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My name is Dr Annie Hughes. I'm the Course Director for the Geography
programmes here at Kingston University.
I'm specifically Course Director for the BSc in Physical Geography, the BA in Human Geography
and our BSc and BA degree in Geography.
Geography is a fantastic subject to take in higher education because it offers you not only the ability to
understand an academic subject, but also offers you very many practical skills.
In fact, Geography graduates have a very good standing
in terms of the employment statistics. Practical subjects like accountancy and IT business management.
Geography graduates fare very well and I think that is because they have solid grounding
of skills that they take away from their degree subject.
Particularly from Kingston where we do have a very practical element within our geography programme.
We offer a BSc and a BA in Geography and within that degree students will take
combination of Human Geography and Physical Geography modules
By the end of the first year students do have a good idea what they are better at, what they enjoy more
and they may specialise one way or the other.
The Geography course is a very practical course. I can think of a module in particular. Sustainable Cities,
which is very much based looking at policy issues in Kingston upon Thames. In fact students have just presented
in the last couple of weeks their proposals as to the redevelopment of different parts of Kingston to the Kingston Town Centre Working Group.
Our students study data analysis, they also study GIS. Geographic Information Systems in all years and it's compulsory.
We believe it is very important, given that the GIS packages are being used so widely within commerce, industry and the public sector now.
Within our school we have a robust personal tutor scheme.
So all students have a personal tutor that is assigned to them in the first year and who remains with them
helping them and guiding them through the three years
We don't have huge cohorts of students going through each year so we do get an opportunity to actually get to know
our students personally and actually take an active interest in their lives and their activities.
Although the staff members that you will see in the classroom everyday are academic university teachers we are all also active researchers.
Many of us work on academic projects funded by government organisations, by policy organisations by charities
So, in fact you'll find that although you're being taught by teachers
we also have a life outside the university where we are professionals in a great diversity of fields.
We bring in people from our 'other life', as it were, in terms of contacts. In terms of external speakers.
Also to get the students on our modules out into the community and into other realms of life to actually look and see how things are run.
The University itself has a very strong alumni.
In fact I have just be in contact with a student who graduated about fifteen years ago.
He has done incredibly well and is now Managing Director for a very large IT company.
He's just asked if a group of our undergraduates could go and work for him for some work experience.
It's fantastic to actually be able to use links with past students to help the students currently at Kingston.
If you are thinking of coming to do a Geography degree at Kingston.
Please come to one of our open days where you can chat to myself or one of my colleagues about the course
and also interact with some of our current students who will give you a very honest opinion
of both their time at Kingston and their experiences in the course.