Opportunities and Support
The Sheffield Sociological Studies Graduate
We have two major goals for when our students graduate:
- The first is academic. We want all our graduates to have a ‘sociological studies imagination’. You will enter the department as students who study sociology, social policy or social work but you will graduate as fully-fledged sociologists, social policy analysts or social workers. This means not only that you have academic and professional qualifications but that also you think imaginatively as social scientists, having an in-depth understanding of the social world.
- The second goal is social and civic. Our graduates not only understand the social world, they engage with it purposefully and constructively.
We encourage our students to register for the Sheffield Graduate Award where they have to undertake activities from four of the following areas: volunteering; social and cultural awareness; student jobs and work experience; enterprise (including social enterprise); activities supporting the university; and extending international horizons.
Additionally students are actively engaged in the social, administrative and academic life of the department. This begins when you attend opens days and are hosted by our students. Then they act as guides during the induction sessions in your first weeks as a student in the department, continuing as mentors throughout the year.
Further details of the Student Mentoring Scheme
We have an active student Sociology Society which arranges social, academic and cultural activities. Student representatives play an active role in department governance, attending staff-student committee and the department teaching committee. Student representative have also been actively engaged in planning our new curriculum, presenting staff with their vision. Additionally there are departmental `champions´ for inquiry-based learning and inclusive education.
We also look wider afield. As well as year-abroad and Erasmus arrangements for study in universities in other countries, students arrange field trips (in Malta in 2009) and in 2008 and 2009 there have been staff-student study tours in the Gambia, where the department has strong links both with the university and local and international non-governmental organisations.