1. Careers Centre ‘ Good’ placement support: allowing students to combine academic and professional achievements Nalayini Thambar and Clair Souter Assistant Directors Commercial Awareness

2. Careers Centre Outline  The Careers Centre and its institutional role  What our students have told us about their placement experience  The Leeds response  The Careers Centre placement module – modelling good practice  The student experience

3. Careers Centre Our Services and Activities  Information, Advice and Guidance  Drop-in service, individual guidance, central workshops  Faculty Activities  Work extensively with schools and departments, we are a teaching department ourselves and have our own placement module  Services to Business  On-campus graduate recruitment activity, Internship creation and management, Business Start-up Support

4. Careers Centre Our institutional role  Professional leadership of the university’s employability strategy  Interface between the university and the graduate employment market  Contribution to the university placements and internships provision through  The creation of exclusive opportunities for Leeds students (100 in 11/12)  Our own placement module to broaden access to industrial placement years (more shortly!)  Being “The principal source of support and advice on Placement Learning for Schools/Faculties” at Leeds

5. Careers Centre ‘Good’ industrial placement support – key messages  Support when it is needed  Regular contact from the university  The possibility of links between their placement and dissertation where appropriate  Advice when making final year choices  A visit(or) which represents the university well  Help as a returner – establishing networks, getting back into the mode of study !! Students distinguish between institutional support and the unmistakeable value of their placement !! Students know what other institutions are doing

6. Careers Centre The Leeds approach  Sharing of good practice at the placement tutors’ forum  The establishment of pre, post and ‘on’ placement minimum standards that will apply across the institution  Broadening the industrial placement option to non traditional subjects; departments can adopt the Careers Centre placement module as their own (Music) or their students can transfer to us for their year’s placement (Philosophy, Psychology, History)  Building good placement support practices into the delivery of the Careers Centre module

7. Careers Centre Our placement module  “CSER8000” – an industrial placement year module where the Careers Centre is the parent department  Students can take up to 3 placements, combining paid, voluntary, UK and internationally based opportunities  We help students find their placements, brief them before they start and have a minimum of a monthly review while they are on placement  On their return they deliver a presentation on their year and we support them as they re-integrate into their academic department

8. Careers Centre THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE

9. Careers Centre Concluding comments  At Leeds our approach to ‘allowing students to combine academic and professional achievement’ currently focuses on:  Setting minimum standards for pre, ‘on’ and post- placement support which have been directly informed by the student experience  Making a placement year available to all students regardless of degree discipline