Outreach in Food and Nutritional Sciences

Outreach is an important part of our work. It enables us to educate and help a wide range of people -  not just our own students.  Typical people we connect with are school children, teachers, community groups and professionals. We are involved with schools (both junior and secondary),  career seminars, professional bodies, agricultural shows, industry groups and many more! We also benefit by discovering more about the concerns and issues raised by our work in food and nutrition.

Our priciple aim is to help increase understanding about:

• the key scientific concepts important for food safety and quality, and
• explaining the importance of our work, and that of our graduates, to providing a safe and sustainable food supply both here in the UK and around the world.

Some examples of our Outreach activities are illustrated on this page.  Please feel free to contact us about any of these or any additional ideas you may have where we might be able to help.

A sheet giving more details of the range and type of our recent outreach work is available. See: Outreach Activities 2010-2011

Summer school

The Summer School is a major outreach activity which has been organised by the Department for many years. The 3 day course is usually held in early July and is for sixth formers (principally students nearing the end of Year 12). It is fully sponsored by the food industry. It consists of a series of talks, laboratory and pilot plant practicals, interactive games by food industrialists and talks on careers in food and the food industry. We also run a Teachers' Day in parallel with the main course for Science and Food Technology teachers which is sponsored by the Institute of Food Science and Technology (IFST)

For more details of these events, go to: Sixth Form Summer Course and Teachers Day

School Visits

We organise a number of visits for school groups. These typically involve a practical demonstration and related discussions, a tour through our facilities and an introductory talk about our courses. In addition we organise outreach activities in collaboration with the University's Student Recruitment office such as the 'Formula for the future' event and with other organisations such as the Royal Society of Chemistrty.

In collaboration with the Chemistry Department, we are also involved with organising technical workshops tackling key elements of the A-Level syllabus.  These have included Chromatography workshops and Spectroscopy Masterclass workshops.

For more information on some of these workshops please visit the School's Outreach web page (see link on the left) and/or contact Dr Jauregi (see contact details on the right).

Undergraduate Ambassador Scheme (UAS)

The UAS is a national programme that allows our final year BSc students to do their final year project in a school on a subject linked to 'Science Education'.

We joined the scheme in October 2008 when one of our undergraduates was linked to a local secondary school - Leighton Park School. In 2009/10 this was expanded with three of our students doing their Science Education projects in schools - these were the Abbey Junior School, Leighton Park School, and Whiteknights Primary School. This is a very interesting programme which helps us to promote the discipline of food and nutrition and particularly helps to inform pupils about the important science-base of food and nutrition degree programmes.

As well as providing out students with an interesting and challenging opportunity to stimulate interest in their subject, the programme has enabled us to build more contacts with schools and establish a dialogue with both science and food technology teachers.

A further brief summary of the scheme is avaiable (see: UAS Powerpoint Slides) as well as a summary report on the work of the students (see UAS Summary Report)

Other outreach:

Additional activities have included:

• Helping run the University stand at the annual Berkshire County Show with exhits about our work in, for example, functional food or understanding the science of bread making.
• Open Days with a departmental programme that includes a lecture, tours through our facilities and discussions with members of staff.
• We provide Work Placements for secondary school children and welcome about 2-4 pupils per year for one week. They typically join a research group and work alongside a PhD student and under the supervision of a member of staff.