Staff and students working as partners in STEM and pedagogic research

The Faculty of Science Engineering and Computing has run a Summer Undergraduate Research Internship Programme for the last two years. The internships enable level 5 students to work full-time with academics as part of a research group for 8 weeks over the summer. Students were selected based on their academic record and the commitment they demonstrated in a cover letter. Last year 90 out of 2000 eligible students applied for the 24 available internships. This presentation will detail how the programme is currently organised and explore how staff and students have worked to maximise the impact of the internship scheme. The results of research, led by four previous interns, on reasons that prevent students applying to the programme and how the programme could be developed to open it up to greater number of students from diverse backgrounds will be presented. The talk will illustrate how blogs have been used so the interns‘ experiences can be shared with other students. An evaluation of previous interns‘ experiences will illustrate the benefits of programmes in which staff and students works as partners in research