Transferable and professional skills

The acquisition of transferable or "professional" skills should be an important goal for students in higher education. Such skills include the ability to apply existing knowledge to solve new problems; expertise in finding and evaluating information; the ability to communicate effectively orally and in writing; the building of mathematical models; the ability to work in a team and demonstrate leadership; organisation of one's own work, resilience, creativity, recognising skill needs and achievements, making and taking opportunities, and the assumption of responsibility for one's own learning. Many of these skills are developed in the normal course of honours study.

The year-long module, PH3014 Transferable Skills for Physicists, is designed to lead students through a wide range of activities which will help develop their transferable skills to an advanced level, while at the same time exploring aspects of physics and astronomy of interest to them. These activities include the writing of a review article, and practice in giving a talk on a chosen topic in physics or astronomy. The latter is done in the context of a student conference, usually held at the Burn House, Edzell. PH3014 is a compulsory part of the teaching programme for all single-honours students in their JH year.

Much of the first semester of study in PH3014 forms part of PH4040 Nuclear and Particle Physics with Advanced Skills, which is a compulsory module for many of our joint degree students. MSci Chemistry and Physics students have some of this in PH4043 Studies in Physics and Chemistry.