Boost Your Public Engagement Skills with Be a Scientist!
Looking to enhance your public engagement skills and broaden your experience? Volunteer at Be a Scientist on Tuesday, 25th February 2025 and gain hands-on experience at a large-scale public event!
What’s in it for you?
🔍Skill Development: Build confidence in engaging with diverse audiences and learn how to effectively communicate complex topics in an accessible way.
🤝 Networking Opportunities: Connect with colleagues from other disciplines and learn how they share their research with diverse age groups.
🎯 Hands-On Experience: Help run exciting activities, observe best practices in engagement, and learn about creative evaluation techniques.
☕ Coffee & Community: Whether you join for a half-day or full day, enjoy coffee on tap and a supportive environment to build connections in the wider research community.
📋 Register your interest via this Microsoft Form, and we’ll be in touch!
Generally speaking, student placements be taken at any point whilst engaged in further/higher education (typically 15+). There are many different options to consider:
Have you considered?
Ambassador Wales – Wales Ambassador Scheme
Natural Resources Wales
If you’re a student aged 15 or above, you can apply for a placement to gain work experience. Student work experience placements can range from a few days, up to 6 weeks.
All of Natural Resource Wales’ placement opportunities (including work experience, volunteering, apprenticeships etc) are advertised on their placements page: Natural Resources Wales / Apprenticeships, volunteering, work experience and other placements
Placements are dependent on staff identifying opportunities – once placements are available, they will be advertised on the website, therefore it’s worth checking in regularly to be kept up to date.
For the weekly recruitment newsletter subscription link please see here: Natural Resources Wales / Jobs
NRW Gower Volunteer have a range of volunteer placement opportunities to enable you to promote the sustainable management, benefits and value of natural resources and ecosystems. You’ll be assigned a placement manager who will oversee your work programme and you’ll receive an induction and training, and ongoing support.
Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC)
Museum Wales
Placements – All of Museum Wales’ available Student Work Placements are/will be advertised on their website – Placements | Museum Wales
Museum Wales will be recruiting for summer placements in the next few months, providing staff have opportunities to offer.
In the meantime, there are some other opportunities that students may be interested in:
Volunteering – Current Opportunities – Become a Volunteer | Museum Wales
Youth – If students are 25 or under, they may also be interested in opportunities with the Youth Team: Young people | Museum Wales
UK CEH studentships
Studentships | UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
Any work experience, internship or PhD opportunities will be shared on the above page.
RSPB
Welsh Water
UK Research and Innovation (NERC)
Undergraduate research experience placements (REPs) – UKRI
NERC also offer Policy Internships to doctoral students funded by UKRI research councils in organsiations such as JNCC.
The National Trust
The Wildlife Trust
There are plenty of ways you can donate your skills and time to look after wildlife! Opportunities include community gardening, species surveying (such as looking for otters!), caring for nature reserves, plant identification and GPS mapping. You can even run Wildlife Watch groups, which enable young people to discover and explore their local environment.
Our volunteers carry out a huge range of tasks but it doesn’t have to be outdoors! You could find yourself making good use of your organisational, IT, administrative or financial skills too.
Each Wildlife Trust has a large number of both regular and casual volunteers, amounting to a total of more than 32,500 volunteers across the UK.
Find your local Trust below and start your volunteering adventure today!
It might also be worth looking at:
Environmental Internship Jobs – 2023 | Indeed.com
Environmental volunteering | Environmentjob.co.uk
Not all work placements will be advertised (or even exist yet!) Here is a good article on how to approach employers for work experience from Prospects.ac.uk:
How to ask employers for work experience
This is an excellent video on getting work experience with no prior experience:
How to get an internship with NO experience || beginner’s guide for college students – YouTube
Your university may advertise and help you to access placements or work experience. It is worth booking an appointment with a careers advisor to find out more.
Some courses will offer placements in industry as a module (for example Aberystwyth University offers a Applied Geospatial Skills in Industry module) or a sandwich year.