also look at the way the Foundation Stage feeds into KS1 and KS2 preparing you to work with children from any phase of primary education.
• No exams: learn through interactive workshops and with no end-of-year/semester exams.
• Close links to the Master of Education (MA Ed): this link enables students to achieve enhanced career progression in a profession in which masters level attainment is increasingly valued.
• Work based learning opportunities: students benefit from a wide range of placement types within our partnership of over 500 schools and other settings, from single days to extended block placements to develop and consolidate QTS standards.
• Professional identity: from the very start of the programme you are considered as a teacher in development. The programme supports you as you develop your professional standards and identity.
• Research-informed teaching: not only are all modules enhanced by tutors’ active research interests but students are immersed in a research culture and benefit from learning about the advantages of researching their practice first hand.
• Student support: within the Plymouth Institute of Education there is a strong ethos of support for all students. Your professional tutor will actively engage with you throughout the BEd programme to offer guidance and support in both academic and pastoral terms.
• OfSTED recognised: recent inspection rated the Primary ITE provision at Plymouth as good in all aspects, with particular strengths in the partnership led elements of the programmes and the quality of the graduates

Creatively solve design problems as you learn to harness the power of typography within graphic design. Collaborate with students from other disciplines and world-leading researchers to discover how graphic design makes a positive impact in the world. Work hands-on in an inspiring and dedicated studio environment with 360-degree views of the cityscape and ocean before joining our community of graduates working for leading design studios worldwide.

Key Features

• Prepare yourself for your dream career: our graduates finding creative fulfilment working for companies such as DesignBridge, Leo Burnett, Snask, IBM and The Times.
• In your final year you can choose a specialism to match your interests and career goals with options that relate directly to the design industry. Choose from identity and branding, editorial and publishing and Information design.
• Draw on support from committed tutors with long-term industry and academic experience.
• Fly high and join alumni and current students who have won national and international competitions.
• Engage with live client briefs, giving your creativity real-world impact.
• Explore our range of resources including printmaking workshops, photographic studios and Apple Mac workstations complete with the latest Adobe CC software.
• Develop your knowledge and develop yourself by taking advantage of a learning environment that includes open plan studios with a 360 degree view of Plymouth, a city at the heart of art and culture in the South West.
• Have direct contact with prestigious visiting speakers such as Jonathon Barnbrook, Michael Johnson and Angus Hyland. Get feedback on your work from practicing graphic designers during our ‘Industrial Liaison Day’.

Explore the challenges of today’s global financial community and investigate how the stock market and international money markets work. Graduate equipped to pursue a career in finance, accounting or management anywhere in the world.

Develop a critical perspective of finance as an academic subject and learn how it contributes to practice in the real world of finance. Many students go on to study masters degrees in finance, accounting or management. This course is available with a January or September start.

Key Features

• Enhance and broaden your existing knowledge of accounting and finance and investigate the challenges of financial management in the international arena.
• Build the confidence you’ll need to meet the challenges of economic change and graduate ready to be a successful player in the world of international finance and accounting.
• Tailor the course to meet your career goals by choosing from a range of optional courses. These range from investment management and international trade to risk management and quantitative finance.
• Get invaluable training on important finance software such as Bloomberg and DataStream so that when you start your career you can contribute from day one.
• Take the opportunity to continue and further your studies to postgraduate level with our MSc Finance programme. Alternatively many students also go on to study at masters level at a range of top universities in the UK and around the world.
• You will get invaluable training on important finance software such as Bloomberg and DataStream so that when you start your career you can contribute from day one.

Are you ready to make your mark? If you’ve studied a foundation course in law and business at one of our partner colleges and want to obtain a law degree, BSc (Hons) Law with Business will prepare you for a career in the legal or business professions and beyond. Develop a breadth of transferable skills, and benefit from our focus on teaching law in the ‘real’ world.

*Please note: the first two years of the degree are only available through University of Plymouth partner colleges which provide you with a foundation degree in law, enabling you to join the third year of our law and business programmes to obtain the BSc law degree.

Key Features

• Choose from a range of relevant third year law and business options from the LLB (Hons) Law programmes and BSc (Hons) Law with Business Studies.
• Top-up your degree with a one year Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) before applying for the solicitors’ Legal Practice Course or the Barristers’ Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC). 
• Benefit from working with a faculty of highly qualified law and business staff who provide a great mix of research-informed and practice-led teaching.
• Pursue further business study – we offer a range of postgraduate options at the Plymouth Business School.
• Take part in relevant work experience and research in areas such as business, criminal justice, employment and family law via our Law Clinic.
• Benefit from being part of a very successful Business School which was recently shortlisted for the national Business School of the year.

*Please note: the first two years of the degree are only available through Plymouth University’s partner colleges which provide you with a foundation degree in law, enabling you to join the third year of our law and business programmes to obtain the BSc law degree. 

Key Features

• All our modules rely on 100% coursework. We want to create inclusive learning environments, designing forms of assessment that reflect real working conditions and truly test the skills anthropologists will need to apply in their future careers.
• Learn by doing. Throughout your time with us, you will get many opportunities to participate in real anthropological research.
• You will be taught by research-active anthropologists, who constantly publish work in renowned academic journals, ensuring your course is based on cutting-edge developments in the field.
• Take part in two major, funded field trips that enable you to practice core anthropological skills, and get to know your colleagues better. Travel to London and Oxford to visit various ethnographic museums, and take part in an international field trip to carry out fieldwork in a non-British setting.
• Shape the way anthropology is taught. Many of the subjects we teach are directly proposed by students themselves. That’s why you’ll learn about marine ethnography, humour and laughter, conspiracy theory, and anything in between.

Do you want to launch your graduate career in a competitive, dynamic global industry that spans both the arts and the sciences? With our highly-regarded and well-established MA you can develop vital editorial, production and marketing skills, while working with industry-relevant digital technologies. We focus heavily on employability and you will undertake work placements, engage with live publishing projects, travel to national industry events and build a network of professional contacts.

Study our MA Publishing and you’ll gain insight into key areas of the publishing industry and achieve a qualification endorsed by the sector. You’ll immerse yourself in the world of digital publishing, discovering new technologies and the impact these have on the industry. Through dedicated modules, you’ll develop an understanding of the skills and responsibilities essential to becoming a publishing professional, as well as the roles and collaborative processes vital to the industry. Engage with the different stages of the publishing process, from production and distribution to marketing and financial viability. You’ll be able to network with guest lecturers from established publishing companies and negotiate invaluable work experience, through placements and collaborative projects. Benefit from key industry partnerships with publishers such as FW Media and University of Plymouth Press.

Key features

The UK leads the world in the creative industries and we offer the only MA Design programme in the country that allows you to specialise in key areas that are right for you. Do you want to imagine and plan the spaces, objects and experiences of tomorrow? Do you want to enhance your skills in a fast-paced sustainable environment and progress into the design industry? New design tools are available to us now, so we can plan our preferred futures, design is evolving, play your part in that future.

“Design requires bridging the ‘knowing-doing gap.’ The tools of the designer, is about getting out into the world being inspired by people, to learn with our hands, our minds and our hearts, creating stories and joining forces with people from other disciplines, these are ways to widen the impact of what we do.” Tim Brown, CEO, IDEO. OBE