Penelope Nestel - Employability, Applicant and Previous Experience

The programme has been developed, the syllabus and the curriculum have been developed to match core competencies both for public health practitioners and specialists as well as for nutritionists on the Association for Nutrition register. We put a premium on developing competencies so that graduates go out fit for purpose. We see that as being one of our comparative advantages in the wider market that our students they not just know the academic, the knowledge side of things, but they know how to apply that knowledge to real world situations, work environments.

Well, we have in one of our modules, in particular, well, public health as an academic discipline we don't do lab work and things like that, but we do give students the opportunity to get experience of working in public health. So one of our modules they would go and work for up to 100 hours with a setting where public health is practised. It could be a diverse range of things. We also develop skills. For example, for nutrition in developing skills for doing dietary assessment, from taking anthropometric measurements to assess nutritional status for assessing physical activity. So, the students will be put in the appropriate settings where they can acquire those skills.

We are, depending on which side, So, anyone with a social science degree, at least a 2:2, will be looked at favourably. For the nutrition pathway we prefer, and we encourage, students to get some grounding in biological science. Because they need to understand the metabolic processes that go on into understanding why we do what we do. The other important criteria is English language. There we look for an average score of an ILTS of 7.

Work experience is a bonus but not essential. We observe in students who come in with some work experience, say they do get more out of the course. But, as I say, it's not essential.

We welcome international students, who bring a lot. Having a good mix of students is a win/win situation, because they all have diverse experiences and expose each other to issues that they might not have thought about. So that's all