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hi, I’m Allan Seddon, I’m Head of School of Life Sciences
at Kingston University. The School of Life Sciences
is one of the three schools in the Faculty of Science,
the others been Pharmacy Chemistry, Geography Geology
and The Environment. Our courses range from what you’d
expect in life sciences, from things like straight Biology
through to subjects like Biomedical Science, into areas like
Sports and Exercise Science, and we also deliver courses
in the technological sciences, which is delivered by
a group of staff that joined the school from the then school
of Applied Physics around the year 2000
The School has built a reputation over the last few years
for excellent teaching quality; we’ve had a number of
subject reviews in that time and we always try pride
ourselves on the quality of our teaching and the approach
that staff take towards their teaching. We deliver courses
through the University modular scheme and many
of our courses offer the opportunity after the first year
to be able to transfer across into an alternative course
if you are not happy with the one you’ve first joined.
Several of our courses have accreditation, for example
our Biomedical Science courses are accredited by
the Institute of Biomedical Sciences, which’s
the professional body for biomedical science in the UK
they come in and review the programmes that we deliver and
they have a role to play in maintaining the quality of all the courses
There’s a prescribed programme, the course has to follow
and we also have accreditation from the Nutrition Society
which again accredits our BSc Honours in Nutrition, which again
is one our more popular courses that we deliver now.
And trying to review all the courses the school offers
is going to be difficult, in the time I've got available
but I certainly encourage you to look through
the prospectus to see the wide range of courses available
Ok in terms of laboratories, and this is an example
of our laboratories, we have a number of laboratories.
In fact we’ve built several new laboratories recently
we’ve got a new Microbiology laboratory adjacent to this one
We’ve also got several other specialist areas, where we
can do more research-based studies, so we have a very
good facility for doing electro microscopy.
We also have some excellent cell culture facilities.
Where we can carry out work culturing cells and
exposing them to various compounds, looking for
the effects of, perhaps anti cancer agents, that sort of thing
So we can determine whether or not a potential compound
is going to be suitable to investigate further to see
if it’s going to be beneficial in terms of a drug for example.
In terms of other facilities we’ve got available,
several of our courses have specialist facilities, for example
Forensic Science course, we have a house, where we are able
to simulate crime scenes and in fact we often end up
with murders and other hideous crimes been simulated.
I will say simulated, which then students are able to investigate
using the techniques they’ve learned on the course.
All of the things about most of our courses are about
preparing students to go out to work of course.
And that’s about making them employable by potential
employers and we hope that our courses through like accreditation
I mentioned a few minutes ago, through the sort of
applications that we’ve got, that we should be able
to ensure, students have a good opportunities to get work experience
We also enable students if they wish to, to travel;
we’ve got a number of programmes, where our
students are able to study abroad. We have a student
studying currently in the United States and we also
have had a student recently over in Sweden,
in the Karolinska Institute, carrying out a years placement there
All of which again make them different to majority of students
who might be looking for a job in year or two’s time.
And again we feel this is an important add on
towards their degree, to give them a broad range of skills
that they might use to gain useful jobs at the end of the course.
Hi, my name’s Emmanuel and I am a second year student
doing Biomedical Sciences. And the reason as to why
I chose my subject in the first place is because;
I was interested in fining out the functions of a
human body in a whole lot more detail, as apposed
to just looking at human biology.
What’s unique about the course is the labs that we use
as apposed to just using theoretical work.
We have to do quite a bit of practical in Microbiology
which requires a whole lot of information on, microscopes
and also testing out different chemicals to see
what they would, how they would react in the body.
So things, such as enzymes, we find out as to how
they work through all the practical labs that we go to.
What I enjoy most about my course is the knowledge
that we actually get from the course, because you find out
that a lot of the knowledge we gain from the course
is very practical. I, myself I like to do sports, so I found out
that there’s a whole lot of similarities.
As to if I can’t do something in sports, why that would happen
I can relay back the to myself, just kind of find out
that sort of thing as well. We are assessed in a different
variety of ways; we are assessed through coursework
which you may have to hand in, we are assessed
through practical reports and actual practical exams
themselves and we ‘re also assessed through examinations
I over came any challenges I had; firstly
by speaking to some lecturers, which you can contact
by e-mail, and also as well we had little study groups
that we’re involved in, so from time to time we’d
meet up and any queries that somebody else had
we’d share them between ourselves and then
found the answer to them, sort of thing.